It had been two months since the last time I went swimming, and I don’t think I had ever been happier to get into a 64° pond. Starting out was the familiar shock of cold and trying to remember how to breathe without filling my nose full of water. While I was able to find a rhythm with my swimming stroke, still feeling as though my heart was racing.

Couldn’t have been a nicer day to get out there, absolutely perfect. My breathing did come around, my stroke came back, but my legs did give me an unexpected surprise. About 1200 yards in cramps set in with a vengeance. By the time I got back to the beach, 500 more yards, I couldn’t stand up. My left leg locked up tight, oddly, when I was able to get myself out of the water and vertical once again, the pain and tension subsided. This does have me slightly concerned, as I won’t be able to cycle after a swim if that happens again. Moving forward over the next 12 days will be as much water immersion as I can get in, with the attempt to get my body re-acclimated to swimming.

What a beautiful place to swim, I can’t thank Chad enough for having a couple of us Watts crew over now that the water is tolerable and we seem to be moving slowly past the imminent threat of a pandemic.

Two weeks to go now until I attempt my second 140.6! I’ll be doing my best to get into that water a much as possible to work out the issues before taking on 2.4 miles.

Update: 5-20-2020

Second swim attempted, second day of cramping. Was really hoping this was going to be an anomaly, looks like I’ve got some work to do. It’s really strange, the outer side of my left quad just locks up tight. This time I was feeling twinges about 800 yards through, so I got out of the water to walk a little, and when I bent over at the waist to pickup my water bottle, the whole thing locked again.

After giving it some time to relax, I tried another shorter swim, got out and was on the verge of locking it up again.

I went to visit our sports medicine guy yesterday, and I’m now on an increased intake level of magnesium, electrolytes, water and stretching plus lowered workload. I took a day completely off, and I think I’m ready to give the swim a couple more tries before pulling the plug and changing the Covid-19 Iron Distance to a duathlon. Here’s hoping the next swim goes much better.