Del Valle Open Water Swim

May 31, 2009

My second go at an open water swim. The last one was the Folsom Lake one back in September 2008. This one was a bit closer. Del Valle Lake is just south of Livermore.

These events always seem to start very early. For this one registration started 6:15am with race start at 8am. I dragged my butt out of bed at 5am and managed to be checked in and ready to go at 7:15am... I could've gotten another half an hour on my Tempur Pedic. Ohh well, being up and doing something isn't all that bad either.

I had signed up for the 0.75 mile race. There was another one at twice the distance, but my experience doing these things is pretty limited, so I opted for the easier one.

Swimming out in the wild nature is quite a bit different than swimming laps in the pool, where there's a nice line on the bottom to follow. The main difference is probably the look and taste of the water. It's not at all that pleasant to gulp down some stale lake water.

There were about 10 people from the swim club there.

The swim went OK. I didn't drown.


Registration. I wonder if use of laptops reallt speed things up


Morning fog still hanging over the mountain tops


Staging area



Finish portal

Route

All done