Ten Triangle-Area Swimmers Attend Bermuda Open Water Swim
As soon as the open water race announcement hit the inboxes of DAMA swimmers who’d participated in previous international open water swims, such as St. Croix and Bonaire, word spread like wildfire through our team email listserv about the Bermuda “Round the Sound” swim. Longtime DAMA swimmer and open water enthusiast, Gretchen Van De Carr, was the first to stir up interest. In a matter of days, we’d shared more than 20 emails amongst the team, all of us talking up ideas of sharing hotel rooms, sharing airline deals we’d seen online (as low as $240 with 2 stops from RDU airport) and other travel logistics. In total, we had 5 swimmers from DAMA that were attending – Heidi Williams, Tommy and Lindsay Gainer, Gretchen and myself.
In addition to DAMA swimmers, the THAT swim team had 4 swimmers set to attend – Elizabeth Nowak, Martha, Tommy, and ______, plus one of their coaches, _______. RAM swimmer, Billy Su, was also geared up to make it a swimming vacation that would not be soon forgotten.
The race would take place on October 21 in Harrington Sound, which sits southeast of the capital city, Hamilton. Five race distances were offered: 0.8K, 2K, 4K, 7.25K and 10K. The host resort hotel, Grotto Bay, was offering greatly reduced from normal rates. Gretchen and myself, along with our spouses/significant others, traveled to and roomed together in Bermuda. The following is a diary-style synopsis of our trip. I hope you enjoy reading it!
Thursday, October 18:
Gretchen, Jeb, Rob (my husband) and myself flew into Bermuda in the evening. Getting through customs wasn’t as bad as we’d predicted. We took a cab from the airport to the Grotto Bay hotel, which took all of a whopping 3 minutes to get to! After dumping our luggage in the room, we all went out to the resort terrace to join a good size group of swimmers who were already socializing. Randy Nutt, the race organizer for the U.S. based swimmers, appeared shortly thereafter and announced the location of the following morning’s swim. The socializing tapered off an hour or so later, and we left to explore the resort grounds.
As we walked toward the hotel pool, we happened upon 2 caves (hence the name – Grotto Bay), one of which was lighted and open to exploring, the other was dark, and only open during daylight hours. We were amazed at the cave’s geologic formations and the crystal clear water! It was so beautiful! After many posed Kodak moments and general ooh’ing and aah’ing, we found our way back to our room and went to sleep…
…or tried to, that is! With dueling snores coming from both Rob and Jeb, poor Gretchen wasn’t getting much sleep. Me, on the other hand, I’m sound asleep – I could sleep through a freight train crashing into my house! Rob’s snores were so loud that they woke up Jeb. After nudging Rob and notifying him of his snoring, installing earplugs and using pillows to sandwich her ears from the logs being sawed in our room, Gretchen finally got some sleep.
Friday, October 19:
When the morning sun shone and woke us, we jumped up excitedly, like kids’ on Christmas morning, eager to see the presents under the tree. We walked out onto our 3rd floor balcony, and fully took in the view. “Wow!” and “It’s so beautiful!” and “Let’s get moving, guys!” were some of the comments that followed.
A few swimmers, eager to test out the waters and stretch out the cramped-in-coach-class legs, joined in on a morning Pilates workout followed by a 2-3 mile swim. Everyone was making plans on how to spend their day: Gretchen and Jeb planned to go scuba diving, Heidi and others planned to take the bus into Hamilton to sightsee. Rob and I made plans to rent “pedal cycles” (a regular bicycle) from a local shop in town, and spend the day riding the old Bermuda Rail-Trail.
Our bicycle excursion was excellent. What a beautiful way to see many parts of the island! We passed through many perfectly manicured gardens, old military forts, naval shipyards, and lighthouses. After riding and exploring for 4 hours, we hopped on a ferry that took us back into Hamilton, where we returned the pedal cycles. From there, we hopped on the bus and returned to our hotel room where Gretchen and Jeb were getting a much needed nap.
Our hotel phone rang at 5pm. It was Heidi, calling to invite all of us to a night out on the town. Gretchen and Jeb accepted the offer, while Rob and I declined, instead deciding to make it a romantic night.
So we put on our best outfits – Rob in dress slacks, a crisp new button down and a handsome blazer, and I put on a black cocktail party dress, heeled sandals and
We arrived back at our room just in time to have Gretchen and Jeb come back from their fun night with Heidi and everyone else. Oh, the story they told us about … let’s just say somebody had a couple more drinks than normal and … yeah, umm, never mind. Sleep was summoned soon thereafter, and I think we all slept pretty good that night.
Saturday, October 20:
After eating bagels or oatmeal in our hotel room, (we saved a lot of money bringing our own food!) we made plans to go snorkeling in Tobacco Bay, not too far from our hotel. All of us, which included Heidi, Billy, Martha, ________ (friend of ??? – she was an Ob-Gyn doctor at Duke?), Gretchen, Jeb, Rob and I. The nearest bus stop was in St. George, a town that was the original capital of Bermuda, so there were a few things of interest to stop and see. One such place was the famous “Unfinished Church”. The church was built in 1874 and was never finished due to constant disagreements between church members. Also, a storm caused some structural damage halfway through construction, so it sat, unfinished for years until being bought by the Bermuda National Trust.
We finally made the long walk to Tobacco Bay and snorkeled for a bit, maybe 20 or 30 minutes. We would’ve gone longer, but the water was a little cold. Don’t get me wrong, it was the perfect temperature for an open water race, but not so for gentle breaststroke sculling and fin-assisted kicking! We took a few pictures with Gretchen’s underwater camera, including some of the amazing schools of fish that seemed to border us all around anytime we remained still, and of the beautiful, huge coral reefs everywhere!
Back at the hotel, we caught the arranged tour buses that would take us to the race site, which was the Harrington Sound, near Palmetto Bay resort. At the race site, we finally ran into Tommy and Lindsay Gainer, whose flight had just come in from Boston. (Technically speaking, Tommy wasn’t a DAMA swimmer since he’d switched his USMS registration over to New England Masters since their June move from Durham to Boston.) Back at the race site, Randy Nutt introduced us to the local open water race director, Reeve Trott. This Bermuda local told us about the history of the swim and announced that this year marked the 17th annual race. He warned us about the 2 types of jellyfish we might see during our race; regular, mostly harmless “moon jellies”, and the rare, more dangerous, “spaghetti-like” man-o-war type of jelly. You could almost hear everyone gasp at the description, and mutter “I hope I don’t see any tomorrow!”
Then we all departed on separate boats for an ocean cruise to our start locations, where a local would help point out landmarks to use for sighting. For my race, the 4K, the big turn was at a rock named “No Name Rock”, which was a refrigerator-sized rock island a little ways away from the 2K start area. On top of the rock was a big wooden sign with a bright orange arrow pointing you to swim a 90 degree angle around it. Everything else about our race course was pretty mellow.
After the ocean cruise, we had a small social with free beer and wine, homemade dips and snacks, all provided for us by the local Bermuda swim team – the Dolphins. The locals were so awesome to have provided that for us! We really felt great generosity towards them, so a pool of money was collected for us to give to the Dolphins on race day.
When the sun set, we got back on the tour buses and went back to our hotel for the night, where we remained mellow, not drinking much of anything except water. Bedtime came early for us that night, and poor Gretchen could not sleep due to Jeb and Rob who were busy sawing down some more logs all night. Gretchen finally retreated to sleeping outside on the front door balcony, where she said she slept just “okay”.
Race Day: Sunday, October 21:
Elizabeth, Billy, Martha and I were doing the 4K race. Heidi, Tommy Gainer, Tommy (from THAT) and _______ (THAT swimmer, name I can’t remember) were doing the 10K race. Gretchen was doing the 7.25K race, and Lindsay was doing the 2K.
Our races had staggered starts so that we would all finish close together. The weather had been beautiful, mid-to-high 70’s, with bright sunshine, blue skies and few clouds on the previous 3 days, but today was different. The skies were gray, and the sun radiated bleakly through the thick, low-lying clouds. The temperature had dropped to the low 70’s. It seemed as though the rain would hold off for the race. But some wind had picked up, thus causing some choppiness to the water.
The 4K race started, and I started swimming at a moderate-fast pace, sighting every 9 strokes or so. It was fine until about 5 minutes into the swim. Then the choppiness started to eat my alive. I don’t have much experience with open water swimming (my first year, and this was my 4th race), so when the chop picked up, I had a hard time breathing. I had to stop more than a few times to choke out water I’d breathed in, but after a while, I learned to time my breaths with the rise and fall of the chop.
I began to feel lactic acid building up in my triceps from the lack of training for this race. My moderate-fast pace slowed down to a moderate pace, and my stroke form started to get ugly. When I’m tired, I begin to cross over my centerline, most noticeably on my left arm entry. Mix bad form with choppy water and sighting every 9 strokes, and the end result is swimming way off course. When I realized how far off I’d gone, I swam hard and fast back closer to the sound’s shore. There, I caught on with 2 men who were swimmingly a decent pace. I figured I’d use them to sight for me. It began to work until I noticed I was still crossing over and falling to the right of their feet! Frustrated at myself, I began to swim breaststroke for a bit, and found that my long glide timing matched the waves just perfectly, so in essence, I’d do an outsweep/insweep/breathe at the top of a wave, and recover/kick/glide as the wave would crash down and help push me forward. I did breaststroke for a while, and kept up on the 2 guys’ feet until my hip flexors and pectorals started to fill with lactic acid, and I got dropped.
I swam into the 2K checkpoint area and looked at my watch, which I’d set to run on stopwatch mode. I almost smacked myself in the face when I saw it report I’d already been swimming for 58 minutes! I thought to myself, “WOW! That was so slow! Those waves were fierce, and I sure did swim off course a lot! I better get moving!” So I took a drink of fresh water offered to me by the race volunteers, and swam off towards the finish line.
I went around “No Name Rock” soon thereafter, and had to switch back to breaststroke for a bit, since it became very shallow. If I’d stuck to freestyle, I would’ve ended up with coral under my fingernails! At this turn-around point, the water was much more calm – in fact, I don’t remember there being any waves. Sighting became easier and I was swimming better in a straight line. I was so exhausted by this point, that I was in auto-pilot mode. I wasn’t even thinking about technique or breathing, I was just letting things happen naturally and slowly. I thought about quitting, once, but then I remembered that I’m not a quitter, and that even though I may be swimming slow, I would still finish. I kept thinking of an image of a turtle and the caption…”Slow and steady finishes the race.” I also retreated to my tried-and-true mental imagery of The Little Train That Could. “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can – YES! I can!” I know, weird…but so much of distance swimming is mental, especially when you’re like me and never train at all.
Near the end, I saw one of those “spaghetti-like” jellies off to my left. It was close, maybe 5 feet away. I immediately stopped, dropped underwater and looked all around to see if I was in the middle of a horde of them. Luckily, the water is pretty clear, so I can see about 10 feet in front of me. I didn’t see any more, so with my heart rate at 200 beats per minute (ha!) I resumed swimming towards the finish. I kept my head position a little higher after that, just in case another jelly decided to swim in my path!
About 5 minutes later, I finally crossed the finish line. I looked at my watch – 1 hour, 37 minutes! Wow, so my first 2K took 58 minutes, and my last 2K took 39 minutes! And to think of how exhausted I was after the first 2K! If only I hadn’t gone off course so much, or I’d swum better in the chop, or I’d trained even a little bit for the swim…I would’ve done so much better! Oh well, it felt great to be finished!
The rain was still holding off, but the weather had turned colder, mid-60’s maybe. I bundled up in a dry towel, and hung out with the rest of the Triangle crowd, sharing stories of our swims. The best thing to drink at this time would’ve been water, but we couldn’t seem to find any! The only drink that seemed to magically appear before us was beer. So we “replenished” ourselves with dehydrating liquids, knowing fully that we’d regret it later. But…how often do we find ourselves on a beautiful island on vacation? Not very often. In fact, our last real glamorous vacation was in 2002 when we went to Cabo San Lucas. So “live it up” we did!
The rain held off until just before the awards ceremony. Five of the Triangle swimmers received awards for 1st through 3rd place:
Heidi Williams, 10K – 3rd place 20-39,
Tommy Gainer, 10K – 2nd place 20-39,
Martha Montgomery, 4K – 2nd place 20-39,
Elizabeth Nowak – 4K overall winner,
Billy Su, 4K – 1st place, 20-39
Once the awards ceremony was concluded, we jumped back on the bus back to the hotel. Immediately, showers began and plans were made for our social night at the famous Swizzle Inn, home of the Bermuda national drink – the “Rum Swizzle”.
Social at the Swizzle Inn – 8pm until 2am:
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