Holy Lake Beating Batman!

The big lesson learned last night? Lucas has clearly NOT done enough (or any) lake training! Oh sure, in my head I was thinking, "Now Lucas, you have to remember that the lake will not be as easy to swim as the pool. There will be waves and murky water and other bodies thrashing about, but you are a good swimmer and it should be no problem for YOU." But having that in my head and experiencing it out in the actual water....NOT THE SAME THING!!!!

Cessica and I went to Lake Nokomis last night to do a lake swim. It was her third. My first. All I gotta say folks is WOW. And I mean W.O.W.! The water temp was great, no worries there. It was a bit murky but not too bad, there were a few seaweed strands but nothing at all scary, it didn't even smell bad, but the waves and the bodies? Those are gonna be a problem folks. I started off with a freestyle stroke which quickly had me panicking a bit. I couldn't swim a straight line to save my life, the waves (small as they were) were tossing me about quite a bit and occasionally when I turned my head to the side for a breath, I got a face full of water instead. Ok, freestyle? Clearly not the way to go! So I started in with the breast stroke. MUCH BETTER! I could see where I was going, where the other people in the water were and was able to get actual air into my lungs instead of lake water when I came up for a breath. Sure, it's a slower paced stroke but who cares? If it gets me from A to B without panicking or drowning then it's the stroke for me! Every now and again, when there was some empty water stretched out in front of me, I switched to freestyle and was able to use that stroke for a while before returning to the breast stroke and I think I developed sort of a system to be able to get me through the water. Sort of. I hope. Oh God, I hope and pray!

I am SO GLAD I went out to the lake as my very last workout before the tri. What if I had skipped that step and found myself panicked and trying to figure this all out on race day? Would have been a lousy way to start the race! So while I maybe got beat up a bit last night, I also learned a lot and am feeling better about the swim now that it is not such a HUGE unknown. And the best part is that after we swam approximately how far we will be swimming on Saturday, I didn't feel tired at all, even with the beating I took. I know the length of the swim won't be a problem, just navigating through the waves and bodies will and I now have just a bit of an idea of what that will be like.

And so that's it! All training is behind me. Workouts are done. All I need to do now is keep on eating right, resting and getting some serious sleep so that I'm ready and fresh for race day. The Captain came home late LATE last night so I know I'm in good hands; grilled protein and veggies here I come! So I'm off for now.

Hope you all have a great Thursday!