Wesley Johnson's birthday swim

I recently learned through Facebook of Wesley Johnson's upcoming Catalina attempt (on July 25th), and reached out to him to see if he needed any help training.  It's awesome that we have another Catalina Crossing from a Utah swimmer since last summer's Catalina swim from James Jonsson.

Sleeping in the van the night before.
Kinda lonely on a 4th of July evening.

Wes told me he wanted to do a long training swim that started very early in the morning on his birthday.  I took the day off work and drove up the evening of July 4th and stayed in a campsite that his friend Mark bought for him.

I got up at 3:30 and met Wes at the Deer Creek boat ramp.  For his birthday I gave him a bulk pack of light sticks which will come in handy for his Catalina crossing which will require at least a dozen.  We got everything packed up and lit up and he made his way in the water.  I didn't have a thermometer but the website said that the water temp was in the low 60s.

There was no wind, and it was a clear night. In fact prior to getting in I saw a star make its way overhead which I immediately recognized as the international space station and snapped a pic.

We started the swim about 4:15, and I started my tracking on mapmyfitness.  He wanted a drink every 15 minutes, which he must have programmed into his watch because he was the one to initiate the stop only a few seconds before the 15 minutes elapsed.

At 7am we met several of his friends at the boat ramp where they joined us.  The all wore wetsuits, and man were they fast.  I sensed about a 25% jump in the pace.  Wes I'm sure really enjoyed the opportunity to draft.  Unfortunately none of that will be available for the Catalina crossing, but it was a great chance to get a slight break and also increase the speed.

The sun was warming the air and the swimmers kept up their quick pace only stopping every 30 minutes for a regroup and quick drink break for Wes. At 10:30 we stopped at the boat ramp and picked up a couple more swimmers and made our way over to sailboat beach (just around the bend west of the boat ramp) where the swim ended.

Mark, who reserved the campsite, also cooked up a very nice barbecue for the group of burgers and hotdogs.  It was cool to meet these young international triathletes and celebrate Wes' birthday together.  We talked about a few of the various Catalina crossing topics.  I'm betting Wes gets it done in about 10 hours.  His pace was about a 28 minute mile.  The reason we finished when we did was because we ended up waiting at various times at the boat ramp for additional swimmers to join in.

This was a fun experience, and again made me realize that kayaking these distances is quite a big deal too.