On June 22nd, I did a 12.5 mile swim race around the island of Key West in 5 hours and 5 minutes.  It was long and hard (which is pretty normal for a man like me), but in the end it wasn’t too bad.  The water temps were 90 degrees which made me pretty nervous, but it never seemed to bother me.  There wasn’t much interesting to look at in the water and with a personal kayak escort, what I saw on the day mainly went like this: water, kayak, water, kayak, water, kayak, water, kayak, water, kayak [repeat for 5 hours and 5 minutes]…..[bonk] Red buoy!!

My swim training built up to a handful of 12-15K swims with lots of frequency and total yards on my biggest weeks between 40-50K.  I found that once I got to around 40K for a week, I turned into complete idiot in the pool.  How marathon swimmers can get to 80-100K per week is beyond me.  I’m happy to be taking a break from a swim session that involves 600 flip turns!

Post race back where I started on Smather’s Beach

Got a nice conch shell and mug for my age group award