Popsicle Stick #45

Gracious. No excuse for the radio silence from my side of the net. Oh yeah. Since I last saw you, I traveled to California and Canada, suffered for ten days from an insufferable respiratory infection, withdrew from the Ironman, and captured the summer's first hardware.

Let's skip to the good stuff.

Last weekend Bob, Liz and I left north Seattle at the precious hour of 4 am, pointing the car toward Forest Grove, Oregon, home of the Hagg Lake Open Water Races. I think only swimmers can be happy road trippers at that hour, and certainly we were.

Hagg Lake is hosted by the Gecko Tri Club, which did a great job of putting together the event, which included 800 M, 2 K and 4 K races. It was a perfect day -- warm, sunny skies, comfortable lake temperature and upbeat vibe.

I had hoped to swim all three races, but was still recovering from the creeping crud (above). So I decided to enter the 2 K, thinking it might be fun but not fatal. My goal was to break 30 minutes. The first 10 of them were pretty tough...my lungs were weak from being so sick and my body just wasn't used to moving fast. After rounding the second buoy, though, I started to feel good...overtaking a few folks and getting into rhythm. When I came out of the water at :27.40 I was surprised. I was handed a popsicle stick with "#45" on it. That meant I was 45th out of the water...OH NO...was I really that far behind everyone? I looked over my shoulder and saw that at least some of "everyone" was still in the water. Lots of them, in fact. In the end, being 45th overall translated to 10th among women and second for women over 40. Not bad for a first outing.

The best part was being greeted by Kim, Scott, Jake and Matthew in the finish chute.

Tomorrow morning, a big group of open water swim friends are braving Lake Washington off Madison Park. The King County Web site says the water temperature is 69 degrees. It's been a warm couple of weeks, but I'll have to swim it to believe it. I can't wait!