🏊 Swim Recaps

The Leadup

In 2018, I worked for KMK Law in downtown Cincinnati. The CTO who I worked under, Rich Wills, told me about a swim that the firm sponsored every year. Bill Keating had swam this race since it first started, and his daughter took over the event and helped run it in his honor. It is used to raise money for the Adventure Crew which is an organization promoting outdoor activities for the kids of Cincinnati. I unfortunately did not get a chance to swim in the race until 2022 due to me not really thinking about it and because of the pandemic.

Fortunately, in the months leading up to this race I had been lifting and swimming on alternating days, doing about a mile each swim session. I had figured that this would be my first baby step to possibly gearing up for the Lake Erie swim.

The night before, my parents came down and my roommate, his parents, and ourselves went to Hofbräuhaus to carbo-load. I ended up not getting to bed until 11PMish that night as I was getting excited and nervous for my swim. Ended up waking up at about 5:30 AM, picked up my parents from their hotel, and drove to the starting line.

I believe that I was the very first swimmer doing the 900m swim there, as I had misread the time that they had wanted us there by and showed up with the double dip swimmers instead. We sat on the river shore for the next hour or so as more and more people started to arrive. I got to talk a little bit with Philip Weisfelder, who ended up being my biggest competitor!

They called us all over for the safety meeting about a half hour before the race. We also watched the double dippers start to arrive back from their 2.5mi swim. After the safety talk, I put on my time tracker and chugged some preworkout. We made our way over to the starting area to hop in the water. As I was going to put my goggles on, the nosepiece ended up breaking on me. Fortunately, I was able to get the goggles suctioned onto my face before hopping in the water.

The Race

It was honestly an uneventful race for me. After the horn went off to start, I waited back a few seconds for people to push off. The two things that I was concerned with were getting swept up in the current and getting caught up with everyone. I pushed off and I found a nice slot for me to swim through the group of people in front of me. I think I might have only hit one person with my arm accidentally. I was also hyper focusing on making it to the buoy in front of us, making sure that I would not miss it due to the current. I think ultimately this was the thing that saved me, as my parents told me after the race that most people went way off to the right, downstream of the buoy.

I felt great leading up to and while I was circling the buoy. The water was a bit warm but pretty favorable overall. I had no idea where I was at positionally at this point and I just assumed that there must have been a few people in front of me. On my way back to the Ohio side I did see one person who I ended up passing. Halfway across the river I was getting a little tired, but I just kept pushing through. I lined everything up almost perfectly and finished right at the finish line. I hopped out of the water, stripped off my goggles and cap, high-fived the event organizer, and ran to the finish.

Post Race

I ended up getting second place overall, and first in my age group! Philip was the only person who just eked out in front of me by about 10-20 seconds. My parents didn’t really expect me to pop out of the water so fast, nor that I would get second overall. I was tired when I got out, but not exhausted. I got my first-place age group metal and posed for some photos afterwards as we waited for all of the swimmers to make it back.

Epilogue

I believe that I was happy with my time overall. My goal was about 12 minutes and it hit that pretty much on the head. This was a very comfortable race for me. I probably could have gone more all out in the beginning to supplant my position, but It was a good idea to push off last so that I didn’t get swept up in the group that had to work back upstream for the buoy. Training was good for this, although I am very excited for 2023’s race as I have been swimming a lot more consistently since then! Additionally, a good challenge will be doing the double dip 2.5-mile swim before it!