Open Water Swim!

Today was the day of our 1 mile open water swim in the mediterranean! I signed up a few weeks ago with my roommate Taylor R. The swim was hosted by Grupo-Brotons and was in the town of El Campello (the same place I visited in class on Friday) We left around 9:30 to make sure we had plenty of time to get there and find the place before the swim started at 11. 2 of my other amazing roommates Bianca and Taylor M came to watch and Bianca helped translate the directions for us (did NOT want to risk my spanish on misunderstanding instructions for an open-water haha)

We got there an immediately became extremely nervous for 2 reasons.
1. Everyone around us was wearing wet-suits.
2. It was one of the windiest days all semester .. 20mph. Seriously.

I was beginning to think that wetsuits were required and that we werent going to be able to swim. When we went ot sign in we had Bianca ask and thankfully he said "no pasa nada!" and handed us out chip, cap, and gift bag. The bag included a really cool tshirt, some wierd back-pack thing, an energy drink (until mine exploded in my bag) and a hat. After we were signed up we went over to get ready and watch the first event, the half mile. Taylor had never done open-water before so it was good to be able to watch the other people go first. We were seriously so nervous because the waves were out of control especially for the mediterranean. There are usualy NO waves whatsoever and they were huge! Just our luck. I was hoping for a nice flat swim but that obviously wasnt going to be the case.

Finally it was time to swim! The only other open-water swim i've done was for a charity and this one was for prizes, so it was a little more competitive than what i was used to. people literally sprinted into the water at the start .. it was like a stampede. Me and tay picked a safe starting spot in the back. The swim went pretty well minus the roughness of the water. I was getting thrown around a lot and of course swallowed a ton of water. It only got worse as it went on too, I thought the second lap was a lot harder than the first because the waves got a lot bigger. The only problem during the swim was that during the second lap my chip kept coming loose from my ankle. I had to stop and fix it 6 times and one time, it completely came off (you get fined 30 euro if you lose it!). That slowed me down a lot because I had to keep stopping and scale down my kicking because i was worried about losing it. Taylor and I finished just about 2 minutes apart and both felt pretty accomplished! Afterwards we got a celebratory Kebab (obviously) and I spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach. Cant wait to do my next open-water ... eventually want to try to bay bridge swim!

stampede into the water.. no thanks

piles of people!

me and tay at the finish line!

me crossing the finish line

Today was the start of Semana Santa (holy week) so this week is going to be great. There are different parades and celebrations every night of the week (the biggest and most famous one is wednesday evening starting in the village of santa cruz.. cant wait! I leave Friday for Spring break but I will get to see most of the celebrations and I'll get pics on here asap. Its so cool here!