Swim Around Key West
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tri-ac posted 1 year ago.
damn, college is still as fun as i remember! :) thanks for the report!
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Star posted 1 year ago.
Isn't puke good shark bait? Hahaha Sounds like an interesting day, you crazy kid! Maybe you should write about the-night-before-the-race. Reminds me of the time I partied the night before scuba diving...once I was under the water everything was good...then I surfaced and, well, I felt bad for the other divers :o
My blog: http://star.trifuel.net
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Triguy98 posted 1 year ago.
Star;71273 wrote:
Isn't puke good shark bait? Hahaha Sounds like an interesting day, you crazy kid! Maybe you should write about the-night-before-the-race. Reminds me of the time I partied the night before scuba diving...once I was under the water everything was good...then I surfaced and, well, I felt bad for the other divers :o
I went down to the keys with a Scuba club in college. I was the freak who abstained from drinking the night before the dive- and the only one sober enough to want to dive the second spot! This was after being up till 3am cause one girl decided to do a backflip into the pool being skunk drunk and split her head open. Mr. Sober saved the day by being able to drive to the hospital.
Matt- You're F'in nuts!!! Sounds like a ball!
Life is short. Play hard and get dirty doing it.
The whole way around the island is 12.5 miles, but I wussed out and did the 3-person relay, so I only swam a little over 4.5 miles. Next year I'll do the whole thing, though. My neighbor did this year, and I can't let a girl beat me, so I guess I really have to :D
Anyway, I did the first leg, and there happened to be storms rolling through at the same time, so it was raining on-and-off for the first few miles. It was also rough....I mean really rough. We're talking 4 foot breaking waves the whole time. I kept losing my kayakers because they were getting blown around from the wind. I started off strong, swimming the first mile in about 20 min, but apparently you can get seasick without even being on a boat. After the first mile, my stomach was in knots (my relay team blamed all the Irish car bombs I drank the night before, but they're just pansies...they could never manage a sub 3 second pint of Guiness!).
Whatever alcohol was still left in my stomach (which according to my neighbor was a lot, based on my yelling "cock-a-doodle-balls" at the rooster outside when we woke up that morning) got left in the Gulf of Mexico at about the 2-mile point. At this point, I'm already an hour into the swim (the puking slowed me down a bit;)). One more mile, and I made it into Key West harbor. The water flattened out, but then there were tons of boats (read: lots of exhaust fumes), so I still felt sick....but didn't throw up!
I swam the last 1.5 miles through the harbor and climbed into the kayak and passed out for a while my stomach settled. I came to with a bad sunburn, helped paddle a little bit, then went for a beer (or 10). Total time: 2:10....I meant to go 1:30, but the beer and whiskey were worth it. Next year, I'm going for 4:30 for the whole 12.5 miles (I'll drink less next year to be able to do that).
Oh yeah, the Coast Guard got mad at us because the race director did the swim, too, so there was no one to talk to when a bunch of kayaks got swamped in the storm at the beginning. Even one of the motorboats capsized (I wish I had seen that....sounds funny!) Hopefully they'll iron out those details for next year.
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-Matt
Not fast enough.