Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Swimming Milestone #3

In preparation for the Oakland Triathlon Festival (coming up August 29th!), last Friday I swam a half mile in open water at the Dolphin Club in San Francisco.  A half a mile!  Yay.  Sure, I stopped to cough up water *and* caught myself swimming in the total opposite direction of where I wanted to go a couple of times, but all in all, it was a success!

This workout starts with a 4 mile bike ride from the Embarcadero BART station along the wharf.  The touristy hustle and bustle down there is always entertaining and merits a mention on this blog because it's a segment that I always look forward to riding for various reasons.  From Pier 29 to Ghirardelli Square, the sidewalks are flooded with droves of tourists from all over the world walking around taking pictures and noticing everything (which turns this run-of-the-mill ride into a kind of parade of urban American traffic).  Instead of cutting off tour buses, I all of the sudden feel like waving to them (Miss Oakland style of course: elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, middle finger... ooops! jk).  One time I was overwhelmed with the urge to just start chanting USA USA USA!  Haha....  Anyway, I don't know why I'm so weird, but I enjoy the idea of sending tourists home with crazy cyclist stories.  :)

Back to the swim though - the first time I went to the Dolphin Club was before my second tri and I barely made it to the first buoy and back.  The second time, two Fridays ago, I went with a friend who encouraged me the whole time.  She was like, yay, first buoy!  Yay.  Second buoy...  ONE MORE BUOY!  ...and so on and so forth.  She helped me prove to myself that the distance was possible.  So, this last Friday I finally did the whole 1/2 mile by myself.  Definitely a milestone!  So that felt great.  Woohoo!

I love the Dolphin Club so much now!  The water is 68 degrees and has an absolutely gorgeous view of the Golden Gate bridge.  Also, in addition to the beautiful swim and the wild ride that gets me there, the sauna there is incredible (that is a story for another blog post though - hehe!).  I'm hoping a few more open water swims is enough to get me ready for race day.  The Oakland Tri Fest Sprint has a swim of .6 miles which will be the most swimming I've ever done in a race!  Eyeyey.  Oh my gosh...  I have butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it!

Alright - that's all for now.  More later!

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