EPTIt was a fundraiser for a swimmer who got into a car accident and went comatose, 25 bucks a head. About a thousand people showed up, among them my friends and me. We'd all race marathon-style (divided into several groups due to size issues) and get a place.
I went in with my friends about 10 minutes before the race. They said the water would be warm that day. They were also talking out of their asses. I've been in the ocean anywhere from March to November, and I've never felt water that cold. It's the kind of water you piss yourself in a desperate effort to raise the temperature even by a little.
Also the waves were the size of men, I should mention that. Six feet at the shore. Powerful enough to send you doing somersaults unless you properly braced yourself or came in at the exact angle to maintain your course. The funny thing was that there was no wind that day, I still have no idea why the ocean decided to shit itself.
So now it's race time. Like I said before, we were divided into groups. I would be in the first group, and each one would go three minutes after the last. The race would go about 100 meters out to sea, then maybe 400 meters farther out (against the current) and to the right, then about 300 meters even farther right (against the current) and slightly towards the shore, about 600 meters back (with the current) to the first buoy, and the 100 meters to get back to the sand. Then a short sprint up the steep shore to the finish line where everyone was.
Also there were no rules. You could push others out of the way, tear their goggles off (accidentally, i don't think anyone was enough of an asshole to actually sabotage the race like that), do whatever it took to win. What this meant was my buddy and I would position ourselves away from the biggest guys so we wouldn't get screwed up too much by any antics. We took the spots farthest to the right of the group so we'd have the current working with us on the first leg. Didn't make much of a difference.
Short countdown later, everyone was sprinting towards the sea. You ever see a movie with an ancient battle where both sides are flat out running and yelling at each other until the inevitable clash of steel? It was like that except with more water. And more running. And more yelling. Less steel, though. Wasn't a lot of that in the race.
The first hundred meters were brutal. I tripped, and my buddy pulled ahead of me (our plan initially was to stick together to power each other through). Frantically paddling, I went further in.
The first leg of the race felt like this - you can't see shit. Anywhere. You're doing butterfly over the waves, or just front crawl, trying to get somewhere, closer to that buoy a football field away. The wave motion makes the water a solid shade of brown. You are moving vertically, up and down, up and down, with no sense of forward progression except the hazy images of other people's body parts around you.
Sometimes you look to the right and see the wave extend, but not for long, as you are tossed back down. Sometimes you take a glance forward, to see where you're going. All you see is the next wave. And the next wave is always bigger. The waves onshore were maybe six feet high. The waves here had to be eight. Maybe even ten. My buddy is nowhere to be seen, and all I can do is keep going.
When you look forward, you don't see a buoy. You see water. You see other people doing what you're doing. I just chose to follow the mass. That many people can't be wrong about where we're headed. I started next to dead last (judging by my only glance backward as I went in), but I was closing the gap. I'd draft off of the first person I could until they lined up with another person. Then I'd use my built-up energy to paddle forward to the next person, push anyone else out of the way, and continue drafting.
Finally we got to the buoy. Oddly it seemed to be extremely calm at this point. The waves were no bigger than two feet tall now. There was even a guy in a kayak watching us swing around the buoy, not concerned at all by the water. I got to hug the buoy and take the tightest turn. I could tell I made progress. I couldn't look long enough to see where everyone was, but I probably passed 8-12 people around me on that first leg alone.
Given that I was essentially sprinting my ass off, and due to the waves the 100 meters might have been 150 or even 200 in a regular pool, this would be the point where I'd slow down and feel tired. But that cold water was doing its job. I didn't feel the temperature anymore. But I didn't feel the pain either. Sprint and continue.
The second leg of the race felt like this - you feel a little bit better. By this point I'd forgotten all about my friend. I don't think he could have pulled ahead that much. You lose sense of how much you've done, and only focus on reaching that outer buoy. This would be the hardest part in theory, going a long distance against the current, but the first leg was more strenuous and we made it past that, right?
At this point, people seem to be more streamlined. Everyone is going in some semblance of order. I'm still passing people left and right using my systematic draft. I can't see the buoy, but that's because of the distance, not the waves. Some people are already tired, maybe going on their backs for a bit, maybe doing breaststroke. But I'm still chugging at my same sprint pace. Every person I pass makes me feel a little better. Every ounce of good feeling I get makes me go faster. The mind is a beautiful thing.
The second buoy had a bit of a pileup. In this one we'd be making a 90-degree turn, so the formation we had got squashed against the left side again. People were swearing as they were kicked, pushed, shoved, and abandoned as everyone tried to circumnavigate the big balloon. Personally I got kicked in the eye, but at that point I couldn't care less.
The third leg of the race felt like this - it's very silent. The brutal first section was filled with rolling tides, Viking screams, and collisions. The lengthy second section was filled with exhausted groans and the occasional "Shit!". But the third had nothing. It was all calm. And again I followed a smaller number of people. I only passed one person on this part. The time was getting longer, and competition was getting tough at the forefront of the mass.
The calm led into a blur. The ocean was brown, but not a violent brown like before. It was... placid. But that numbness and the blind desire to pass more people overtook that placidity. I kept going. And rounded the fourth buoy.
The fourth buoy was technically the tightest turn. We almost did 180 degrees, maybe 150 or so. We were now slightly going inward to the shore, and left instead of right. The current was with us now. But due to the spread of the swimmers at this point, there wasn't a traffic jam again.
The fourth leg of the race felt like this - utter confusion. Six hundred meters (I think) is a pretty long distance. Before, I could look up and rely on a mass of people who were swimming in the same direction I was. But now I was in the near-front. When I looked to my left, I saw just one more mass. We went neck and neck for a bit. At some point I realized that this guy was next to me at the start of the race. Quick chuckle, then back to business mode.
Upon seeing nobody else, I looked around and saw I was drifting off to the left. I left that guy to his own devices, and adjusted as needed. The mass was bigger too. People were everywhere. Some were probably a hundred feet to my right, and I couldn't see any shapes in the water anymore.
The first wave was all-male. I think this is the first part of the race that the waves started blending into one, since if the women were up here then the gap probably closed up. I don't know how it went. I never looked back after that one time to confirm I was almost dead last. But now I wasn't. The women fell away with the men.
Maybe two-thirds of the way in, my right leg decided enough was enough and began to mutiny. Every now and then it would attempt to cramp up. Shuddering at the prospect of seizing up after all this progress, I let it drift. I made my left leg kick ever harder to compensate, and pulled more and more water with my arms. Every ten seconds or so, it would attempt to cramp again, and I'd flex it accordingly.
The saltwater I was taking in at this point wasn't helping. My throat wasn't dry, but I could tell I swallowed a lot of it on the way. The San Pellegrino I had before the race didn't help either. 18% lemon juice doesn't exactly hydrate you. Finally I hit that first buoy again. This time we'd be making a left turn in to shore. And the last stretch of the race would be upon us.
The fifth and final leg of the race felt like this - there was blindness, and there was resurgence. The current might have helped a bit, but the waves helping you was overwhelming. The way in must have taken 3 minutes to complete. The way back took around 30 seconds. Every wave that swept us up carried us forward in leaps.
And it made the race much more interesting. I think there were maybe the three fastest women ahead of me during this part of the race. At this point I lined up side-by-side with one of them. She followed me almost all of the way. I powered everything up to 100%. My right leg protested so I powered that back down. One wave went through us, she was in the lead. Another, and I was back. Two more and I was ahead.
At this point I wasn't looking up anymore. I knew which way I was going. The waves kept me straight enough. The woman was gone. I assumed I won and kept going. I could feel the rush. The roar of the water was more and more. But I wasn't looking up anymore.
Another wave picked me up maybe five feet, and I rode it for almost three seconds. Then suddenly I dropped. Not before, where it would gently set me down in anticipation for the next one, but hard. I was on top of it when it dropped, not behind me. And I went down with the wave. Brown turned into brilliant white. I shut my eyes. The wave collapsed on itself and I did three somersaults.
Then I realized I could feel the ground. I looked forward, and there was the coastline. I'd finally made it, a lot faster than I thought it would come! Taking a few bracing steps and continuing my approach, I paddled with all the strength I had left. Even stopped noticing my right leg for a few seconds. But only a few seconds.
Swimming turned into wading. Wading turned into jumping. Jumping turned into running. This was it. This was the finish. Then I realized I had to run. On a disabled leg. And one that was soon about to be disabled.
Whoever was around me (maybe 10 people in my vicinity, these kinds of things give you intense tunnel vision) was running as well. This might have been the only part of the race where people gained the lead against me. I did some quick experimentation and ended up doing something between Gangnam Style and the Russian leg dance so my legs wouldn't seize up during this final, critical stretch. Up the brightly decorated finish line. The slope of the beach increased to 20, 30, almost 45 degrees. And then it evened out. And then it was over.
There was maybe 1000 people in the race, aged anywhere from fourteen, to college age students (overwhelming majority, esp. my wave), to middle-aged adults, to senior citizens (waves three and four, males in three and females in four). And out of all these people, I managed 136th place. 21 minutes for 1500 meters.
My friend (who I thought was ahead of me, that thought only resurfaced when I saw him again) got 245th. My other friends were around 170-250. And some of these people were genuinely faster than me in a regular pool. Maybe it was because we had permission to be assholes, maybe I just had a knack for swimming in waves, but holy shit I did not see that one coming.
I think I finished before any of the other waves. The girl I raced crossed the line shortly after I did. But after. I limped over to the line, gave my name and place at the checkout counter, and went with my friends to do stuff. Mostly eat. They had shitty breakfast food there (it was 9:30 in the morning but I'd still rather have some meat or pasta instead of fruit and bagels. I can't stand breakfast food for whatever reason). But they had Gatorade and plain old water, so that's always a plus.
All that success came at a price though. I had to chug a buttload of water, and they got pissed off at me for taking all that water. Also, my right leg came out fine and never cramped, but my left leg gave out overnight from all the stress, and now I'm having a lot of trouble walking, and I can't run at all. But that should subside over the next two days.
So the moral of this story? Adrenaline is awesome. That's all I learned. I could probably pull some philosophy out of my ass like I did with the inevitablity of death that one time after falling off a tree. Maybe something about blind pursuits of inferior goals until you're no longer in a state of doing anything.
But honestly, philosophy can go out the window on this one. Adrenaline is probably one of the most useful things in the human body. It comes at the rarest moments (or not, seems I get an adrenaline rush during an intense PvP clutch play these days) but it accomplishes miracles. I can't swim a mile that fast in a regular pool where everything is controlled (maybe 1-2 minutes slower). I certainly can't beat college-age women with that intensity. Adrenaline rushes are just that. Miracles.
The fact that it was for a good cause was probably a nice cherry on top too ^^ 
