Anyone planning on doing the 12.5 mile Swim Around Key West?
Or has anyone done the swim before?
The Race Director Bill Welzien is attempting to swim around Key West once a month for a year. He's posted his race experiences through December 2006 but he's not posted an update since December 2006. I hope he's doing okay.
Still working on getting an escort. . .
Anyway, should be a fun event. I hope to be there even w/ a surgery scheduled for April 30. Doc cleared me and said I could do it - course, we'll see how it goes after the surgery. Now, just need to continue to get in that yardage. Doubles were hard the first couple of weeks, but now they're pretty fun!
Parents
Former Member
Oh Key West! Should be fun!
That was my first experience with open water, way back in 1997 (or was it 1998? I know it was the year that Gail Rice decided to swim it all butterfly), when I did the race with five friends in a six-person relay. We actually sold candy at school and had a garage sale and car wash to raise money for the entry fee, hotels, etc. and managed to pay for almost everything. It was a lot of fun -- mostly lounging on the boat, with a refreshing two-mile swim thrown in there.
Zinc oxide is a really good idea. It's going to be hot, and that sun just bears down on you. All of us on the team had olive complexions and we trained in an outdoor pool year-round (Miami), so we already were tanned when we started the race, but afterwards, boy were we brown. And we'd been applying SPF30 regularly. I know I have the photos somewhere -- if I find them, I'll try to post them. We even had cute matching monogrammed swimsuits!
Are you going to have a kayak support? That's really key in this race, I think, because so much of it is too shallow for larger boats. When we swam it, the parents of one of the relay members escorted us in their boat, but for much of the race, the boat had to stay pretty far away from the swimmer, because the water was too shallow. For most of my leg of the race, I had to shorten my stroke because the water was only about three or four feet deep and there were grasses on the ocean floor that tickled my stomach. My friends were yelling at me from the boat about swimming breaststroke, but at certain points, it was all I could do.
Good luck and have fun!
Oh Key West! Should be fun!
That was my first experience with open water, way back in 1997 (or was it 1998? I know it was the year that Gail Rice decided to swim it all butterfly), when I did the race with five friends in a six-person relay. We actually sold candy at school and had a garage sale and car wash to raise money for the entry fee, hotels, etc. and managed to pay for almost everything. It was a lot of fun -- mostly lounging on the boat, with a refreshing two-mile swim thrown in there.
Zinc oxide is a really good idea. It's going to be hot, and that sun just bears down on you. All of us on the team had olive complexions and we trained in an outdoor pool year-round (Miami), so we already were tanned when we started the race, but afterwards, boy were we brown. And we'd been applying SPF30 regularly. I know I have the photos somewhere -- if I find them, I'll try to post them. We even had cute matching monogrammed swimsuits!
Are you going to have a kayak support? That's really key in this race, I think, because so much of it is too shallow for larger boats. When we swam it, the parents of one of the relay members escorted us in their boat, but for much of the race, the boat had to stay pretty far away from the swimmer, because the water was too shallow. For most of my leg of the race, I had to shorten my stroke because the water was only about three or four feet deep and there were grasses on the ocean floor that tickled my stomach. My friends were yelling at me from the boat about swimming breaststroke, but at certain points, it was all I could do.
Good luck and have fun!
