The thing I like most about this race is - the course is always exactly the same (well, except for '04, when water quality forced a move to Lighthouse beach). Us middle-of-the-pack'ers are most interested in competing with ourselves; we want the same course each year so we can calibrate our progress. So, I was looking forward to this year's race. I'd been training with long, hard intervals with Ferrell and Chappette at Spa Fitness for several weeks. I took Thursday's workout off, my old "nucleus maximus" shoulder injury was kinda sore, and my hip's been very sore.

At the starting line, I remembered how it felt to swim hard and well, and focused for the whole race. I feel I put in the race I had in me, today. My time was 25:15. A minute plus off my best, but considering my bad hip and resulting inability to really match my aerobic fitness of '96 - I'm happy with the time. That was 10th out of 21 in my age group, and about 94th out of 230 total. The winning time was 17 minutes. I've measured the course with my bike odometer and it's indeed a mile.

I didn't get around to shooting any pictures till pretty late after the end of the race. Bruckner, who regularly does distance swims like the trans-Tahoe, the Maui channel, and this year the English Channel... did well, needless to say.

Getting warm - a dark sweatshirt helps.

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And finally, that's me grinning ear to ear after a good swim