That's what she said!: This may be one of my last posts...

IF I DIE THIS SATURDAY IN THE OPEN WATER!!!!
Okay, I guess it's not really THAT bad...But, this coming from the girl that has been both skydiving and bungee jumping, I will say that this was one of the scariest things I've done. Last Friday, Kelli and I took our first shot at an Open Water Swim. I put on my cute little tri swim top, grabbed my workout bag and headed out the door to pick Kelli up..la la la la la...no worries. And then halfway down the road leading to Lake 288 (a scuba diving and sports training lake) something unexpected happened...BUTTERFLIES IN MY TUMMY!! This is VERY different than swimming 60 laps in a 25 meter pool! Will there be alligators? The big know-it-alls say "No Misty, there aren't alligators in there", but HOW DO YOU KNOW?? An alligator can go wherever it wants! At one point I will be 1/2 mile away from shore bobbing like bait...what if I get a hammy cramp? aaaaahhhhhhh!!! We talk the whole drive out and calm ourselves down. Then we arrive and see this:

Yep, it's official, I'm going to die! THIS is where I'm going to die!
The owner of the Lake took pity on us and got his swim instructor to come give us a quick little private lesson. Faking confidence (as to not look as stupid as we know we are) we began putting on our swim caps and ear plugs...only to be told WE HAVE BEEN WEARING OUR SWIM CAPS WRONG ALL ALONG! We were putting them on sideways (which looking at them and minding all of the rules of fashion is how it SHOULD go, but whatever)! How do you fake confidence in your swimming ability when you don't even know how to put on a swim cap! So this process, which has taken us an average of 10 minutes (getting our big fro's all up in a tiny cap is NOT an easy task) only takes about 10 seconds when you do it correctly!
Now that we are one week from the triathlon and just passed level ONE of putting on the cap, we were ready to do a "test" for the instructor! Simply swim out to the boat in the middle and back. Sounds easy, right? Being the show offs that we are, we put on our best swimming form and did his little test. After a couple of quick pointers (and Richard nicely lying and saying that our form actually isn't all that bad) it was time to start! If you hug the perimeter of the lake it is a square, 225 meters on each side. So twice around would be 1800 meters, 200 meters more than the race.
So off I went! No more than 100 meters away from shore, it was like I completely forgot how to swim! I floundered, gasping for air and would have drowned, I think, if I hadn't forgotten how to do that too! I had a quick Come to Jesus meeting with myself and said, "Misty, you have a long way to go...there's no turning back, and you know you'd rather die than quit! So GET IT TOGETHER!" Before I knew it, I'd passed the first buoy, then the second, then the third, and in no time at all I'd finished 900 meters, one time around the lake! And since this whole triathlon is just a big mental game with me, now knowing that all I had to do was do the same distance one more time, I was good to go! Settling into my rhythm, I finished the distance just before sunset! It was a great feeling to be done, and an even better feeling to know that I can do this again in a week and I won't die!
And it really felt good to get out of the water, talk to Kelli, and find out she had ALL OF THE SAME EXPERIENCES in the water as I did!

I was on such a high the rest of the night and began counting down the days to the race! I told everyone who would listen all about this Open Water experience but I don't think you can understand the feeling unless you try it!
A few more pictures of our recent training...

If you look closely, you can see a little dark shadow called KELLI! Yep, we are DUMMIES! We had to start EXTRA early (5:30am) one day because Kelli had to be home earlier and it was a 2 1/2 hour workout, so we meet in our usual spot forgetting that it would still be PITCH BLACK! Good thing I was wearing black shorts, grey tank, and had NOTHING reflective on me! I eventually turned on my iphone and tucked it in the back of my shorts to shine behind me, hoping the cars MAY see us and not kill us! :)