Drove down to Mason Neck State Park this morning for a dip. My masters coach told me about the place, and it looked perfect online. Not too far away from the house, but the highway down had lots of lights, so despite it only being ~20 miles away, it took me 40 minutes to get there.

But boy was it worth it. Very nice. Beautiful cicada sounds. Bugs. Boat launch. Lots of people. Fishermen and farmers. Well. Celery farmers. I hung my shirt, shorts and sandals on a tree limb and started wading in. I’m sure the farmers were watching me wondering what the hell I was thinking. The water was warm, probably low 70’s. I had to wade out about 30m to get past the foliage and to “deep” water. (I could have stood up during my entire swim, if I didn’t mind putting my feet in the nasty silt.)

I took off to the SW toward some parked boats. The current (from wind, I assume) was west to east, so I got to beat my way through some chop. It took me a while to get to the boats (no watch, today). When I finally got there, I looked around, to make sure I was nowhere near any of the kayak or boat fishermen, then turned back and headed into the sun. I had a good sighting point. The visitor’s center of the park is on a clearing, easily seen from anywhere I could have swum today. The beach where I took off was just to the south of that. So I headed toward the visitor’s center. Got there faster than I got to the boats. Waded back up. Didn’t get any looks, as far as I can tell. Fought the bugs back to the van, did the towel-wrapped-around-the-waist dance to get my wet and sandy suit off, then drove home. Based on time and google, I’m guessing I did about 1.5 miles.  Nice first OW workout of the season.  I think this’ll be an every weekend deal.

Lessons learned: Wear bug spray/sun screen, if only for the walk to/from the water. Bring a small cooler with a soda for the ride back, to kill the critters I (probably) ingest. Buy the Garmin Forerunner 310XT, so I don’t have to guess how far I’ve swum. Buy a parking pass for Mason Neck.