Open Water Race Reports

Figured it's time to start a thread with race reports to make it a little easier to search. I hope some of you also add your experiences in here as well! St Croix Coral Reef 5 mile race - 11/6/16 I just read through last year's race report to refresh my mind on how it went. This year, it was much the same, minus the tropical depression. This year, I went down again with one of the guys on my team, Gary, who'd done the race about 15 years ago. I wasn't planning to go this year, but he got the bug after I'd done it last year and who was I not to join in? St Croix, USVI, is one of those places I've been to many times for work and play since 1998, so every time I land and drive on the left side of the road, I feel like I'm home. The Tamarind Reef resort is welcoming and I'm beginning to feel more like a local each visit. Someday, maybe, this will be home for good. These are my people. The flight from Miami to St Croix was filled with broad-shouldered peeps and it wasn't long before our whole section on the plane was chattering about the race. The ladies I met were so intimidating just looking at them, but then again, maybe they were thinking the same thing. In any case, this year there was a decent chance of storms keeping us from racing. Thunderstorms had been around every day for the last 2 weeks, according to the locals. Fingers crossed, we woke up Sunday to bright skies and not a single cloud with any vertical form. Perfect! The winds were less than 10kts and the current was forecasted to be 0.5kt or less at our backs once we turned along the coast. After we were dropped off at Buck Island (some of the best snorkeling ever, BTW), I had time to chat with some of the other competitors. There was a lady who'd lost part of one leg in a car accident years ago. She was a delight and did well finishing later. I ran into a couple of the ladies from the plane as well as Sydney who just edged me out last year in the last 400m. For several months, I've been training hard to be able to put up a challenge with Deb Dawson who won the Chesapeake Bay OW swim earlier this year. I had an article about her winning that race to keep me motivated. I looked her up on some other areas and knew that she was going to be a beast. And she was. She won the women's division by a lot. I got to meet her later at the awards and she was super gracious of me being a fan-girl. Once again the race started on time and we were off, no problem. I got side by side with a man with shark print jammers. He and I were breathing so that we were facing each other and pacing at exactly the same pace. The bad thing was his navigation was edging too far right so as I tried to push closer to him to navigate left, he wouldn't budge. I think we were both annoyed with each other. After about 1/2 mile, I backed off slightly and got around him. From there, I caught in with two ladies doing a really good pace and kept with them for a while as well. Back at the start, most everyone detected a strong left-right current and aimed towards a building onshore left of our first turn buoy. But I noticed about 1/3 of the way across the channel that the current wasn't as strong in the middle as it had felt right at Buck island. I continued to navigate closer to the buoy than most of the others. I cut off from the ladies and charted my own direction. I hit the 2 mile turn easily, then stopped for a quick water/gel break. The channel crossing this time wasn't as difficult as last year. The next 1.5 miles were a slog. Two people passed me - a guy and a girl with big arms. It was disheartening and my head got the better of me. I just didn't feel like I was making good progress. Once I made it to Green Cay, about 1.5 miles from the finish and where my hotel was, I felt some energy kick in. I saw a yellow, 5 miler cap ahead and was able to start making some progress at hunting it down. Turns out it was the big armed girl and I overtook her. There were also some of the folks from the 1 and 2 mile race ahead and having some targets to work against definitely helped. I picked off another yellow-capped dude as I hit the last turn. There was one last yellow cap, but he picked up the pace as I did. I made some progress on him, but he still finished about 20 seconds ahead landing on the Buccaneer's beach. Gary had finished about 10 minutes ahead of me (which is about what I'd hoped.) My division was TOUGH this year in the 40-49 women's category. I finished 10th OA in women and 6th in my AG. These women were beasts! My time was 5 minutes slower than last year, sadly, but the current wasn't nearly as strong. Later in the afternoon, after I'd texted my time, my awesome coach took the time to look up the results for this year and last, then do some comparisons with others who'd done both races. His analysis made me feel better, despite the slower time. Thanks to all of you who supported me as I blogged about training this summer. I appreciate it. Once again, I'd highly recommend this race as one to put on your calendar at some point if you're an OW swimmer. It's beautiful, very well run, and there's a ton to do on the island. Jeanne, my cousin, and I stayed a full week and had to come back to reality on Friday. Sigh. Next year, Barbados is the big tropical race to target.