Last weekend (June 12) I woke up early and drove out with my wife to Lake Berryessa for the 29th annual Lake Berryessa open water swim. I joined a local Masters Swimming program at the beginning of the year and have been swimming, when life doesn’t interrupt, three times a week. This open water swim was the first event, outside of practice, that I’ve participated in. My event wasn’t until 11:30 AM but we left early because this is a big event and a lot of people turn out for it, over 1000 this year. There is are two events for adults the two mile and one mile swim children under 11 can swim a 500 yard race. Some people take this very seriously but I was simply there to swim my mile and have fun.
I got a time, nice smack dab in about the middle, but there were a lot of people ahead of me. I’ll consider swimming as a workout a success if I come back next year to the swim and cut 5 or 6 minutes off of my time. The fact that others are swimming right by me stopped bothering me a long time ago. It was exciting enough and looked fun enough that I believe the wife will do it with me next year too which is nice.
Later this summer I believe I’ll be climbing Half Dome in Yosemite National Park and in August I’ll be doing a Sprint Triathlon which leads me to believe that I’m well on my way to crossing off ‘getting in shape’ on my list of 2010 goals.
