Today was the 3K open water swim at the FINA Masters World Championships. There were just under a thousand swimmers entered in the event. I was entering it as a recreational open water swim and had no intention of racing it. It was more about the experience of swimming a new open water race with 1,000 new friends.  The swim was scheduled to start at noon, and after arriving at the Robert Crown park beach at The Alameda a bit before 10 AM it was obvious that I needed to go back to the car and get everything I had there to help keep warm. It was freezing there with the temperature in the low 60's and a cold offshore wind blowing steadily. After checking in, getting my arms marked, picking up my cap and a T shirt and walking out to the water, I bundled up and settled in under a tent to stay out of the sun. The tide was out very far when I arrived, so you could walk about 100 yards out on the muddy bottom of the bay before hitting water. That would change by the time the race started as the tide was coming in several inches per minute. During the wait, there was a good music mix playing and an energetic announcer sporadically giving information about the swim.

The start was an in water start with waves starting every 5 minutes. Each wave was a ten year increment starting with men 25-34, then women 25-34, etc. so I was in the fifth wave. The water was a comfortable 70 degrees, which is very high for this area.  The course started with about a 600 M swim in open water and then we circled a small marina island in a protected channel and then swam 800 M or so to the finish in open water. I started back in the pack to let those who were racing go at it. I was able to dolphin for quite a way before the water was too deep and I had to start swimming.  Sighting the entryway to the channel was easy and there was no problem with overcrowding of the roughly 20 yard wide channel entrance. Swimming in the protected water around the island was very easy and it was interesting swimming past all the moored boats, giving you lots of sights to see while swimming. At the other end of the island, there were two rows of rocks serving as a breakwater that we had to navigate. It looked like a solid wall of rocks and was a bit disorienting. I couldn't tell where to go to find the gap. Oh well, when all else fails, follow the pack. Once outside of the breakwater, there was a long stretch from there to the next buoy that ran alongside a rocky shore of the island. This was the roughest portion of the course. There was a pretty bad chop working in this area and as usual, the closer you got to the rocks, the rougher it was.  After getting out of this section, we were coming bak to the open water portion of the course. The wind was really whipping up some whitecaps by this time, but the chop was much less of a problem than in that last section of the course. I didn't have any problem swimming though this chop or navigating the buoys to the finish. It looked like a few people swam the last portion kind of wide and had to swim back in towards the finish.

My evaluation of this swim was "it was a swim". Nothing special about it, and I didn't swim it hard enough to get too tired or sore other than the usual soreness you'd get from swimming 3K without any turns. I didn't hang around the beach for too long afterwards because I didn't see the point of freezing in the wind longer than was necessary.  It turns out that I was 26th in my age group and 200th overall at 50:26. Not that I care, but you just have to look up your stats.

I stopped at my hotel room on the way back for a shower and then went back to the Stanford aquatic complex. I missed the USMS Women's 40+ playoff game. They were seeded second after the preliminary round and lost to the third seeded Calgary team 6-4. This was the team they beat 5-4 earlier in the week. They said they just didn't have a good game. They will play for the bronze medal tomorrow morning while I'm out at the Alcatraz swim.  We spent the rest of the evening at the water polo beer garden in the grove next to the pool with the water polo team plus me, Mike Heather (one of their coaches), Jeff Roddin and Rob Copeland. My brother-in-law who lives in the area also joined us for a while. Looking forward to more of the beer garden tomorrow night.