5th April 2009 Sunday, My Third YF Sea Swim + 10km Run

Today was my 3rd sea swim with the YF and it was special for the new and slow swimmers; mostly from Friday class becasue Coach Lim was conducting a sea swim fundamental briefing, something he had done in Feb 09. It was from 8 to 9 am, and then from 9 to 10.30am actual training would start whereby other fast and regular swimmers would join us.

There were about 20plus of us. He explained what to looked out for when doing a Tri or Ironman on the actual day of the event. How to study the tide; preference on tide; how to tell direction of current and swim with current to stay on course. He also explained where to stand before the swim depending on each efficiency and how to clear the crowd when entering out in the first 200m. How to ensure that we swim straight without being swayed away too much from the course. He also advised us to always study the swim course and tide before each race.

Today route was 2 diamond shape: one big loop(approx 250m) and one small loop (approx 100m) marked by poorly visible buoy which Coach jokingly said that he was poor and provide bigger buoys. But he was serious to say that he has no safety guard boat, other than 3 live guards, so he advised us to take care of ourselves in this swim. We did some practices on the small loop after each of his explanation.

The actual swim started from 9 am and there were approx 40 to 50 swimmers by then. We were divided to 4 grp. Grp 4 being the slowest and Coach Lim assigned me to grp 4 which swam smaller diamond loop. The first swim was:-

grp 1 - 4 big loops ccw,
grp 2 - 3 big loops ccw,
grp 3 - 2 big loops ccw
grp 4 - 2 small loops ccw.

I was the first few to come came back to the shore from my grp, after the first swim, and coach was confused, he asked me why didn't I do 2 big loops. He had forgotten that he assigned me to grp 4. He smiled and told me that I had to be in grp 3. I must have approx 1.5 km today.

The second swim was the same number of loops but CW. Today swim was not quite unfortunate as some of our swimmers were stung by jelly fishes so we decided to stop after only 3 swims and it was approx 9.55 am.

I changed into my running gear went for a 10km run with Wung Y, Lyn, Sandy, Carol, Jacq, Kenneth and Chong. It was a 6 min/km pace jog. We run from F2 toward Ford road, but u turn after hitting 5 km. After that all of us went to Paya Lebar Hawker for a lunch. I felt it was a Sunday well spent, great work out.
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