Greg Mockett is the latest swimmer to add his name to the list of swimmers who have completed the Antelope Island to Black Rock Beach swim. Greg had registered for the 8 mile Great Salt Lake Open Water Swim but wasn't able to swim on Saturday because of the wind advisories. He finished his swim this afternoon with a time of 4:21.
Greg was kind enough to let me share his account on the blog. Here is his experience in his own words:
We drove to Black Rock at about 8:20am to get a GPS position.
Saw Gordon on his way back to the marina making good time. Looked like
there was another swimmer behind him--must have been his SSD?
We
then met Dave Shearer at 9am
at the Marina. We assembled Taylor's inflatable, pedal-driven
double-pontoon boat and loaded it on the rescue boat where Dave and Taz
(his dog) took us for a quick trip to Antelope Island. Well, almost
there. Dave let us off in a little over waste deep water and after we
found the bright orange flag which had gone overboard when we launched
Taylors boat, we started.
The
water was amazing! Beautiful, really. The air and water temps were
perfect. I couldn't have asked for better. It lasted for about 3 miles,
then we got 6" to 12" chop. Which was not a problem except that the
direction was from behind and directly into my breathing cavity. As I am
a novice swimmer, and currently breathe right-only (working on
bilateral and left-only in the mornings at the pool and will have better
options for handling this next year) this took a few miles to get used
to. I finally got to where I could predict
the waves and manage my breathing much better.
The
water was incredibly shallow for much of the swim, Near Antelope
Island, the bottom was sandy, but as we neared the middle and for a
substantial portion of the swim, the bottom was rolling black rock that
looked a little like a mountain scape with "canyons" filled with white
sand. It was probably 8 to 10 feet down, but really looked like it was
just out of reach.
The black rock bottom and sandy bottoms each returned from time to time but particularly closer to Black Rock.
This was definitely a great adventure swim.
Now,
for my struggles and even an "ooooh gross" moment . . . While I was
trying to work out the breathing in the aforementioned chop, I wound up
getting a lot of salt up my
nose. By mile 6 my sinuses were so completely swollen that I could not
breathe out of my nose. This only compounded the problem. In fact, as
the sinuses began to go, I thought my goggles had started to leak until I
noticed that the water in my goggles was not burning my eyes--because
it was coming from my eyes owing to the pain in my nose and sinuses. The
struggles also included being slightly out of shape for this swim. I
had to reroof my house over the past two weeks and got maybe 2 training
swims in. My arms are very sore. But its that good sore. My back is also
sore. Like a dough-head--I forgot the sunscreen!! So while my roofing
tan is no worse for the wear, the lily white remainder got loberstered.
And for the grand finale . . . the "oooh gross" moment. When I was
showering off at home and scrubbing off the Vaseline, I pulled no less
than 5 dead brine shrimp from my greased armpits! Told you it was
gross!
I will be better prepared for next year's Great Salt Lake Marathon. And will be shooting for a time with a 3 at the front.
--Greg
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