Today my friends I am a finisher, 10 times over!  Yes, I finished my 10th open water swim at Deer Creek and I couldn’t be more thrilled (and tired!).  If you’ve been a follower of mine on the blog you might recall my very first race back in 2011.  In fact, after my first open water swim at the clinic that year I posted “Yesterday was the best day of my life!” I hope that everyone is able to find something they love like that in their life.  Once was all it took to get me hooked!

What a journey it has been since that first attempt. 10 races have come and gone and they all are treasured memories.

Like always today’s race had its fair share of challenges.  I went in to the race feeling pretty confident.  I felt strong at Bear Lake and then did a practice swim on Thursday that went very well.  My plan was to break up the swim into sets of 100 strokes and then do 25 strokes of breaststroke.  The problem was for some reason my asthma was bothering me and I felt pretty wheezy.  It didn’t seem like I could get enough air which was causing me to get a lot of water up my nose and in my mouth.  This is not the ideal way to swim by any measure.  But I kept going…

This race was really neat because my Dad swam it with me.  Typically my family and I don’t share a ton of common interests and so it was really neat to share this experience with him! He did the entire race alternating between breaststroke, backstroke and sidestroke but finished and did very well!  It’s been a cool month for me with the swim with my Dad and doing the book videos with my Mom.  Both meant a lot to me.

It’s the weirdest thing when you are swimming open water because it feels like you are on a swim treadmill.  No matter how fast you go it feels like you aren’t making any progress and you will never reach the darn buoy.  Then you do and it is so exhilarating! You would think after 10 races it would get less exciting but it is still such a thrill.

My time wasn’t good on the race but the important thing was I finished.  I’m very proud of that as I am for all of my finishes.

I’d like to thank my paddler Michelle for taking time out of her busy schedule to help me achieve my goals.  She couldn’t have been more encouraging and wonderful.  It was so great to catch up as she isn’t my trainer at the moment since I left that gym.

I also want to say thank you to Jim Hubbard and everyone at Salt Lake Open Water for being such a wonderful community that nurtures all types of swimmers.  I couldn’t be more grateful that I am accepted and cheered on at every race.

Thank you and on to 10 more!!

Here is my youtube update on the race.