Shark Tank

On Saturday I participated in the second of three swim races held at the University of Ottawa.  This series called, “The Shark Tank”, is a mix of long distance swimming and life guard race drills.  

My race had 3 different events spread out over 2 hours.  The first race was a 1500m time trial, the second was a 400m obstacle course and the finale was a 200 TT on a zig zag course. 

If your wondering how the actual swim was prepared I’ve prepared a couple of sketches seen below. 

Swim course 

This is my beautiful picture of the pool.  So first thing, we had the entire pool to swim (8x50m).  One lap around the outside of all 6 buoys was 100ms.  The 1500 TT was 15 laps around the outside 6 buoys.  My lines are the obstacles for the 400 which were pulled during the 1500.  The 200 TT started at the top left buoy went down to the bottom left buoy up to the top middle buoy then down to bottom right and finished at the top right.  Confused?

So the 1500 TT was probably the best experience you could get for open water swimming in the winter.  In our “heat” there were 6 people.  Heat maybe an understatement as there was actually only 6 of us in total for the entire 2 hours!.  It wasn’t much of a race as everyone quickly spread out.  I swam around in no mans land except when I got lapped or lapped some of the others.  One lady did the entire course breast stroking!  Props.

The 400m was again done on the same course but this time the obstacles were brought in.  How this worked was the obstacles were submerged about 2.5ft and you had to swim up and under them as you went around.  It’s a weird feeling to be freestyling then all of a sudden dive down to go underneath a gate.  Neat experience. 

The night ended with the 200 TT.  It was an ambush to the first buoy which resembled a tri.  A couple of the life guards chose to join us for the last one.  Making it a little more congested (just a little).Overall the Shark Tank is a good experience.  It’s too bad there were not more people but I guess when it’s winter, people are not thinking triathlon training.  

Next one up is in March.