I tried something new today as part of training for my 1/2. I decided that it would be fun to do an open water swim off the coast of Jekyll today. I was reallying looking forward to this event and plan on doing similar swims in the future. When I was in college, for those that don't know, I was a lettered varsity swimmer. That means I joined the swim team, all 6 of us, maybe 7, and stayed around until the end of the year. Swimming in a pool or lake is much different then the ocean for example there are currents, rip tides, waves, man eating animals, etc. Please pay close attention to the last thing listed.
For those of you who do not know south Georgia beaches are crummy even at high-tide the water is never pretty and blue it is brownish and cloudy. I will not bore you with the reasons, but I will say that here in south Georgia we have lots of marshes and some of the most extreme tides in the world. So, all that being sad let me now tell you about my adventure in this swim.
I walked down to the beach and noticed that I was one of only about a dozen people on the beach and the water looked like it was full of oil, I mean like pitch black. I put my foot in and out several times to double check to make sure there was nothing oily sticking to me. Now logically I knew that the oil was not here, but hey a little paranoia works well for upping the adrenaline. The tide was out and I mean waaaaay out. I started walking to the water and noticed that the sand changed almost suddenly to mud and muck. I was walking maybe 6 miles out to find deep enough water to swim in (maybe more like 50 yards from the beach) and I was standing in ankle deep muck and waist deep water. Having noticed that at this point I was the only one in the water I thought hmmm maybe sharks. Do you hear the jaws theme yet? I did. So I waited several minutes and decided since I was still standing it was OK to start swimming.
Well, I started swimming and the longer I swam the more I was convinced that I was being chased by a shark so after two stops where I had to look up and check my surroundings, and no sharks, I decided to swim a bit longer. Well, I was sore from my strength training work out Monday so I switched to swimming the breast stroke. Now that is not a strong or quick stroke by design and the entire time I was in this pattern I was going nowhere. I knew this because my landmark and I stayed even for the next 20 minutes. I was not worried about going nowhere because it felt like a "forever pool" set up. I also felt safer with this stroke because I as able to keep my head up and look around. I mean since I was going back the way I came I was sure I would see the shark chasing me from before, right?
While swimming I noticed that I was so close to the bottom that a properly executed stroke would cause my hands to rack up muck, so I modified it a little to dig my hands less deep on the return stroke and realized that I looked like a sea turtle. You know slow, fat, and round. When this thought came to my head I was hoping that there were not any sea turtles with eyesight problems and they would think I was a sexy sea turtle in need of some attention...so as I am swimming looking for sharks and worried about being violated by sea turtles and all the while going no where, I figured I had enough and stood up to leave. During this swim time nature was all around me especially the biting fly that bit my head and kept trying to eat me every time my head was above water. Now as I was leaving I was bit by a little fish and felt something sharp and prickly poke my feet.
So, I was now leaving the water at an accelerated rate, remember the adrenaline thing, to avoid any other attacks by nature and after running back onto the beach I realized that I was probably out deep enough to have found Spongebob, if I looked hard enough, and decided that high tide with sand sure beats low tide with muck. Will I do this again absolutely! Will I try to conquer my fear of being eaten a live? Yep. And will I over come my fear of sea turtle assault? I think I have already done that, I mean they are slow and heavy and I am pretty sure I could take one on if it came to close. The little biting fishes there nothing but uncaught dinner. The biting flies that is another story all together. That being said look out beach and ocean I will be back!
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