Challenge Met

Well, I did it. It  wasn't pretty and it wasn't too much fun, but it's over. The Chicot Challenge went down Saturday June 1, but not without a hitch. Currently I am in the process of doing a full write up of the swim which I will post here. However, for all two of my readers, I thought an abbreviated version was in order before the full story can be published.

By Friday I had made the decision to reverse the order of the swim because of the weather forecast which called for sixteen mile per hour winds out of the south. Not only would that have been a torture to me, but my kayakers would have suffered as well. Saturday morning Robin and Randy met Forrest and me at the County Park after they had left Robin's truck at the State Park. The reverse course entailed us heading south for about a mile before crossing the lake and then heading north. Robin and Randy, however, were adamant that we should head straight north because they said the water was like glass the other side of the causeway, and we could make up the lost distance there. I said, "Sounds good. Let's go." And we did.

Just before starting the Challenge

Even though the wind was quartering to our back, I found the swimming tough. Pretty much I am a rhythm swimmer, and I was constantly having my rhythm disrupted by the chop. But after three hours, we made it to downtown Lake Village, and the crew wanted to stop so we did. My wife and Paul Brown were there, and I took some real joy from that. We stayed about thirty minutes, and I crammed in all the food I could while I had the chance.

When we started back, I was determined not to look too much at the causeway because last year I found that highly discouraging because the bridge never seemed to get any closer. A mile or so into the swim from downtown Lake Village, Randy Beets asking me how I felt, and I responded: "I'm struggling." That was somewhere around mile seven. My mental distress at this point was through the roof.

Just as we made it to the causeway, a storm blew up and the wind went crazy. Randy and Robin and Forrest immediately took shelter under the bridge jamming their kayaks between the pilings and the bank. I found it strangely difficult to swim, and at one point I noticed that I wasn't getting any closer. The wind was blowing a current through the channel under the bridge and I had to swim like a madman to make it to Robin's kayak so I could grab it and pull myself out of the flow and onto the bank.

We sat there and watched the rain and wind and debated what to do. Robin pulled up a weather map that showed a dangerous looking storm sitting right over the State Park. We were at 8.45 miles and our options were to face the storm towards the State Park or turn back to the County Park. Honestly, I didn't think I could swim all the way back, but that was the choice we made, turn around and go back.

The water was flat and the rain falling as I started the swim back to the County Park. I enjoyed that and actually had a couple of good miles before I sort of came apart again. My muscles were tired, my shoulders hurt, and my mind screamed STOP. I plodded on and on as my pace deteriorated. My mental game was to make one mile at a time. The last couple of miles seemed to take forever. When Robin finally announced that I had made sixteen miles, she followed that with, "Grab the kayak and I'll pull you in." Then Randy took that job over and I held onto the handle at the back of his boat while he paddled furiously the mile or so back to the landing. It was dark when we got there and I was just relieved that the swim was over.

I'll write a longer piece later, and I'm still trying to figure what all went wrong. The swim was a success, but I thought it was way harder than it should have been. Sunday, I only got out of bed long enough to eat and use the bathroom. My cat loved that, and he napped with me all day. I had no trouble sleeping that night, and I really didn't want to get up the next morning. Monday after work all I did was mow the front lawn and do an easy 3.09 mile run.

Tuesday I was still feeling tired. I did another three-mile run and went to Masters for the first time in a week and a half. I got there a little late and chatted a while with the Mad Swimming Scientist so I missed most of the warm up. I did

100
8 X 50 as
   2 25 fast/25 easy
   2 25 easy/25 fast
   2 however
   2 fast
4 X 100 as
   1 50 fast/50 easy
   1 50 easy/50 fast
   1 however
   1 all out (1:23)
200 as 50 back kick/50 swim
4 X 150 @ 4:00 as 50 fast/50 easy/ 50 fast
200 breathing by 50s 9, 7, 5, and 3
300 easy
Total: 2,200 meters

Amazingly the 1:23 was a PR. All year I have been swimming 100s all out at around 1:30/1:32 with my PR being 1:28 (I did 1:24 off the blocks a year ago). To me, it is counter intuitive to swim my fastest after doing sixteen-miles just a few days before. When I checked my training diary, I found that my last 100 PR was also set the week after my big swim last year. I still don't know how that works because it sure doesn't go that way in running. If you run an ultra marathon, you aren't setting any running PRs for at least a month and probably not then.

For the week of the Challenge I

swam 29, 044 meters
ran 20.29 and
walked 3.11 miles.

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Thank you.