Open Water Swimming at the 2008 Olympics

I got my butt out of bed today to do a nice morning run with my brother-in-law Kevin. It was a great run. The morning was just cold enough that the lakeshore path wasn’t completely packed with runners, but warm enough we both sported shorts (with hat, gloves, and long sleeve shirts, but shorts none the less).

Kevin and I both travel with our work, and thus we don’t get to spend as much time hanging out as we would like. We also share a lot of common interests, which include triathlons, thus whenever we can we try to catch up over a workout.

You may remember Kevin from when he destroyed the competition in our indoor triathlon at UIC.

As we were wrapping up our run today, we talked about how we were really looking forward to the Olympics this year, and how the number of events we were interested in watching has grown since the last time they held the games. That is when I mentioned that open water swimming will be an event for the first time this year.

I hadn’t really thought much about open water swimming as a competitive event until I started doing triathlons. That, along with my best friend preparing for the English Channel swim this summer has me interested in what this sport would look like.

Well it sounds very aggressive, check out this story in the Wall Street Journal. In Beijing they will will compete around a 2.5K course for the 10k Swim. I am sure it will be something to watch.

As for the run, I though Kevin was pushing the pace the whole time, and that we would be sub 8:30 miles, but it turns out we were only running 8:50s. Time to get back to the track…

Running:
7.35 miles, 8:50 min/mile pace, Kevin kicking my ass… again.

Bonus:
Here are some of the efforts of Kevin's work...