austria 70.3 episode eight - the swim!

Apparently most of my stories are punctuated with 'and then' so here we go...

And then on the way to the swim start my timing plan - which up til then had been perfect - was hampered by lack of portaloos and people (guys, no chicks in my Q except for me) taking Forever! In the end i was giving them cut off times or none of us would have got to the swim start in time. By the time i'd got to the swim start, the pre-race excitement had turned into dawning terror, particularly as the dreaded wetsuit and i had a pre-swim standoff. As i miserably clambered into the horrible thing, the 2XU guy appeared from nowhere and helped to yank me about and then evaporated. Am not sure whether he was a figment of my imagination or whether he was real and his brief for the day was to grope people in 2XU wetsuits! Flung my street wear bag at a blokey in an army uniform, later i wondered whether he was actually the right person to give it to or whether he was just out walking his dog, but hey, i got it back at the end. And then had a bit of a moment where i couldn't find how to get behind the metal gate things to join my fellow wetsuit, red swim hat clad wave, found it, got in and did a perfunctory warm up and then re-stretched the neoprene around again as instructed by imaginary 2XU groper. We were off! but after about 2-300m the wetsuit demons tried to clamp my lungs and drown me and i had a 'i can't breathe/move' panic attack, shook off the demons and got going again, but heck, the julestar really can't swim in a wetsuit! I feel as aquadynamic as an octopus with all its legs tied together in it. So i lost time and useful feet getting through the first lake, trotted the 200m over the bridge to the next lake and started to feel a bit more settled by but was desperate to get the suit off. That's Another Story as in addition to my dismal swim time my T1 time was laughable (see later for more comment on this :-Z) as the suit then decides it likes me after all and refuses to come off. Next time i will put scissors in my bike bag and cut the damn thing off. That will make an interesting YouTube video!!