Dear Slowtwitchers, my athletic career is now complete, because I finally beat Rosie the Labrador in an Ocean Swim!
A bit of background: here in New Zealand there is an established series of open water swims that have been going on for four years now. The first and alongest running is the King of the Bays, which goes for 2.8km along the coast. This year it attacted 850 entries, so it is getting pretty popular. All our Olympic swimmers turn up for it, so there’s a chance to swim with the best. Competing in all of those events has been Rosie the Labrador, who swims along her owner. She completes the swim in about an hour, so is still in the middle of the pack. She normally gets a prize, both as youngest competitor (about nine years old) and as fastest non human
The first year she fnished about five minutes ahead of me. Rather than acknowledging the superb performance of the dog, my friends and colleagues focussed on on how slow I was. A bit unfair I thought. She trains a lot. The next year I was heading into the beach on the final leg, and I came across her, swimming alongside and about to pass. I thought I could put in a sprint and get some time on her, but was making no progress. Seeing as I had had a five minute start anyway, I hung back, because the one thing that is guaranteed to be on TV is Rosie the dog. Sure enough, on the news that night, the only item on the race was a shot of Rosie finishing, surrounded by a couple of human patsies. I wasn’t one of them. I was 30 seconds back.
Last year I had sort of given up on swimming. A friend of mine was doing the event for the first time, so I was a late entry, to give her a bit of moral support. I did one 1000m training swim. The day of the race was really rough, but I wasn’t worried, I was sure they would either cancel or hold a shortened event on a local lake. It wasn’t until we were standing on the shore looking at the surf that I realised they were serious. It was too late to be worried or frightened. We swam directly out into the surf, and I thought I was going to be in big trouble if the rest of the course was like the first leg. It was slightly better. I made it to the finish. I couldn’t care about the dog. I was still alive, and that was the important thing.
This year I thought I might make a bit more effort. I increased my training by a factor of six! Yes, I did six training swims. I got my rhythm pretty quickly at the start of the race and settled into my Ironman pace. I only go one speed. The course was pretty crowded, but pretty well behaved. Then. at about the half way point, someone just swims right over the top of me. And then the dog follows suit! I thought this was all pretty rude, there was plenty of ocean there. Why pick on the one I was in? This was war! I picked up the pace a bit. We were going to have a race! I lost track of them on the course, but coming to the last buoy came up alongside them again. This was it! The final 300 metres I really dug in: long, strong, smooth strokes. getting a big ragged, so focus, focus, focus. Then my cap started coming off, riding up on my head like some rooster comb. Seeing as i was going to end up on TV, I stopped to put it back on, and saw I had 10 metres on the dog. The final hundred were tough, and looking up, I saw that there was a 100m sprint up the beach as well. This was going to be close.
As I got out the water, I heard the cheering and clapping, but it wasn’t for me, it was for the dog. I didn’t care, I just ran. It was like one of those weird dreams, I was trying to move my arms and legs, but not much was happening. It was like running in extremely soft sand. Actually, it wasn’t “like”. It was what I was doing. I didn’t care about TV, all there was was me, the dog, and my chance to finally achieve glory.
I came to the finish line, heart rate at max, like a kid who has just finished a sprint race holding his breath. I stood there gasping, just aware of my heart pounding and my lungs panting. People looked at me. But there was no dog in front of me. I had done it at last! O sweet joy, to finally taste the fruits of victory. The winner, by four seconds. My life is complete.