Love that dirty water

I was going to save this post till the photos from the race came out, but the web site is taking their sweet time with it, so I'm posting it now. But first, I'd like to apologize for disappearing off the face of the earth the last couple of weeks. I miss hearing about everyone, and I miss posting, but it's just been impossible lately. We're pushing like nuts at work to meet deadlines while we're one editor short, and all the other editors are going on vacation. I've been waking up at 4:00 every day to get in my workouts early, so I can go into work early, work through lunch, stay late, get home, try to get in another workout, and try (usually unsuccessfully) to fall asleep. I'll have my life back in a couple of weeks, and will get the rest of my LifeCycle posts out by then, but in the meantime please bear with me. Hope everyone's having a great training and racing summer.


I know I've used this youtube clip before, but this time I really, really had to use it.

Today (being last Sunday), against my better judgement, I did the Charles River 1-mile Swim. If you are not familiar with the Charles River, it is the "dirty water" that the Standells are talking about in the song. Twenty years ago, if someone fell in the Charles, the standard treatment was to give them a tetanius shot. Apparently they have cleaned it up a lot since then, but anyone who's lived in Boston for any period of time will make a face when you talk about the water in the Charles. The Charles River is synonymous with "yuck."

When Rachel from Masters sent out an email to people inviting them to participate in the second annual Charles River 1-mile swim it was at a time when I was worried about getting in open water practice. I figured that if they were putting the event on, the water MUST be safe. Maybe it was way upstream or something? But as I started telling people that I planned to do the race, they all started making the "yuck" face, even Rachel. "Yeah, last year I swam too close to the shore, where the duck poop is, and when I got home I actually had paint under my swim suit." I don't know how that works, but I believe her.
"When she got back, she really smelled," said Josh, her husband.

On Friday my parents came home from work telling me that "that race you're doing was all over the news. They're saying that the Charles is in EXCELLENT condition. Now it's swimable 62% of the time!" Quite an improvement from 20 years ago and the tetanus shots. I was surprised, the lake where we swim every Friday is only "swimable" 60% of the time, less than the Charles. Thursday, which was a hot day, I ran next to that lake and smelled poo the whole time. I kept looking around for dog shit, but no, it was the lake. I swam in it the next day. Rachel insists that the lake is clean in the middle, it's just gross around the edges and where it's stagnant.

But back to the Charles. The race web site was touch-and-go about whether they would be able to hold the race. If there was too much rain, the storm drains would overflow and it would be unsafe to swim in. I didn't know if that was comforting (because they really are watching out for our safety), or not (because, well, that means it still is borderline gross in there). But I'd paid for it, so I leaned towards the former.

Still, I was less than thrilled about this race right up until race morning. Right up until I was standing there on the dock with my wetsuit on staring down into the water. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I got there half an hour early, checked in, and found some people from my masters team. I was expecting to see at least a handful of people, but the only people from our local YMCA were Rachel and Alec. "That looks like way more than I mile," I said, looking at the buoys.
"Oh, it definitely is," said Rachel. "Last year it took me 35 minutes. I can swim a mile in 17."
"Those clouds off there to the right don't look too good," said Alec.

At the pre-race meeting she thanked a bunch of people, including the Charles River Water commission, who was responsible cleaning up the water enough so that it was "safe for swimming" (quotation marks are mine). She told us that the water temperature was in the mid-60's, the same as the air temperature. In the case of lightning we should swim to the shore or grab a kayak. "And umm... maybe it would be better if you swam to shore, so that that way you'll be OUT of the water," she suggested. Well, if we were going to swim to shore, wouldn't that be pretty much the same as finishing the race?

We lined up on the dock by number (which was assigned by age) so that they could count us, then they told us to jump in one by one. I stood with my toes poking over the edge staring at the water. "It's broooooown!" I said to no one in particular. As people were jumping in, their bubbles looked brown through the first few inches of water. I absolutely, positively did NOT want to touch the bottom of the Charles River. I turned to the girl next to me, "Can you do me a favor? Can you tell me when you jump in if you touch the bottom?"
Just as she was turning around to tell me that she had not touched I heard a voice behind me. "Do you want me to push you in?" asked Rachel.
"Absolutely not!" I yelled. She pushed me in anyway.

"It's warm! It's warm!" Everyone was chirping. It didn't feel THAT warm to me, so I made my own contribution to the pollution in the Charles to warm up my wetsuit.

When the horn went off there was the usual violence and mayhem. Rachel told a story of one open water swim she'd done where two girls got out of the water, STILL fighting and scratching at each other and bleeding. It wasn't that bad, but it took me forever to find a groove that didn't have slow feet or perpendicular hips in it. Someone was knocking my left arm back into the water every time I tried to stroke, and there were some toes kicking dangerously close to my head. I found a hole quickly, and tried to hop on some toes, but she was too slow. The next toes I tried to grab belonged to a girl that didn't know how to sight. She would stop swimming every few strokes and do the breast stroke until she spotted the bouy. I went around her too, and as I did I got a swift whip kick to the left ear that smarted for a good long time.

By the time I got to the first buoy I had one or two people to either side, but no one in front of me for a good 20 yards. That always seems to happen to me, I'm not fast enough to keep up with the guns, but I always wind up leading the second pack. Oh well. At least I wouldn't get kicked in the head again or have more water kicked into my mouth. My main objective was to avoid having water kicked into my mouth at all costs.

It took me a long time before I could see the second buoy, so I just followed the swimmers way, way in front of me. Number 46 was still next to me, but she was about 30 feet wide. When I finally could see the buoy again I kept looking at how far away she was, and then back at the buoy. It looked like I was on course, but she was so far away. I was on course, and I rounded the next buoy before she did, but that didn't last long. The third buoy wasn't one of those big orange triangles like the other ones, it was small and round and yellow. I could see lots of small, round, yellow things in the water, but they were all heads in swim caps. I just followed them. I never did see that yellow buoy.

When we rounded the last buoy to swim back to the dock, 46 was still right next to me. She did eventually pull ahead, but my stomach was hurting, and I wasn't racing, so I let her go. A few drops of water seeped into one side of my goggles and my eyes started to burn a bit, but that might have just been my imagination. The water didn't TASTE like anything. Then I realized it was pouring out. I could feel the rain falling on my arms in the recovery phase of my stroke. I thought about what the RD had said about lightning, and looked at the distance between me and the dock. If lightning struck, it's not like I could go any faster than I was going right now. It was going to take me at least 5 minutes to get out of the water, lightning or not.

Luckily I did not die and passed the finish buoy in 28:47. I have no idea how far I swam, but the course couldn't have been TOO much longer than a mile, since I usually swim a mile in about 27 minutes in the pool sans wetsuit.

On the deck swimmers were congratulating each other and getting a load of the faces of the people they'd been swimming next to for half an hour. "I was next to HER for the whole time," I said, pointing to number 46. Maybe number 46 wasn't a chick after all. I only glanced for a second, and in a full wetsuit and cap it's hard to tell. "Oh, I'm sorry, you're a dude," I said. As soon as it came out of my mouth, I knew I was wrong. She didn't even look like a dude.
"Actually, I'm not," said number 46. How do you recover from that. I was smiling a lot and trying to figure out a way to take it back when a photographer came up to us and asked for a picture. This would be a perfect place to post that photo, but as I mentioned, photos aren't up yet.

It was pouring so hard that hopefully all the Charles muck was washed off me right away. I picked up my stuff and tried to work out a way to not get soaked in the half mile walk to the T station. It seemed impossible. "Well at least I won't have that I-just-peed-my-pants look on the train," I said. I would be soaked in a matter of minutes no matter what. It was raining so hard that I'm sure all along the Charles storm drains were flooding and flowing into the river. I wondered how much of it I swam through.

They were doing some work on the subway lines, so I had to take a shuttle one stop. I was so excited to see a bus right when I walked up that I didn't even look at the direction. Of course it was the WRONG direction, so I had to go a stop, walk more in the rain to another shuttle, and ride back 2 stops, wait for the train to show up, and freeze my ass off on the train, which was still air conditioned. I wish I'd just never taken my wet suit off, I thought. I'd probably be dryer.

On the ride home my eyes were still burning a bit, I was sneezing, and I was afraid to put things near my mouth. I was even feeling a bit nauseous. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with the water. I'm sure that the water really was just as clean as any other nasty body of fresh water. But still, I get bragging rights that few other people get. Who else is crazy enough, or stupid enough, or bold enough to swim in the CHARLES RIVER?!

When the results were posted after several days, I got a REAL surprise. I won the under 40 wetsuit division! Now here's the suspicious part: there were only 3 girls in my division, and I KNOW there were more people than that wearing wetsuits, but my time was only good enough for 15th out of 25 in the non-wetsuit division, so I'm not complaining. But the REAL funny part was that in the results I'm listed as having won the gold (what gold? I didn't get any hardware!), some girl named Joanna who came in 8 minutes behind me got silver, and the girl who is listed as WINNING bronze, DNFed. Really! Oh. Yeah. When half the people don't show up, and the other half quit, I SMOKE the competition.

Wetsuit Category
Category	Overall	Time	#	First Name	Last name	Age
1	42	0:28′49.99	17	Claire	Badass Mofo	25	Gold
2	77	0:36′35.87	6	Joanna	Carey	25	Silver
n/a	n/a	DNF	27	Carey	Schwaber	28	Bronze