Where did I leave off? Oh, yes, the swim. I wrote about finishing it but I didn't write about the swim itself. So, the gun went off for my wave and all of us ran out to meet the water. I fell behind right away, unfortunately. For a couple of minutes I was hanging with one girl, but it didn't last long. Another problem I didn't anticipate was the panic I felt almost as soon as I started swimming. And I really should have anticipated it since the same thing happened to me during the sprint triathlon last year. Both times I panicked and was unable to breathe underwater. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) this swim was long enough that, at some point, I just wanted it to be done faster and was finally able to settle down and breathe properly. Even once I sorted that out I had to deal with really inefficient swimming. I'm not good at keeping an eye out for which direction I'm swimming, so I would swim with my head down for a few strokes, look up, realize I was going too far right or left, overcorrect, and repeat the whole process on the other side. I'm sure this just resulted in a lot of unnecessary zig-zagging.
So the part where I had to swim with my head above water lasted for almost half the race, until the turnaround. In that time, people from the two waves behind me caught up and started passing me. It was demoralizing but not altogether unexpected. It also seemed endless. Every time I swam up to the next buoy hoping and praying that it was the last, there would be another one right behind it! And when I say "right behind," I in fact mean far, far away. But I did finally finish and head into the Transition 1 area. The transition went pretty well even though I was one of the last ones out. I forgot to put on my Garmin ForeRunner, but as it turns out this wasn't a big problem.
Oh my God I'm falling asleep again. Four parter? Meh, it's not like anyone is reading anyway. If any of my non-readers are following and offended, I'll try to avoid future four part posts. Night@
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