2nd Annual Aaron Vaughn Memorial Swim Race Report

This past Friday we made our annual summer trip to my home town of Stuart, Florida.   Saturday I swam the 1k Aaron Vaughn Memorial Frogman Swim.  I swam the event last year and was thrilled to be back to swim this year.

The weather was perfect but the surf was a little on the rough side.  With a cap of 300 swimmers in 3 distances (5k, 1k and 200 meter), it was the perfect number of swimmers to create a good start. I was so excited to try out the new TYR Torque swimskin as IMCOZ is typically a wetsuit illegal race.  Again, the family and friends of Aaron Vaughn put on an excellent event and I hope they raised a lot of money for their Operation 300 camp.

I had a bit of a size  dilemma with this new skin suit. I was convinced I needed a medium, but the local tri shop here only had the small in stock, the medium hadn't arrived yet. After spending the good part of an hour walking around The tri shop, the wonderful owner offered me the opportunity to wear the small for the race to try it out. If you are ever in Stuart check out Riverfront Kayaks Tri- Athletica if you need any gear!

So back to the beach....

It was a beautiful morning. The registration / sign in process was a little disorganized but being a second year event, they still have a learning curve. I finally got signed in, body marked and all and was on the beach with plenty of time to hang out. This year the included a tad pool swim for kids under 10. Both my kids registered, JJ in the 5-7 age group and CA in the 8-10. 

The 73 5k swimmers took off around 9:20, then the 100 1k swimmers started 8 minutes later.

The surf was rough - we swam out to the buoys, turned north, swam forever, turned around and came back. We must have swam with the current to the north and fought the current heading south. Not to mention the waves were breaking on us too. Thank goodness for bilateral breathing. I felt good, keeping good form and even stayed on one ladies feet for quite awhile. It felt like a very long swim and sure enough my garmin said I swam 1.3 km.  I finished with an official time of 27:02, 12th female.  Last year I finished 7th in 22:42. This troubles me just a little bit, but I remember last year being quite calm and this year we did fight the waves, not to mention I'm pretty sure the course was long!

I loved swimming in the swim skin!  Thanks to Tri-Athletica I'm a proud owner of a TYR Torque!

After the 200meter race finished the tadpole swim got under way. Poor little JJ had to swim out about 12 meters to a buoy and back through the break surf. There were 7 brave kids in his group.

He did an awesome job and made it back to the beach in 3rd place resulting in a nice little medal for his collection.

He was exhausted!  Since the surf had really picked up and CA's age group had to swim out and across, she decided not to participate.

All in all it was a great morning.  The organizers do a very good job with plenty of food and drink for the participants. There was even free smoothies for everyone at the end!  I hope we are back in town for the 3rd annual Aaron Vaughn swim next year!