This past weekend (May 18th) I completed my first 25k marathon swim, posting the report. Some of the language gets salty, and some of the imagery isn't all that pretty, so consider this a disclaimer.



Last year, I swam my first 10k, at the Pensacola Bridge Swim. On the race website before that swim, they mentioned that for 2012 they were going to host a 25km swim as a test event. Since I usually get interested in the next logical challenge, this seemed like it would be one to shoot for, and I signed up very shortly after the 10k.



A few months before the swim, when I was polling my masters swim club to see who could help, two other guys that I swim with said they were interested in swimming. I wasn't sure they knew what they were getting themselves into, but figured that was their problem. We sat down, and started thinking through some logistics. I had some ideas, but having both them and their paddlers on board turned out to be pretty helpful.



As the race got closer, everything started falling into place. My fiance would paddle for me. My parents would be on a pontoon boat that would supply Amanda, my fiance, as well as the paddlers for the other two swimmers from my club. There would be radios on the 3 kayaks and the pontoon boat. The paddlers had their food, and we had bought enough gallons of water that we should have enough. We had 2 or 3 large coolers on the boat, and smaller ones on each of the kayaks. Logistically, we were ready.



I had one logistic complication, and I'm not sure how much that ended up hurting me. Normally, what I feed on is a 50/50 mix of Carbo Pro and Perpetuem. I knew I was running low on Carbo Pro, so I had ordered another tub. The tracking info indicated that the package had been delivered the Saturday before we were supposed to drive over to Pensacola. However, Wednesday, the day of departure, I still hadn't seen the package. I called the post office, and they told me that they'd talk to the carrier, and call me back tomorrow. Shit. Oh well, I would just go with straight perpetuem. Didn't think it would be a big deal, and, like I said, I don't know how much it ended up hurting me.



I felt pretty prepared. I had been swimming 30-35km per week, but my longest swim had only been 3.5 hours. This concerned me, as I thought it was going to be an 8 hour swim. My last open water training swim, the water had been too hot (I live in Baton Rouge, our seasons are summer, not summer, and almost summer) But, preperations don't always go the way we would like them, so I figured I'd just take it as it came. Donal had warned me on reddit about the 4 hour slump, and I was glad for the warning.



The morning of the race, I woke up about 4:30 AM, which isn't too early for me. It had taken me a little bit to get to sleep, we went to dinner a bit later than I would have preferred, then people were texting me as I was trying to go to bed. Once I got to sleep, though, I actually slept okay.



In the morning, my stomach was very very jittery, as it often gets before anything big. I had wondered if I was going to throw up, and when I was taking my morning medications, the pills were the trigger, and I threw up the soda I had already had, and some of dinner the night before. Once I had thrown up, though, I actually felt quite a bit better.



We got to the hotel where the race started, and staged everything. The boat that would be supporting the kayaks had been docked the night before, and Amanda and I got our kayak down, and everything was staged just fine. I had a bit of time to stand on the beach and wait for the start. One of the other Baton Rouge swimmers led us in a little prayer, the race director gave us his briefing, we took some pictures, and got ready to go. At 7AM, we were sent off. One guy, in a wetsuit, who would end up winning, took off in a run. The rest of us walked out to maybe thigh depth, and eventually, all 6 of us started swimming.



From the beginning, the wind was out of the ENE, which meant we'd have to fight it most of the way out. When we made the first right turn out of the starting cove, it got pretty choppy, rolling maybe a foot. Not terrible, but enough to inhibit a normal stroke. I was glad that a lot of our training swims had been choppy.

