Team in Training Update: Swimming in the Bay!

Saturday was a long brick (bike and run) workout in Moraga, a hamlet located on the other side of the East Oakland hills. I decided to bike home after the workout as Emilio needed the car to take the boys to my son's soccer game in the morning. It was a gorgeous ride through dappled oaks and redwoods (and past the tiny town of Canyon), probably about 36 miles including the trip home. Though I'm a night person, early morning is really the time to do these things, before all the crazy drivers come out. A caravan of model T's processed through the winding roads at one point. I felt so happy to be outside, as if I were in some movie scene of a perfect sunny day.

Sunday morning at 8:30 am we all regrouped, this time at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. I'd been dreading this swim workout, since all of my open water swims have been rather disappointing, athletically speaking. I have discovered that while I am as comfortable as a catfish in water, I swim slower than a flounder (perhaps flounders are fast. Slower than ... an abalone?). The air was a chilly 45 degrees as we struggled into our cold wetsuits. I put on two swim caps, one latex, one silicone. Some folks had booties, gloves and neoprene caps with chin straps, while others -- not with our group -- were diving in with just a swimsuit on!

We dove in and man was it cold. But after the initial shock, I realized that once again, that fabulous wetsuit was saving the day! We began a 30 minute swim around the buoys, and it was the most enjoyable open water swim yet for me. As I turned to breathe one way, I could see sailboats, the Marin Headlands and even the Golden Gate. As I turned to breathe the other, I could see the giant Ghirardelli sign. The salt water felt incredibly buoyant, and didn't taste too bad either. As I stroked, I enjoyed a fantasy in which my swimming form had become smooth and efficient -- until I realized that it was only the current that had cut my time in half going one direction. Sure enough, I was among the stragglers as we ended the swim in the other direction. But I took plenty of pleasure in realizing that I was not too cold (other than my feet, which felt like blocks of ice) or tired when we got out. Translation: I may be slow, but at least I'm not working super hard to be slow. Which bodes well for a triathlon.

We ended the Bay swim with a wetsuit relay -- we had to swim around a coach on a surfboard, then run onto the beach and take off our wetsuit as fast as possible before the next person could go. As if I were on an episode of Survivor, I dove in and swam as hard as I could, though when I went the other team was struggling to get out of the wetsuit so I didn't have an opponent in the water. I got out and made a quick exit from my wetsuit. "Was I fast? Did I look fast? I felt like I was swimming really fast just now," I said to another woman who was waiting for her turn to swim. She looked confused. "Uh, you mean did you swim fast? Uh, well, uh, yeah, good job." Hmmm. Fantasy had struck again.

Finally we got dressed for the run. Only a handful had come prepared, but I am so glad I did it. I went for the shorter route, but some ended up doing the whole Escape from Alcatraz running route, which goes past the Golden Gate to Baker Beach, a nine-mile course. I ran six miles, or just a half-mile short of the Golden Gate. As I ran, I just drank in the scenery. Can you believe I have never run along Crissy Field? We turned around at the warming hut, which is not, as far as I can tell, a warming hut, but rather a souvenir shop.

Here I am, born and raised in the Bay Area, but there are things in this beautiful spot in the world I've never done before. My brother has been living in Paris with his wife this past year, and I never managed to get the money together to go see them and do a gig. But this weekend I had my Paris, and I swam in it too.