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Hey Teammates!
If you didn’t already know, I
am not just a swimmer in the pool, but also an open water swimmer.
On Sunday, September 16th , I woke up at 5:30 am to
swim the 8th Annual RCP
Tiburon Mile Open Water Swim. Swimmers from all around the world
including Olympic and World Champion swimmers from
the
USA
,
Russia
,
Australia
,
South
Africa
,
Brazil
,
Mexico
and
Germany
gathered at Tiburon at 9:00 in the
morning to swim one nautical mile from
San
Francisco
Bay
’s
Angel
Island
to the shores of Downtown
Tiburon.
There were three
divisions: Elite, Age Group and Wet Suit. All the proceeds went to
the Special Olympics Northern California. I saw Olympic swimmers
like Klete Keller, gold medalist in the 4X200 m freestyle,
Erik Vendt, American record holder in the 1500m freestyle and
silver medalist in the 400m I.M., and Larsen Jensen, silver
medalist in the 1500m freestyle, swim in this race. The top female
winner was Chloe Sutton who is only 15 years old! She is also the
winner of USA Swimming’s Open Water National
Championships.
When I arrived, they marked my arms
with my number, 239, and I was given a locating chip to wrap on my
ankle. I was very nervous but also super excited. We took a ferry
over to
Angel
Island
, where the start of the race was,
and I met some really nice people who had swam this race several
times before. They gave me advice and tips on how to do well in
this race. On the ferry, I noticed there were many collegiate teams
including Cal, Stanford, and Harvard.
We started the race all lined up on
the shore, and on the gun blast all 300 people in my division ran
into the water. The water was 63 degrees, so at first I was so
cold, but I got use to the water temperature fairly quick.
The swim was overall easy and fun, you may think I?m crazy
but I would do it again in a heartbeat. My final time was 25:45.4
minutes.
Jessica
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