The Swim

The swim was extremely challenging. Besides the fact that you start the 3.8 km swim with over 2700 other competitors , this time I did it tethered to another swimmer. I had never done an Ironman tethered before. We had tried it the week before at Nationals, an Olympic distance race. At Nationals there was a para triathlete wave but there were only 4 swimmers with us. Now we were getting into the water with over 2700 others. As you might imagine we had problems with other swimmers getting between us and becoming tangled in the tether. The first few minutes of the swim were tough, trying to maintain my position directly behind Meyrick. However as the swim progressed we were able to find more open water on the outside and things began to get better and we were able to get into a rythym. Our time was not bad, 1 hour 16 minutes. Our whole thing about doing this race was to do everthing ourselves. Normally when Meyrick races alone he has a "handler" who would meet him at the end of0 the swim with his prosthetic and help him out of the water but this is where our team work came in and I helped Meyrick into transition.