PARK TO PARK SWIM

Few weekends back I did my first open-water race of the summer in a stretch of the Hudson from that spanned 145th at Riverside Park (where the pool is I swim at) to a small inlet on 165th, about one mile which I’ve roughly indicated in the top photo. The race is set up for an incoming tide so the event starts mercifully late at 2pm, as opposed the traditional early morning deals I was used to in Seattle and elsewhere.

I usually get rather worked up about these things and have a hard time sleeping the night before. Perhaps I know myself better or have done this sort of thing enough so that this time I found myself absolutely insouciant. Even the Hudson River horror stories about pollution, floating condoms and the like could have bothered me in the least. I’d swam in the sea once near Puerto Vallarta during a sewage spill that left the surf green and had no ill effects, so it’s usually not the conditions (now that I wear a wetsuit), it’s the competition. I’d like to think I don’t care about my times, but over the years I’ve become increasingly fast and developed an urge to actually race as opposed to swim and just finish.

It was a perfect day for a swim, warm, hardly any breeze and a jovial, enthusiastic turnout. There was a slight delay of around 45 minutes to add more sand to the starting ramp and by the time I got in the water near the icebreakers seen in the top photo (me in the upper left all alone thinking about how in the winter this part of the river was frozen) I had about a minute to get ready before the countdown. Starting so far in the back I had to methodically make my way out of the cluster, avoiding the kicks in the head and swimming over anyone to finally break out and begin my long strokes to warm up enough so that by the half-way point I looked over at the trail that runs by the river to see Cara, my support team, keeping pace on my way up the river.

There were few slight swells but the water was a great temperature and tasted good, as it’s primarily salt water at this part of the river. I saw no debris and had barely anyone near me for most of the swim. Sighting is always tricky and with the water as choppy as it was, and I was sure I had gone off course a couple of times. I usually have a song or two I think about and a favorite of mine is “Never Stop” by Echo and The Bunnymen which I just replay over and over, though I also think about a thousand other things, trying to keep the focus on pushing harder and harder.

I ran out of the water at the finish (me in the wetsuit in bottom photo) having learned a lesson the hard way at a race in Idaho where I lost first place in my age group by staggering out and having someone run pass me across the finish line. I came in 11th out of 193 with a finishing time of 25:28, just eight seconds short of finishing in the top ten and winning an award. A very good swim for me.

Photos from the race showed up in New York magazine and oddly enough in an article in the New York Times on the 28-mile Manhattan marathon swim that happened the following weekend, which I had no intention of participating in.

In September I’m doing the Brooklyn Bridge swim and hopefully another one or two in August before then.