(First part here. Second part here.)

Now on to the analytics. Here’s my Garmin track.

As you can see, I’m all over the place. I really don’t swim very straight. Probably due to my breathing. For this swim, like almost all of my swims, when the rubber hits the road (hand hits the water?), despite all the bilateral breathing practice, I still breath on my right only. I caught myself slicing to the right. I used my usual breath every 8-10 then sight, and whatever I was aiming on moved to the left, so I’d have to adjust. All this back and forth, zigging and zagging, added more than a kilometer to what I swam. One of these days I’m going to have to practice what I (used to) preach.

To be sure, I took the turn points, the buoy locations, from my tracks above (I hugged all the buoys, that much I was sure to do) and put them into Google, then measured the distance. I came up with 5.9km. The Garmin came up with 7.2km from my not-straight routing.

As I’m not in the running for any sort of competitive team, I’m not all that upset about my navigation. Again, I still prefer to breathe every or every other right. When I’m escorted I go pretty darn straight, of course. Those are the times that my swim-time really matters. Issyk Kul last year and Manhattan next month.

Now that I’ve got all the logistics for swimming here in Russia down, I’m looking forward to the next one at this location. I hope the organizers keep the same routing, since I now know what to look out for (that damn houseboat!). We’ll see on 1 July.