This’ll be a quick after-action report on my 5K yesterday in the waters of the Potomac at National Harbor, MD. BLUF: A great time was had by Iron Mike!

I signed up for this swim in the hopes I’d get one more swim in before departing for Kyrgyzstan AND it would spur me on to swim more. You see, I intended on following the ChickenOSea training plan of 2x per week. I did swim more, at first. Then training began for this assignment, not to mention all the crap that comes with moving a household of six 6500+ miles, and my morning swims at the Y disappeared. So I switched to the “just be active” plan. And I decided the 5K would be purely a training, fun swim.

And it was! It took me forever. I forgot my Garmin and didn’t wear a watch, and the race organizers didn’t tell me my time (granted, I forgot to ask), but I’m thinking somewhere around 2:00. It was 5 laps of 1K each. The first lap hurt, but through it I figured I am always sore the first 1000-1500 of any long workout. Then laps 2-5 felt incredible! No pain, and my navigation was incredible. Way better than ever before. Maybe I should always taper 1-2 months prior to a swim?!

Re: Navigation. Here’s my SOP: I start out by sighting every 6-8 strokes, taking a quick “alligator eyes” glance to ensure I am lined up on the far buoy or landscape feature I’ve pegged as close enough (for the first buoy in National Harbor, you aim for the MacDonald’s).  Then, if I’m dead on 3 glances in a row, I extend it to 10 strokes. If those 3 are good, then 12, and so on to 16. No matter how straight I’m swimming, I stick to 16 because if I go farther my brain starts yelling at me (“You know you’re slicing so you better take a peek!”).  For this race, I was incredibly straight! Each time I looked up I was on target. It was an incredible feeling, especially with my right-side only breathing style (despite my coaching and training bilateral, once I’m “in the zone” I’m a unilateral breather. “Do as I say, dammit, not as I do!”).

So, bottom line, I had a great time. I’m sore as hell today, but that’s to be expected. Boy am I gonna miss open water!