Saturday, January 2, 2010

Castaway Cay

This morning Cathi and I got up and ran the Disney Cruise's Castaway Cay 5K run. It was very windy. So much that they cancelled all of today's excursions on the island. We could still go to the beach, but Austin and Jacob were especially disappointed as they missed out going para-sailing which they had reservations for.

The 5K was easy. My pace was slow and just kept going. After we got the kids ready and had breakfast we headed to the beach. Cathi knew that I was especially excited to get in a good swim. The water was cloudy. The sand was white, and the water about 75 degrees. A little cool for kids who didn't really feel like swimming, but perfect for distance swimming. The water was very choppy because of the waves and wind. But we were in a bay so it could have been worse had we direct exposure to the ocean. We could see waves pounding the barrier of rocks way up ahead.

I got in and swam the perimeter of the swimming area and back. It took me 8 minutes. I figured it was about a quarter mile to do one lap. I did 5 laps and had taken in some seawater once and gagged. The water like I said was pretty choppy, but I kept my arms high on the recover and made sure to turn high enough on my side to breathe as to avoid getting water in my mouth.

Every few laps Cathi would have one of the kids bring a water bottle out to me where I did a couple of mouth rinses and took a drink. I did 12 laps. It took me 1:18. I figured it was close to three miles. With the wind the air temperature was cooler than the water temperature. Not ideal swimming conditions, but perfect for channel training. Although 3 miles is not even scratching the surface.

I was mindful to watch for fish underwater, but I didn't see a thing. It would have been cool. I had my water proof camera available in case there were schools of them. But not so, not a thing.

I'm definitely going to need to do this more often to get used to the seawater. My tongue felt swollen and a bit burnt by the time I was done. Had a fun time though and it met my expectations.

1 comment:

Josh said...

Sounds like you guys are having a good time. I'm glad you were able to get some ocean swimming in. Getting salt water in my mouth was the worst part of my Alcatraz swim. Hopefully this summer we'll get some more salt water experience in the Great Salt Lake. It can't be worse than that, right?