Manhattan Island Marathon Swim - Race day

Sorry this has taken so long to be posted!

Saturday - the day of the race - the alarm went off at 3:45am Eastern time... keep in mind that I had a red-eye flight from Vancouver the day before, which is a 3 hour time zone change, and you can see that I was not particularly excited about getting up that early.

Elliot was staying with myself and Jeff Perkins uptown, we were being picked up at 4am, by Alan Schmidt and then meandering downtown with some pickups (including coffee!) along the way. Because we already had 6 people in a 5 seater car, Elliot took the subway down.

After we made all the pickups we arrived at Pier 11 (on the very far right of the image) to load the boat. Elliot and I dropped the other guys off and we parked the car before returning to the dock. Once everyone was on board I walked back across the financial district of Manhattan. To the South Cove of Battery Park where the race would start. Since there were 34 teams and swimmers doing the race the boat loading took some time, and I had quite a while to kill. Also not really having packed for cold weather I didn't have many extra clothes, and since I had to leave my bag on the boat I had an interesting layer system going. For the race you are only allowed to use a training suit, but I had some Fastskin leggings on for extra insulation while I waited, as well as pants, some running socks, running shoes, a small shirt, the XL race shirt I got in my race package, and a light jacket.

Prior to the start all the solo swimmers were lathering themselves up with grease, and generally being nervous about their upcoming 7+ hour ordeal, whilst the relay swimmers were hanging around laughing and joking! Finally, at 7:10am we were lined up by race number (thankfully we were #34 - the last one!) and jumped in the cove water as our name/team was announced. The water was not warm - 58 farenheit or 14.5 degrees celsius at the start, so I was certainly glad to be the last one to jump in! The race finally began at 7:15am, fifteen minutes behind schedule.

I took a swift lead since that's the easiest way for the kayaker to locate the swimmers, plus I'd previously told Dan that I would do so and didn't want to let him down! After about 10 minutes the kayakers all identified their swimmers, and from that point in the race never left their sides. As we started the 'race' for first quickly became myself and John van Wisse, but since he was doing the effort solo it wasn't really fair to call it a race! About five minutes after the start the kayakers stopped us - as we'd started late we now had to wait for the Staten Island Ferry to pull out of its dock! That is a little intimidating, and also while we waited the 2 minutes for the ferry all the other swimmers caught up, and I began to freeze! Once we got the go-ahead to start moving, I had a really hard time making my arms do what I wanted them to. It's an interesting feeling to feel like you're going in slow motion and now have any control over it. I kept John pretty close, and few minutes later met up with my boat and team mates. Swimming the first leg of the race is exciting because you swim right past all the major landmark buildings in Manhattan, and all the big skyscrapers. Plus breathing toward the left was nice for me since I got to look at the sights as I went. It's a great way to see the city.

Once my first 45 minutes was up (which seems to take forever when you're in the water since you have no concept of how long you've been going) I got to switch off with our second swimmer, Jeff Perkins. Then I began the next part of the process - warming up! It's important doing something like this to get warm as soon as possible so that you're not wasting energy shivering and being cold. It took me about an hour to get back to a regular state of being.

Over the next 4 hours the other swimmers each went in their order, and we progressed through the East river, past 'Hell gate' and into the Harlem River. During the section in the Harlem river the documentry film maker came on board our boat and interviewed me, so maybe you'll get to see that in the upcoming film!

By the time we were almost out of the Harlem river and back into the Hudson, where the swim starts it was my turn to get in again. I got in just before Spuyten Duyvil Creek, so I swam in each of the three rivers that the race occupies, the only member of our team to have ever done this! As it was now A LOT warmer than where I started in South Cove (it was now 65 farenheit / 18 celsius, which feels like a huge difference when you're swimming) I felt a lot more comfortable. When I went into the water our team was in third, about 8 minutes behind the leader, John von Wisse, and about 3 minutes behind second place Penny Palfry, but I managed to pass Penny and make up about 4 minutes on John. Much better showing than my first leg! The second time around the relay we only swim for 30 minutes, which seems quite a lot shorted since we had a great system of signs worked out - holding up coloured paper at various intervals.

After I was done my second leg everyone else went again, and as we came down close to the financial district and South Cove once more, it was very close with John, but he eventually prevailed and beat our relay team by 90 seconds, pretty impressive for a solo effort! Our overall time was 7 hours and 12 minutes this year, which is the fastest that the team has ever done the event.

It was a lot of fun to be part of the race once again, and hopefully I can start looking toward doing a bit more of the race in the future, rather than just 1/6th of it!

The day after the race Elliot and I walked around Manhattan, then on Monday morning I flew out for Fort Myers, Florida for the World Championship Trials in the 10km openwater swim... I'll post some pictures and updates on that shortly!