2019 Open water kickoff - two open water swims this weekend

I texted Chad re: swimming in Pineview last week and he mentioned that it was still a little cold, but he was open to go for it.  I looked up the temp online and it showed 55 degrees!  Woah!  So on Saturday, 6/15/19 I went with Cathi and Oliver up to Pineview to take a temp reading.

It came up as 62 degrees.  Much better.  I tried to convince Oli to swim with me at least out to the first buoy east of Windsurfer beach, but the water was too cold for him.  The water was way high.  It was only a few feet from the bottom stair down from the parking lot.  I set Cathi up with a camp chair and she and Oliver watched (along with about a dozen other people hanging out in that area playing), while I swam.

I went a little bit further, but then realized that I didn't lock the car and the parking lot was a zoo of people.  Didn't want anything to get taken so I called Cathi on my watch and told her to please lock the car.  I figured I had gone enough and turned back.

Once I got about 50 yards from shore, Oliver was there with a big smile on his face and he wanted to race to the shore.  I had to push it faster than my normal pace to beat that little kid. The little stink wasn't even wearing goggles, and was swimming water polo style.  I couldn't help laugh while I was swimming. 

It was a ton of fun and I'm ready to start swimming here on a weekly basis.

I texted Chad and he was at Jordanelle and sent me a pic of his thermometer reading 60 degrees even.

So the plan is to swim together at Jordanelle on Monday morning....

--------------------------------------------------------------
Jordanelle

Got up at 4:30 to get on the road in time to meet Chad at 6:00am.  Got there and Chad and Josh were there!  Chad brought a friend too, Zack.  I couldn't get over how high the water was.  It was basically at the top of the boat ramp.  Last time I was here it was about 25-30 yard walk down the ramp to get to the water's edge!  We had all agreed to do a 15 minute in and 15 minute back swim. About a mile.

What? My avg heart rate was
104?  Man, I'm sandbagging I guess!

When I got to the water, I started the wade in.  Yes it was cold, but not unbearably so.  I kept on going in to my waist. Didn't stop and got up to my shoulders, neck, and started some breaststroke.  I was a little freaked that I WASN'T affected by the cold. I didn't hyperventilate, and it felt fine. After about a minute of breaststroke I saw the other guys coming in and swimming towards me in freestyle.  That's when I started off. I knew I'd get passed pretty quickly.  I'm still pretty slow. 

Once I got to the red buoy, Josh was there and passed me.  We turned and went along the white buoy line and Chad and Zack passed.  I never felt any kind of numbness from the cold. It felt quite refreshing.  I knew that 15 minutes in and 15 minutes back was gonna be cake.  And it was.

When we got to the turnaround point, we chatted for a bit, and turned around.  I was feeling great and the water quality was awesome!  The recovery was easy.  I hardly did any shaking at all in the drive in to work. I definitely want to come here once a week!