A few weeks ago, I’d signed up to do a 2.4 mile swim race in “beautiful” Kent, WA. Why would I do such a thing, you may (rightfully) ask. Well, I wanted to do at least one confirmed open water swim of the distance that I’ll have to race come Ironman day and I always get confused with the suburbs east of Seattle and thought Kent was much closer than it was. The race was at 6:15 in the evening, which ordinarily would be fine, except for the fact that it was on the Friday evening of a weekend I’d planned to spend in Prosser with my friend Erin. D’oh! Luckily, my friend M was up for an adventure and decided to come with me, so I had good company on this crazy adventure.
M picked me up from work and we headed directly to Kent. We left ourselves plenty of time in case of traffic, so of course we were crazy early. This left us plenty of time to check in, wander around, etc. We watched them set up the buoys of the course and yet again I marvelled at how far a 1.2 mile course looks (I would have to do two loops for my race.) Before I knew it, it was time to suit up and get in the water. M was kind enough to take pictures, so here’s the start:


And we’re off:

I started toward the back, as I’d never swum a race of this distance before and wanted to take the first loop nice and easy. I took it probably a little too easy, but made it around the first lap in reasonably good shape. For the first time, I think ever, I stayed right on the buoy line and didn’t swim a lot of extra distance going wide around the buoys. Here’s the pack starting their second lap, or the 1.2 mile race starting, I’m not sure. But the picture is pretty, so it’s here:

And as always with a multi-loop course, I was not excited to start the second loop. It was nice knowing where to site and where I could just put my head down and swim. This is probably me starting my second lap:

It was pretty spread out at the back of the pack, but I still managed to keep ahead of a few people and pass a few others. I didn’t set my stopwatch, but I believe that I probably swam the second lap faster than the first. I managed to do the whole thing in 1:35:30, about five minutes slower than I was hoping for. Given that I’ve never swum this distance, I was pretty happy with that time.
Afterward, M regaled me with some of the craziness that had been going on while I’d been swimming. She’d apparently been told by one of the race volunteers that her cheering was “confusing the swimmers” and they were swimming toward the sound of her voice. (WTF?) She also had some funny stories from the people sitting next to her and I really appreciated that she was willing to freeze her butt off to watch me swim for an hour and a half. As we were getting ready to leave the park, we saw the most ghetto-tastic ice cream man of all time. M was too embarrassed to photograph him with her big camera, so I snapped this stealth shot:

Yeah, that’s a Sikh guy driving a mini-van with stickers on it. It was pretty hilarious and for a minute I felt like I was back on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn. (Except that the guy driving would have probably been Dominican or Hassidic instead of Sikh.) After all of that, it was time to hit the road for a three-hour drive to Prosser. We grabbed some coffee at Starbucks, a little fast food drive thru action and then hit the road.
Erin was nice enough to stay awake to greet us, even though it was midnight when we finally got there. We got to see her cute house and meet her two awesome kittycats. We talked a little about our plans for the weekend, then it was time for bed.
