Swim Report – July 29, 2017 – Plan (OS)B

I was really excited when I woke up this morning as the pre-dawn skies were clear and cloudless. So I knew that the sunrise was going to be fantastic. But as I turned onto Lake Shore Drive from Hollywood, I also knew that we were in for quite an ordeal…

L1 was a raging, frothy mess at 5:40am. The winds we’ve been having this week have really stirred things up, and the end result has been an angry lake with some high volume, highly erratic swells. Needless to say these are no fun to swim in.

After several swimmers arrived, I announced that we were going to ixnay L1 in favor of Ohio Street Beach given that there is at least a breakwater at that site. So we ran, biked, and carpooled down to OSB to see if that site was a go.

Fortunately for us, OSB was much more civil. Although it was still very choppy, we didn’t have the high volume swells that were present 1 mile north. So we put on our swim gear and waded out into the lake.

The water temperature was a blazing 73.4F – very enjoyable even in the chops. I swam out to the 1/4 mile point and then swam back, so 1/2 mile total. But I had to breast stroke part of the way as it was very difficult to find any rhythm in the “washing machine.”

We finished up at around 6:45am, and by that time the sun was out in full force. It was quite a perfect summer morning to be honest. Except for that raging lake part…

Sunrise

No swimmin’ at L1!

The scene at OSB

Andrew, Lake Monster 454, hailing all the way from Australia (congrats!)

Lizz, Lake Monster 455, in town from SoCal (with bonus seagull in the background)

Thomas, Lake Monster 456, shaming all of us by doing a full mile in the chops (congrats!)

Scarlet beebalm (nothing to do with swimming, but it sure looks lovely in my side yard!)