Great Chesapeake Bay Swim on Sunday.

I was close to puking for a solid two miles, because of the lovely combination of chop and super warm water. And I also got caught up in the current in the first channel, losing a lot of time. I was maybe a quarter of a mile shy of the 4 mile buoy when a kayaker approached me shouting that we had to get out. I was really bummed until, from the power boat, I actually saw a bolt of lightning strike the water in between the bridges. There were 6 swimmers on board the boat commiserating, and we all fell silent when we saw that. Better safe than sorry ... It seemed like they were taking things very seriously, and working really hard to pull the over 100 swimmers still in the water. We could hear on the radio that they were arresting people who refused to get out, and that a few swimmers in the last stretch had interpreted the command to get out of the water by climbing up on the embankment to walk to the finish. Word on the radio was that those swimmers would not be allowed back in the race in the future, but I don't know if they are going to enforce that. All of that made me feel pretty good about the fact that I swam right for the power boat when I was told to get out. But then last night, when I looked at the results, I saw that a lot of people were allowed to finish long after I was pulled. I was pulled around 2:20 pm, and it looks like people came in until about 2:45. So now I'm back to feeling bummed.

I was close to puking for a solid two miles, because of the lovely combination of chop and super warm water. And I also got caught up in the current in the first channel, losing a lot of time. I was maybe a quarter of a mile shy of the 4 mile buoy when a kayaker approached me shouting that we had to get out. I was really bummed until, from the power boat, I actually saw a bolt of lightning strike the water in between the bridges. There were 6 swimmers on board the boat commiserating, and we all fell silent when we saw that. Better safe than sorry ... It seemed like they were taking things very seriously, and working really hard to pull the over 100 swimmers still in the water. We could hear on the radio that they were arresting people who refused to get out, and that a few swimmers in the last stretch had interpreted the command to get out of the water by climbing up on the embankment to walk to the finish. Word on the radio was that those swimmers would not be allowed back in the race in the future, but I don't know if they are going to enforce that. All of that made me feel pretty good about the fact that I swam right for the power boat when I was told to get out. But then last night, when I looked at the results, I saw that a lot of people were allowed to finish long after I was pulled. I was pulled around 2:20 pm, and it looks like people came in until about 2:45. So now I'm back to feeling bummed.