IRONMAN FLORIDA - Hey Man, You're Being Kinda Aggressive - Swim

Panama City Beach - November 7, 2009

I’m not sure why, but I’ve always made a habit of getting to transition early before races. I think Trevor suggested I do it during my first race, and even though since then I’ve realized I always end up just hanging around for an hour and a half with nothing to do, I do it anyway. The Ironman was even worse, since you bring over your transition bags (essentially plastic bags where you put everything you’ll need to get from swim to bike and bike to run) and your bike the night before. So it’s basically just show up with your wetsuit and get in the water.

But I got there at 5:15 anyway for the 7 a.m. start. I wandered around transition for a while, took my Sudafed, took my Lipodrene with about half an hour to go as the sun came up, and took in the scene. It really was quite amazing. They make all the athletes get in this giant holding pen on the beach, and from there you can go warm up in the Gulf. Looking back from the water, the beach was full of spectators, and people were out on their condo balconies to watch the swim start. I have honestly never participated in anything that this may people had watched. The pros went off at 6:50, then it was the other 2700 peoples’ turn.

Swim - 2.4 Miles

If you’ve never seen the swim start to an Ironman, it really is one of the great spectacles in sports. Nearly 3000 people all getting in the water at the same time, all headed in the same direction. Knowing I was one of the larger competitors, I thought I’d use this to my advantage. I put myself in the front of the middle, since that is about how I figure I swim in relation to everyone else, and then just dove in. You can run in the water for probably the first 100 yards since tide is low in the morning, but once I jumped in, it was war time.

Basically, anyone I saw in front of me I just tried to swim through if they were slower. Everyone. It was just this mass of people everywhere you went, and it was every potential Ironman for him or herself. So you just beat people up. And in the water you can’t differentiate between guys and girls, so, yeah, I was probably hitting a few girls as I went by. Just swimming like I play basketball: bruising. Not to say I didn’t get my shares of elbows to the nose and kicks to the face, but I’m fairly sure I gave a lot more than I got. But even if people get pissed, what are they gonna say? “Hey ref, this guy in a wetsuit and a red cap pushed me out of the way.” Yeah, that narrows it down.

I kept a good pace, swam straight, and about ¾ of the way to the first buoy it stopped feeling hard. It was just like stroke, stroke, kick someone in the face, stroke. And look at the throngs of jellyfish under me and pray I didn’t get stung.(My mother would have been very worries). Ended up doing the first 1.2 miles in just over 37 minutes. So faster than I’d expected.

I took some water and hit loop 2, still in throngs of people. I did notice I was going from pack to pack, meaning it seemed to me I was passing a good number of people. But it’s hard to tell in the water. As I slowed and looked up to site myself at the turn at the first buoy, I hear this female voice say “Hey man, you’re being kind of aggressive.” It made me smile. Yeah, ok, I was shoving girls out of the way, but if you wanna swim with the boys, you gotta play rough.

The rest of the swim was rather uneventful, though I felt like I was definitely passing more people than I was passed by. Ended up doing it in 1:17, 3 minutes faster than expected, but not far off.

T1 – Swim to Bike – 9:18

I ran out of the water and got my wetsuit stripped by a “peeler” (they can’t call them “Strippers” anymore, apparently) and sort of jogged barefoot over the concrete into the changing “tent.” A volunteer handed me my swim to bike transition bag, and I ran through this hotel ballroom to a partitioned off section for the men. It was very strange, like this makeshift locker room with plastic chairs, with Gatorade bottles and Clif bar wrappers and all; this shit all over the places. And dudes just walking around naked, putting anti-chafe butter and sunscreen on. It was very odd. Anyway, I took my time in there, put on all my gear, and ran out in my bike shoes to the bike. It’s very nice at the Ironman, too, they bring you your bike, even though you end up running like 150 yards from the “tent” to the start. But whatever. One down, two to go.