Redemption! Magen's Bay Against the Tide Swim

Yesterday morning Dave and I did the Against the Tide Swim at Magen's Bay. You may recall, on Sunday in the 10k run we did, Dave got second-to-last and I got last. We turned the tables on everyone today. Dave came in FIRST!! and I came in second among the women!

Magen's Bay is advertised as a one mile beach, but it's a little bit less. The race organizer said it was 2/3 of a mile, but I believe it is a bit longer than that, because the road that generally follows the beach is 0.6 miles (it's where i run), and the beach curves and goes on farther than the road. So, maybe 3/4 of a mile? Dave finished in 17 minutes and I came in around 23 minutes. It's not the type of event where they keep track of everyone's time, but Dave checked the clock for me when I finished.

Against the Tide is apparently the name used nationwide for swims that raise money to fight breast cancer (the Massachusetts one is popular). So our entry fee went to the local foundation that helps with that. I think they said about 60 people did the event today. Last year they had around 100 but the water was very choppy, so perhaps it deterred people this year. They let people either wade the distance, swim, or swim with fins. It was a little sad actually - the organizer couldn't find any sponsors this year either. So, no free t-shirts - they just asked for donations for them, and it didn't look like they got rid of very many. I got two.

The swim was pretty tiring for me. I swam faster than I had intended because I thought I had a chance of coming in first among the women. It was an in-water start. We talked to a few other people before the race started, one woman mentioned that she'd been training for this. Yikes, I thought. I hadn't gone swimming since Christmas, and before then it'd been quite a while too. We also met one woman about our age before the race who had done it before - Jessie. She said to us "don't worry, it's easier than it looks." I wasn't going to mention that we'd done a 5-mile race in October, but when she asked if we were swimmers, Dave volunteered that information. I think maybe it motivated her because she ended up winning the women's division overall.

After the race started, Dave sped off pretty quickly, and I kicked a few people trying to get out of the scramble and follow in his wake. After a few minutes, it was really obvious he was way out ahead, but I could see one person off to the side somewhat near him too - that ended up being Jessie. Based on our conversations afterwards, it seems they pushed each other to go faster.

For about the first third, I was even with a few other swimmers. But just looking at them I could tell at least a few wouldn't be able to hold that pace. One young guy wasn't even putting his face in the water. Around the half-way mark I saw two people in red suits just ahead of me, and not very many people close in front of them. I could tell one was a woman, so I sped up. Somehow I ended up coming up right along side both of them. The guy was in between us and I felt his arm touch my leg and I thought "maybe this is the woman's husband and he's going to try to keep me from passing her" so I started kicking really hard and fast to get past them. Turns out, the guy's name was Bob, he'd never met that woman, but he's really nice and he didn't seem too upset that I kicked him. oops. hehe. Open water swimming is definitely a contact sport!

The red suit woman and I were shoulder-to-shoulder the rest of the race. We kept bumping into each other too, but it was too much effort to try to get further apart. I was getting so tired and worn out, and the finish line didn't seem to be getting any closer. But i kept thinking, maybe I can get first among the women. At some point early on, I'd thought that maybe Jessie was the one who sped off with Dave, but I promptly forgot that. So, not wanting to lose to this woman I was so close to kept me going. My arms were getting super tired so I kept trying to kick faster to pass her. I passed her once, she passed me, then at the very end I got ahead of her when I realized I could cut straight to shore and the finish line earlier than I'd expected. The finish chute was a diagonal, which helped me since I was on the shore side of my competitor. Remembering my mistake in the 5 mile swim when I tried to stand up when it was still too deep, I swam until my fingers touched the sand. I heard Dave cheering me on to run fast to the finish to beat her, and so i did! Woohoo! [I like this photo because it looks totally fake, but it's not. This is me on the balcony at home after the race, you can see where we swam in the background.]

Same people organized the race last Sunday, so they remembered us from earlier in the week. At some point at the end of last weekend's race, a support guy on a bike was cheering us on, and Dave tells him "our excuse is, we're swimmers. not runners." That guy came up to us after the race today and said "hey, you two weren't kidding when you said swimming is your sport." A guy from the newspaper got a photo of Dave coming out at the finish line, and he interviewed Dave too. So maybe Monday's paper will have a picture of him! (There is no Sunday edition of the paper here, it's the Weekend edition instead, published Saturday.) If the story is online, I'll post a link to it here.

Dave got a neat little trophy and we both got medals (well, all the finishers got medals...). And we both felt like we redeemed ourselves after the road race last weekend. Switched from last and second-to-last to first and second. :) And, we helped support a good cause in the process.