Grimaldo's Mile

Early yesterday morning, we took the trip down to Coney Island for the Grimaldo's Mile swim race. We had to leave NP at 4:30am to get to Brooklyn in time for the 730 start. As with most races (or most things) in NYC, the competition was tough. The water was choppy too and most of the time it felt like I was swimming in place. We couldn't see a thing because the buoys were smaller than the waves. Eventually I caught sight of the eventual winner's arm ahead of me, so I had something to look at. I worked for about 15 minutes to catch up to the arm - that belonged to Margie P. - and eventually got there at the very last turn buoy. We both sprinted to the shore, I was a few meters back, but the race was already decided by then. However, as I stood up out of the water to run to the finishing shoot, I was taken by surprise by a "sand pass" by the swimmer (Maggie S., one of my ITU triathlon friends) drafting behind me and ended up in 3rd overall. That's ok though because the trophies for the top 3 were ALL huge. The mile turned out to be more like a mile and a half--our total times were 27-something. Anyway, it was great open water experience, race against some really fast swimmers, and, or course, it was so much fun to see everyone there. Thanks to the 'rents for making the trip up to one of their old summer "favorite" places! The beach was empty because it was morning and it was sort of raining, but my mom reminded me of the times when she first went to CI and there were so many beach blankets and no possible paths to get to the water. She asked my dad what to do and he said you just have to walk on other people's blankets and they'll give you a dirty look, but that's ok.

Time to get ready to run, for almost 2 hours in the heat.