A couple of days ago I was feeling kinda bored and wanted to take on a cool challenge. I'd always wanted to swim in an open water race, the Escape from Alcatraz race in particular. However, given the somewhat recent oil spill and the fact that it'd be a freezing swim, I decided to look for other open water swims.

Hmmm...Hawaii, I thought sounded like a nice warm place, so soon I signed up for the Waikiki Rough Water Swim. This swim is along the lovely shores of Waikiki, requiring no wetsuit, but is also 2.4 miles. I hemmed and hoed about this race for a while, but now my tickets are booked, and I'm all registered. The only problem is that I haven't been swimming for recreation or for competition of late....

If you finish beyond 2:40:00, you don't even place...

Today was my first day in the pool in a long time, and it was an Endless Pool -- i.e. a swimming treadmill. What a weird feeling. At work, we're only allowed 30 min in the pool at a time, but apparently I averaged 2.3 miles/hour for those 30 min, so right now I'm feeling much better about my chances of getting on the board with a time -- any time less than 2:40:00. I think it's still a bit too early, though, to know what time to shoot for.