Well, my summer racing season is nearly finished and it has been my most satisfying season ever. I’ve enjoyed every race, placed higher consistently than any previous summer and gained useful insights to pass along to TI students and Total Swim readers. My two latest races were the John Daly Ocean Mile on Sept 1 and the Town of Hempstead Triathlon Sept 14.

The John Daly race was held at Long Beach on Long Island’s south shore. It was an overcast and drizzly day, with air temperature in the high 50s and water temps in the upper 60s. There had been storm surf the day before and the shore break and offshore swells were both in the 4-foot range. It looked to me like a great day for ocean swimming, with evenly rolling swells beyond the shore break.

We were bused a mile east to the starting line then lined up at the water’s edge for the starter’s instructions. We’d be swimming past six rock jetties and a similar number of buoys. The first buoy was anchored 40 yards offshore. We assumed that, as always, we’d have to swim out and round it, keeping it on our right shoulder, before swimming west toward the finish. But when someone asked if we’d have to round the buoy, the starter said no. I wasn’t sure I was hearing him right, but I didn’t want to question him on it, hoping that most people in the field wouldn’t fully understand the opportunity he was presenting us.

I edged over to the right edge of the pack, where Bob Kolonkowski, a many-time Masters National champion (and former teammate at St. John’s University 30-plus years ago) asked “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I replied “Don’t speak too loud, or we’ll draw a crowd.” A group of about eight swimmers joined us. All grasped that, as we would not have to round the first buoy, we could swim on a diagonal directly toward the second buoy, about 100 yards down the beach, taking care only to avoid the nearest jetty to our right.

As the horn sounded, I began high-stepping through the shallows. I got turned sideways slightly by the first wave, then righted myself and dove under the second and came up swimming. Because most of the field –out of habit -- was heading out on a more perpendicular course, there wasn’t much of a crowd.

By the time we reached the first buoy, a pack of 8 or 10 swimmers had formed. I knew that if I could just stay with them, I’d finish near the leaders. And then I just started stroking, breathing and sighting for what seemed an indeterminable period.

Swimming in a bubble

Open water races, at least for me, seem almost timeless. In a mile race in the pool, your counter ticks off the laps and sometimes you can see the timing board. As laps go by, you do continual mental calculations: how far you’ve gone, how many laps left, how much time that might take. Also, how much discomfort you feel ready to endure. If you’re swimming 800 meters, will you need – and are you ready -- to dig deeper for a closing push at 600 meters or will you wait until 700?

In open water, I am so intently focused on the sensations from my own stroke and the positions of nearby swimmers, that I completely lose track of time and distance. I could have swum 10 minutes or 20, _ mile or three-quarters. I simply don’t know, encased as I am in a bubble of the water immediately around me and the positions of the four to six closest swimmers.

What I enjoy most about this is how it purifies and clarifies the experience. Pool races always hurt at some point – and as I said earlier, you can choose where that point will come, but to swim to your limits, you’re going to encounter that pain at some point. Open water is different. During the Daly swim I felt as if I could have continued swimming for two or three miles at the same pace I was holding for the mile we were racing – and yet I never felt as if I was holding back.

I’m not very good at seeing clearly what or who is around me in these races. I often have someone approach me after races and comment that they were swimming with me at some point. I seldom know who is around me. All I know is that I see arms and caps and sometimes feel body parts. And unlike the cable swim or Williams Lake triathlon, I described last month, not much intentional drafting happens in a sizable pack. It’s simply too difficult to stay right behind someone else.

Pulled along by the pack

What I sense instead is what you might call “psychological draft.” Simply by being part of a pack swimming in fairly close quarters, it seems easier to just maintain a given pace. I distinctly felt a sense of working together in that pack, and less of the sense of racing against that you feel in your own lane in the pool.

As we swam steadily on, I kept my stroke as long and smooth as possible and put as much smooth, steady power as possible into each stroke. Not knowing how far I’d gone or how far I had to go, I simply monitored my “internal tachometer” – staying comfortably away from my red line. And checked my position in the pack every 20 strokes or so. Each time I’d see the same thing – arms and caps. I never even looked for the shore or jetties or buoys. Where the pack went, I would go, making small adjustments in my course to move closer to or away from others in the pack.

At some point in the latter stages, I saw Kolonkowski next to me. In this case I did know who it was, because he has a deep tan and I’ve been watching his distinctly loose-limbed stroke for three decades. We’re both in the 50-54 age group and I knew I’d have to beat him to win the age group. Bob is a good body-surfer so I didn’t want the final 30 yards to decide it. We matched each other stroke-for-stroke for a hundred or so strokes, until he disappeared and I suddenly realized that I was swimming by myself. I looked around and noticed that since my last “peek at the pack” 8 or 10 strokes earlier, everyone else had made a right turn and headed for shore, while I continued stroking west.

I immediately changed course and began swimming as strongly as I could in the same direction. Everyone else was a bit ahead and 15 yards to my right, but I didn’t want to angle toward them. Better to swim directly to the beach and try to outrun them to the finish chute. After 30 strokes, I could sense a wave forming, so I pulled my left arm strongly and speared my right forward while leaning down on my chest. My timing was fortunate and I got picked up. The wave brought me to the shallows and I got to my feet and began high-stepping. I saw Kolonkowski exactly abreast of me and 15 yards to my left. Though he was in front of the chute, he was looking away from me, to his right. I hoped he’d keep looking that way, possibly giving me a chance to sneak ahead of him. Then he looked over and saw me…and at the same moment, I stepped in a hole and fell headlong. I scrambled up and began running again, but reached the chute just behind Bob. In the end, we finished 8th and 9th overall, 1st and 2nd in our age group in times of 22:54 and 22:56. I was completely pleased with the result though, because the overall winner, Karen Einsidler who set a Masters world record for 1500 meters just two weeks earlier, had beaten me by just over 90 seconds, the closest I’d come to the overall winner in any mile race this summer.

Winning my age group would have made the experience a little sweeter, but I enjoyed a post-race glow the entire day, simply from the exhilaration of swimming with that briskly-moving pack for over 20 minutes. I wish I could swim such a satisfying race every week.

Three Sports - One Entry Fee

I have not done a formal triathlon – entry fees, race officials…drafting penalties? – in about 12 years, but the fun I had doing the informal Hudson Valley Triathlon Club weeknight races the previous two months encouraged me to do a “real” race. And this one involved a _ mile ocean swim which made it almost irresistible.

The race was in Point Lookout, just six miles east of the site of the John Daly race. I was struck, as I packed my car the night before, at how much stuff one must remember to bring for a tri. Life is much simpler as a swimmer – all I need is a towel, goggles, cap and swimsuit, along with some toothpaste, which I use as a defogger, and vaseline for my underarms if I’ll be swimming in salt water.

I checked in and got marked with my numbers an hour before the start, then set up my little transition area, taking special care to roll my socks for ease in slipping them on wet feet, as I’d learned from TI Coach Celeste St. Pierre at the TI Triathlon Camp in Killington VT a month earlier. I draped my Camelback hydration system over the bike seat and put my bike gloves over the brake handles, put my sunglasses in my helmet and rested that on the aerobars. Then I put running shoes and a baseball cap to the side.

We walked along the beach to the starting line. The course seemed much shorter than _ mile, perhaps even less than a half-mile. I felt a bit cheated by that. As the field gathered, I swam out to the first buoy, turned around it, stroked east, in the direction we’d be going, for 25 yards, then returned to the buoy. I parked myself in front of it to see which direction the sweep would take me. It was a strong westward sweep. That was encouraging; it could turn a half-mile swim into the equivalent of something longer.

Back on shore, it appeared that the sweep was running east, which several people remarked on. But having drifted west minutes earlier and 50 yards from shore, I knew that where we’d be swimming, the water was going the other way. Most of the field lined up to the west, probably figuring the sweep would carry them to the buoy. I lined up as far left as I could, next to John Skudin, the swim coach at my alma mater, St. Johns and one of the strongest ocean swimmers on Long Island. Neither of us were wearing wetsuits, while virtually everyone else was.

As the horn sounded, I tried, without much success, to stay on John’s feet heading out to the buoy. The water at the buoy was thick with bodies so I made a wide turn looking for a clearer path and wanting to avoid contact. The swim took 15 or 16 minutes – there was no clock at the swim finish -- and the one memory I have is of relative chaos.

When I swim an open water race, no one is wearing wetsuits, so I am usually with people who are similar caliber swimmers. They know how to swim in a pack in a relatively orderly way and there’s even etiquette of a sort. Violent contact, being kicked, having someone climb over you, is relatively unusual. Not so in my “full contact” triathlon swim. The wetsuit-wearing swimmers around me were going in all directions, crossing over me, rearing up in the water suddenly. I was kicked in the head – hard—three times, once having my goggles jarred loose, but fortunately not my teeth. The pack opened up a bit as we approached the finish, but I found myself feeling distracted and it was a bit harder to find a “groove.”

Still, the pace felt quite relaxed all the way and I came to shore uneventfully. Though we weren’t rushing to a finish line, people around me seemed to be moving pretty fast as we run up the beach and across the parking lot toward our bikes. I jogged easily to my transition area. They’d be peeling wetsuits and I wouldn’t have to.

I put my shirt on, then socks and shoes went on easily. On with the Camelback, sunglasses and helmet. Then I began fumbling with my gloves. But the guy next to me was wheeling his bike off, without any. As was everyone else, I noticed as I looked around, so I tossed them down and joined everyone heading for the transition area exit. Well, there’s one thing I can leave home next time I do a tri!

As this race was taking place entirely within 400 yards of the ocean, the bike course was completely flat. No advantage from all the hills I’d ridden this summer, and all the gear-changing savvy I’d acquired. But it was kind of fun to just rest in the aerobars and spin. The only time I changed gears -- up one, down one – was when I was heading into the wind, pedaling west, and when we turned around to ride east. The 10 miles went by quickly, just a bit over 30 minutes. I rode at 17 to 18 mph into the wind and 20 to 21 when it was behind me. I was passed by three other riders in the first mile or so and one more at about five miles. But I passed three others in the final five miles, so I lost a net one place during the bike, coming into the run transition in the top 30, which was a pleasant surprise for someone who doesn’t do this very often. The 1200 miles I rode this summer must have had a positive effect.

“Social” running

The run was my biggest challenge. As I mentioned previously, my calf muscles seize up when I run more than a couple of miles and so I never do any running. I was concerned about being able to run five miles without a painful spasm. I ran as gently as I could for the first couple of miles, felt my left calf give warning twinges about 21 minutes into the run and adjusted my stride to reduce the tightening, but it continued to ache .

The highlight of my run was when a faster-running athlete caught up to me in the final mile and, rather than breezing by, slowed to match my pace and we ran together at a conversational pace. He introduced himself as Lee Mambuca and we talked a bit about heart rates and his experience doing the Lake Placid Ironman weeks earlier.. As I was just trying to nurse my tightening calf muscle home without going into spasm, I know I was holding him back from a faster finish and probably a few places in the rankings. But just having him alongside took my mind off my leg and made the next half-mile much more pleasant. I'm sure it helped me run a bit better than I would have without his company. Once we got to the final straightaway, I told him to go ahead and finish strong, which he did. But that brief interlude of conviviality and collegiality gave me a glimpse of the sense of “we’re-all-in-this-together” community that can make triathlon so attractive to so many people In swimming, you can’t be “social” until the race is over, but throughout the bike and run, nearly everyone who passed me took the time to share a bit of encouragement.

I finished the 5-mile run in 41 minutes (not passing a soul, and being passed by dozens) for an overall time of 1:35:02 and 65th place. The winner finished in 1:10 and the “anchor man” –180th overall – did it in 2:47, so I count that as a successful and satisfying experience. Even more though the undiluted enjoyment I had at the three tri’s I did this year (two informal and one “real”) have already encouraged me to do more next year. I’m already thinking of doing St. Anthony’s in St. Petersburg FL next April!

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