T109 - Welcome to The Big Leagues - Swim

Panama City Beach

Panama City, I guess, is usually a big party location. This weekend, though, it's a bit different. This weekend, the place has been overrun by ridiculously healthy, slightly insane people biking, running and swimming all over the streets and beached usually occupied by falling-down drunk college kids. It's very surreal. On the drive in, I saw no less than four SUVs with bikes on the back, and this morning the streets were lines with cars with 140.6 and M-Dot stickers on them. And bikes. Fucking bikes everywhere.

My parents have reserved a condo less than half a mile from the starting line, so this morning I decided I'd go and try out my wetsuit, and swim one lap of the swim course. Trevor had said it was a good idea as a confidence builder, and it gives you an idea of what you're up against in the water. Of course, within 50 feet of my front door I ran into this guy from Louisiana who was in town for the race, and we made triathlete small talk all the way to the Gatorade Bag Check on the beach, where probably 300 people were preparing to or doing or finishing the swim.

I walked through the athlete's expo on the way. Pretty surreal to see all the booths and tents and trophies and serious, $10,000 bikes in there. This is it. This is the pinnacle of triathlon insofar as non-championship events are concerned. And it definitely looked it. Not one person there looked like they couldn't finish. Everyone looked sinewy and weathered. Like the kinds of people who do Ironman's on a regular basis. I'm not one to get intimidated, mind you, but this crowd was definitely the big leagues.

I got down to the beach area where the swim was and everyone was in wetsuits. Conversations I overheard were all about past Ironman's people had run, or about the experiences people had had in Kona a few weeks before. Like I said, this is the big leagues. Everyone also felt the necessity to wear their finisher shirts from past races, be they full Ironmans or 70.3s. I'm not sure if this is bragging or just fitting in or what, but I thought it was pretty funny that pretty much every single person had some sort of M-Dot attire on. Ok. We get it. We're at the Ironman. I was in a nondescript muscle shirt and some USMC shorts just for the record. Yeah, we get it. I was in the Marines.

Swim - 1.2 miles


3 Sudafed
I put my wetsuit on, at least the leg part, over by the gear check. Which was fine until I got in the water and once again realized I had it on backward. Nothing says "This is my first Ironman" like putting on your wetsuit backward, does it? I'm not sure if anyone notices, but I quickly sat down in the water, took it off, and then put it on the right way. That Cooking Spray really does help a lot in getting it on and off.

I walked out about as far as I could and then began to stroke, and for some reason, just could not breathe. No idea why, but I stopped, turned around, went back to where I could stand, and breathed for about 30 seconds. False start. Got back in the water, started stroking, and didn't really stop except to site.

Which I did not do well.

Sighting has never been a real strength of mine, but today was [perhaps the most ridiculous example. I knew something was wrong when I saw a lot of people swimming back in as I was swimming out. The course was a loop, after all. I figured they were just pussies and didn't want to do the whole thing and were turning back. I figured wrong. When I ran, head on, into a lady who looked at me like I'd just insulted her mother, I knew I'd probably fucked up. I made it out to a guy on a surfboard, who informed me that I had just swim in a diagonal from the starting line to the far turn back, essentially bisecting the entire course. Well, I wanted to do a full 1.2 miles, so he told me to just swim to the other far turn (essentially the end of the initial swim out) and then come back. I later realized this ended up being more that 1.2 miles, but hey, more training, right?

Anyway, I managed to do that, and sighing on the way back was easy because there was a giant condo tower to sight off. I seriously hope the buoys are bigger on race day, or I may be fucked. Seriously, these things were so small, I couldn’t see them at all from the water. Of course, the 2000 other people in the water may help that direction too. But I really need some fucking Lasik.

So this was my last training day. This was it. I’m going to take Friday off to rest up fully, then Saturday is the big day. This is the end of the training road, and this is the body I’m going to do the Ironman with. Ready as I’ll ever be. This swim definitely made me believe the swim will not be a big problem (Challenging, yes, but not deadly unless one of those jellyfish I saw gets me) and I’m ready to go. Now it’s just 2 days of check in a bag packing, and the hardest 12-13 hours of my life.