Life was going on as usual. That was until yesterday afternoon, when I got to learn Sajeesh (@nairsajeeshg, I call him Sajeeshettan) was planning to do a 10K swim in Periyar river today morning. He was looking for people to join him. I knew I was not ready yet to do a 10K swim - I'm still working on improving my technique and efficiency; I could be overdoing the swimming training; who knows, I could hurt myself. The rational side of the brain kept pouring excuses after excuses to preserve the prevailing comfort and to ward off any endeavor of risk and uncertainty. I thought maybe I should try a 10K dry run for #Oceanman (Dec 11) a couple of weeks later, but of course not now.
But the irrational side of the brain has its own strange methods to get its way - we all know that very well. Half a day later, 5:11 AM today, I was all set to dive into Periyar to do a 10K (5K upstream and 5K downstream back to the starting point). And it went just fine :).
It was not a smooth dry run for the Oceanman 10K in any way. I was supposed to take a food break at 3K upstream, but that didn't transpire due to some miscommunication from my end about when we'd reach 3K. My muscles are still not in talking terms with me after putting them through so much stress due to lack of energy intake (usually for any long distance swim, it's helpful to plan for feeding breaks). And on the way back, we swam navigating through tons of watermoss (a weed called Salvinia auriculata, called ആഫ്രിക്കൻ പായൽ in Malayalam). All of this made the swim challenging.
But when I look back, these not-so-well-planned endeavors are what get the best out of you. I got to finish in 4:18 hours, which is 12 mins shy of the cut-off time in Krabi. And we have more good news:
1/ Open water swimming in the ocean could get easier than river swimming due to the salt water buoyancy factor, especially if you are able to catch the waves.
2/ We have 3 feeding stations during the 10K Oceanman swim - which means I could avoid the whole "muscles burning with lactic acid accumulation due to glycolysis" episode by relying on food and drinks available at the feeding stations. This could mean more energy throughout the swim.
I still have a long way to go when it comes to improving efficiency. For instance, I completed 700 strokes more than Sajeeshettan to cover the same distance in nearly the same time - that's the number of strokes I took to cover a km today. But any area of improvement also means an opportunity - you can work on it and get better at it. Now, I am looking forward to the swimming drill sessions to improve technique.
But the relief of knowing that I could pull off 10K within 4:30 hours in adverse conditions - that's bringing a wide grin on my face. Hope to share more stories during this journey with you all. 🙇🏻♂️ 🏊🏼♂️ 🌊