Ohio River Open Water Swim

Good learning experience today in the Ohio.

Things I learned:

1. Treading water for 5 minutes while fighting the current of the Ohio River is not easy! They had us all get in the water to "warm up" about 5 minutes before the race started. I swam out to the starting area and then began to try and stay in the same spot. The current was pushing me away from the starting line. Five minutes of this was a little more than a "warm up" for me.

2. How to recover from having my goggles kicked off my face. About 10 minutes into the swim, I was kicked on the left side of my face, knocking my goggles half way off. Instinctively, I reached up and pulled them back over my eyes...only problem was...they were now full of water. So I had to flip over on my back and empty the water out of them before putting them back on. Not easy to while swimming in a crowd of people.

3. I DO NOT swim straight! Sighting is a big problem for me. I know that I was zig-zagging all over the place. I just couldn't see the small buoys that they used and trying to follow other swimmers wasn't a good idea. I had to be directed back on course twice by dudes in kayaks.

4. I can swim 1.2 miles. This was the furthest that I've swam, so it's always good to reach a new milestone. I felt good coming out of the water and felt like I could have gone further.

Swimming in the river was a good experience. We went 0.6 miles up river (against the current), turned around, and went 0.6 miles down river (with the current). Current makes a huge difference and this was my first experience with it. If you don't constantly swim, and swim hard, you will go backwards! My time against the current was 31:24, with the current was 19:44...for a total time of 51:08.

As for how dirty the water is, I didn't really notice during the swim, but the white drawstring on my swim shorts is now brown...probably not a good sign!