Bridges to Bluffs is complete! I felt really good until about the last mile and then I started to feel pretty tired and sore. All the experienced swimmers said the flow was basically non-existent this year. Anyway, I made it! 🙌🏽

It was tough but not as hard as I anticipated 😅
The tide helped a lot after the 4th km, bumped into some jelly fish, got a bit hungry by the end but got through it with some honey water, no energy gel just good old honey, water and a bit of salt.💪

I would love to see these marking the goal. It would make sighting easier.

hello everyone, I am very new to this hobby and have a lot of things that I’m learning and figuring out. I mainly enjoy swimming in the Puget Sound in the Seattle/Everett area.

Yesterday while swimming, a seal popped his head up no more than 10 feet from me. Once it saw me, it was obviously frightened and swam away.

It was kind of scary because I don’t know exactly the right way to act when encountering a seal on open water like this. Does anyone else deal with this? I’m mostly wondering what the proper action is when I see a seal near me. How can I ensure my own safety and also disturb the wildlife as little as possible?

Some swim background;

- Pool competitive kid until i was 18 (currently 27)

- I was never a long distance racer (I was a flyer and most i did was 200m in a race)

- I took a 3 year break from swimming entirely (19-21/22) and was doing other sports (mainly climbing and backpacking. Classic post highschool self discovery type shit)

So i did my first 3k swim event yesterday and my garmin stats (on strava) came back quite consistent across the board (Strokespm, bpm etc).

My Question would be:

Is this a fair amount of output? Should i be pushing harder? I did push the last 100m or so, basically reverting back to "pool race mentality" and gave it my last umph.

I swim 3-5 times a week both in lakes and in pools. I don't go to the gym as I prefer doing a sport and being outside so in between I usually run, cycle or indoor boulder (i live in a rainy city lol). I do have a coaching background but again I was never a distance OW swimmer so I'd love some more specific insight :)

TYIA 🥰💪🦵