Our swimmer came, saw, and conquered the one mile swim Sunday morning. We don’t know if we’ll stop thinking Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling every time we see the acronym GLOWS, but it looked like the event was a big success. Here’s the first-person report:

The main lesson I took home was: DON’T TRUST SPARC! The only info I read about the race was on the registration page, which lists the start time as 10am. So imagine my surprise when I traipsed out of the rec center from my 9:40am pee break to hear “Get out there! Everyone’s in the water!” I ran to the start line thinking, “Who starts a race early?” And “It’s like they’re encouraging us to pee in the lake!”

On the upside, when you’re the last one in the lake by several minutes, it’s very easy for your loved ones to tell which splashing blob you are. On the downside, you can’t blindly follow the crowd and know you’re going in the right direction. I got my own paddler whom I assumed was keeping me on course, but half-way across he shouted at me, “Swimmer, go left!” But that’s cool. I got extra exercise swimming a bit more than one mile.

Me, bottom left corner, catching the field

A couple other things to keep in mind for next year:

• Check in as soon as you arrive because:
  • There’s free food!
  • There’s a limited supply of t-shirts (I had to choose between L and XL)
• The 1/2 mile swim starts from across the way so if you want to get revved up by watching them start, leave time to get to the Bathhouse by 9am.

Googling “green lake open water swim” we found this much more informative page, with accurate start time and which will post the results soon.