Philippines 70.3 - Swim

Race morning comes EARLY with a 3:00AM wake up call, 3:30 breakfast and 4:00 departure from the hotel!  Continuing with my streak of bad luck, the organizers didn't have enough shuttles to take the athletes to the race start, so they got a local van to take about 15 of us all while sitting on the floor as this was more of a cargo van!  I'm thinking at this time with all the bad luck I've had, I was bound to have a great race!

After checking my gear and getting all set up, it was time to head down towards the swim start...

One challenge that the organizers hadn't totally thought through was that the tide was out causing very shallow waters at the beginning and to make matters worse there was a lot of coral everywhere! 

The swim start itself was a water start meaning that we had been swimming or treading water for 10-15 min before the start, then the gun goes off and everyone starts in a flurry!  It was simply a beautiful swim.  The water was crystal clear, making the swim almost like a snorkeling day.  You could see all sorts of colorful fish which kept your mind off the exertion to some extent.

Course wise this was 1.9k (1.2miles) in one large clockwise loop.  The water was a bit rough thanks to a typhoon that came through a few days before so there was an occasional bigger type wave but all in all it was fine. 

Coming into shore I was feeling pretty good about my time but hadn't seen my watch since the start so I didn't really know.   The last 100m or so I swam breaststroke simply trying to avoid cutting up my hands on the coral.  Upon getting out I looked at my watch to see a time of 37min and change, so I was quite pleased with my start...