Ironman Arizona: The Swim

I will be posting a mini-series of posts to describe the day of Ironman Arizona.  This is the third installment of this series.

I'm one of the green caps.

The swim is set in the Tempe Town Lake, which is a man-made lake next to the Arizona State University campus and not far from downtown Tempe.  There usually isn't any swimming allowed in the lake, apparently due to run-off and sewage from the city.  This doesn't seem to affect the fishers and boaters in the lake though.  One wonders whether they eat the fish they catch in the lake.

Overheard on Saturday: in the days or weeks prior to Ironman Arizona, "they" pour in ungodly amounts of chemicals to clean up the lake so that the swim can take place.

On Saturday morning, the organizers held a practice swim, which I participated in with my back-up wetsuit.  This way, my primary wetsuit would be nice and dry for race morning.  The practice swim went well, I swam approximately a half mile just to feel the water and its temperature.  I didn't think it was cold; in fact, it is warmer than the ocean water I normally swim in.  I was worried about the shoulder, but it felt pretty good in the water.  Swimming freestyle for a half mile didn't seem to bother the shoulder much at all, though there was still a dull pain.  Nothing that would end my day though.

On to Sunday morning.

Target Time: 1:30, no slower than 1:45 considering the shoulder injury.
X-Factor: The shoulder injury.
Strategy: Bilateral breathing (breathing on both sides, ever third stroke) in order to control my pace.  With unilateral breathing, which I normally do in choppy water and in race situations, I have a tendency to push myself too hard in the beginning and then lose steam towards the end.  With a 2.4 mile swim, losing steam was something I certainly did not want to do.  With a mass start, where everyone gets into the water and treads water for 5 to 10 minutes together, there is usually a lot of punching, grabbing and kicking (most of it unintentional) as all of the swimmers jockey for position.  Knowing my time puts me in the slower half of the group, I wanted to start near the buoys to keep the distance shorter, but probably about two-thirds of the way back to stay out of the way of the fast swimmers.  That would help decrease the chances of getting kicked by other swimmers.

Result: 1:25.
After jumping into the water, I swam to where it appeared to be approximately half way to the front.  As the start time neared, however, more and more swimmers started crowding around me and I began to realize that I had somehow ended up near the front of the crowd.  I slowly backed up to get behind some folks, knowing that I'm likely slower than some of them and didn't want to have an aggressive start.

The mass start seemed like chaos.  Luckily, I gave myself some space in front to start swimming and though I did kick fellow swimmers and also had my legs grabbed, I got off the start fairly smoothly.  For the entire span of the swim, it was difficult to get away from other swimmers.  I only stopped swimming a handful of times, each time due to swim traffic.  As planned, I used bilateral breathing to help pace myself, which worked like a charm.   As I took the last turn around the last red buoy, I kicked it up a notch with unilateral breathing and more kicking.  The unilateral breathing allowed me to pick up my stroke pace while the extra kicking not only picked up some speed too, but more importantly, it gets blood flowing through the legs to prepare for getting back on land (to avoid the dizzy feeling).

Very happy with my time - beat what I thought I would end up with even without the shoulder injury.  Onward, to T1 and the bike!

Quick Facts:
Bilateral Breathing: for most of the swim to control pace.
Strong Swim End: Switch to unilateral breathing for the home stretch, with extra kicking effort.

Ironman Arizona Series
Results
A Really Really Early Morning