Canada Day 4k Swim Challenge at Sasamat Lake

Two days ago, Friday, July 1st, Canada Day, I participated in the Canada Day 4k Swim Challenge at Sasamat Lake in Port Moody. This was the 20th anniversary of an annual event put on by the Vancouver Open Water Swim Association (VOWSA).

I normally do not take part in this as July 1st is also Esther and my wedding anniversary and I prefer to spend a nice day with my wife.

This year however I am also training for Ironman Canada and the 4k would be a good test of my swim abilities over that distance -- the Ironman swim distance is 3.8k. 

As we had all year unseasonably (and IMHO unreasonably!) cold temperatures, the water temperature at Sasamat Lake was only about 16 degrees. Not unbearable but a little cold. 

It is a two loop course and on the first loop I felt pretty good with the exception that I had some difficulties sighting on the last bit just before the second loop starts. The second loop on the other hand was not that good... I kept getting off track and started cramping in my left leg and right foot quite a bit. 

In the end I came out of the water in 1:21:03 (2:02 pace per 100m). By far not spectacular or what I was hoping for, but good enough. 

Seeing that this is also Esther and my wedding anniversary we had planned to go to dinner to the new Hawksworth Restaurant at the re-build Rosewood Hotel Georgia. Esther was still fighting a cold with a nasty cough and now I was coming down hard as well. In the end it would have been a waste for us to go to a nice dinner the way we felt and we reconsidered in favour of rest.

Not only that, but I also missed two huge workouts due to this annoying cold: yesterday a 6 hour ride with a 30 min brick run and today a 2:45 hour run. I will take this week as an early recovery week and make up for the lost long workouts next weekend.

It's all good!
Now where are my pills??

Thanks for stopping by.