First Ever "Gear West Splash and Dash"

Last night, after wrapping up teaching, I braved rush hour traffic to head out to Long Lake. I was going to try out Gear West’s “Splash and Dash.” They were supposed to have had the first one in June, but the weather caused them to cancel. Here’s what Gear West says about this event:

...The swim is 200 meters consisting of 2x50 meter out and back swims. You will swim out and around a buoy and back then run out on the beach around a cone and then back in for another out and back swim. You will transition to a 1 mile out and back run north on Brown Rd. Then repeat. (200M 2 lap swim/1 mile run/200M 2 lap swim/1 mile run)...

Sounds fun, right?!? It was pretty cheap, so I thought I’d give it a whirl. I arrived an hour early, and helped Curt from Gear West set up the tent. Here’s Curt getting ready to set out the buoy:

The buoy on the right is staked to the beach,
and that’s the one we had to run around.

Here was the “transition zone square” as it was called. It’s TINY! The arrow shows which way we were to run out:

Well, there were 7 people that showed up! Curt was thinking there’d be around 10, so that’s about right. Here’s some of us getting officially registered:

Here’s the transition square “filling up.” My shoes are to the right on the brown plaid blanket:

Hannah from Gear West showed up, and we changed the format a little. Instead of swim / run / swim / run all back-to-back, she said we were going to do the first swim / run, and then take a 5 minute break to wait for everyone to finish before starting our last swim / run. That sounded fine. That sounded safer: we wouldn’t be sprinting right into the water already oxygen deprived from the run.

We lined up on the beach, and we were off!

The 7 of us spread out pretty quickly. I rounded the buoy and headed back to shore. I was getting ready for the run, and I honestly forgot about having to run back into the water for the second part of the swim until I saw the 2 guys in front of me jump back in. Oops. So the second part of the swim was a bit tougher because I went a little too hard in the first half. My first 100 was 1:22 and my second 100 was 1:32.

My 18 second transition consisted of running to the coned-off square, plopping down, and throwing on my running shoes. I was off to try to catch the 2 guys in front of me.

I started running. It’s really hard to run when you’re already breathing hard from being oxygen deprived from swimming. It was MUCH harder than I thought it was going to be! I caught Mike in the first 1/4 mile. Nearing the turn onto Brown Road, I saw the guy a block in front of me going the wrong way. We were supposed to cross Brown and then round a cone and head to the right up the hill. This guy kept going straight instead of taking the right. Running up to Hannah who was controlling that intersection, I was asking, “So we turn right here? Just past the intersection? Right?” I took the right and rounded the 1/2 mile turn-around cone in 3:06. I wanted to be faster than that. That was 6:12 pace, and I was thinking I could do more like 5:35 - 5:45 pace, but the swim REALLY took more out of me than I thought it would.

I ran hard back to the waterfront. I did that last 1/2 mile in 2:52, so my 1 mile run was 5:59. I was the first one back with a total time of 9:14. There was no sign of the guy who got lost. So I took a commanding lead after the first half of the race due to his error. D’oh. Everyone showed up after a few minutes, and we mulled about until we were ready to start again. Here’s a shot of all 7 of us in the “transition square” getting ready to start the last half:

We grabbed our goggles, and we were back in for round two!

I tried to keep it easier for the first part of the swim, and then I tried to pick it up for the last 1/2. I swam a 1:26 and a 1:33. The last half of the swim I was all over the place - when I get a little fatigued, I can NOT swim in a straight line!

I had a better transition time as I only took 14 seconds to put on my shoes. (Oh yeah, these were the first 2 runs in my racing flats where I did NOT wear socks, and my feet were just fine!)

It was the same situation as last time: I had 2 guys in front of me, and I caught 1 pretty quickly. The other was about 2 blocks ahead of me. I was slowly gaining on him. And he took the right turn this time... good.

I cut his lead to about a block at the turn-around. It’d be a close finish if I kept this up. I ran out in 3:02, which was too slow. I noticeably picked up the pace and headed towards the finish.

Rounding the “flower mart” corner, I knew I couldn’t catch him, but I only finished second in that heat by a couple seconds. I ran that last 1/2 mile in 2:41, for a total mile time of 5:43. That was better! And that made my final time for the last swim/run 8:59. Nice.

Curt tallied the results. He noted that the guy who beat me on the second swim/run had the fastest individual swim/run time (of about 8:55), I had the best single mile time, and that I was the overall winner with a combined time of 18:13. The 7 finisher’s times were between that and 25 minutes, with a majority stacked up in the 21 minute area (if I’m remembering correctly).

I felt bad for the guy who probably SHOULD have won, but he had a good, carefree attitude. He didn’t seem to mind. There weren’t any prizes or anything, so he didn’t miss out. It was a REALLY fun little event!! One of the participants said, “Hey, we should all come back to the one in August, and we should all bring at least 1 friend!” We all agreed that was a good idea. So, who’s interested? The next one (and final one for the year) is on Tuesday, August 11 at 7 pm. Click here for more info. If someone wants to come from St. Paul, you can hitch a ride with me!

I got home and updated my FB status. This is my race report condensed to 2 lines:

p.s. OWS at 6:30 pm at Nokomis tomorrow night (Thursday) if anyone is interested.

p.p.s. All my splits above are unofficial. The “official” results should be up on GW’s website in a few days. And Curt had a video camera, so there MIGHT even be a "highlight reel"...