My introduction

The Chesapeake Bay swim is about 10 years old (http://www.bayswim.com). The event crosses the bay between the north and south span of the Chesapeake Bay bridge, heading eastward from a point near Annapolis, MD to end on Kent Island. It's the most narrow portion of the bay's main channel (hence the reason the bridge is there!).

Each year the Coast Guard sets the limit for 600 participants in the full 4.4 mile distance. There are also about 400 or so entries in a 1 mile event that is a circular course. Coast Guard provides support in the water, along with small craft and kayak support.

This is my first year attempting the swim, but I do come from a distance freestyle background (8 yrs at college and high school level). In March I started swimming with the Central Maryland YMCA Masters (CMYM) swim team twice each week.

My training plan officially began 12 weeks prior to the event. It requires 3 swim workouts per week. One workout is a long distance solo workout which gradually increased from 3000 yards in the first week to approximately 6000 yards in April. In May this workout was replaced by open water swims in the Severn River with a few others who are doing the Bay Swim. During these swims we went as far as 3.5 miles. The other two weekly workouts are typical master swim team workouts that average about 3000 yards each for the duration of the training plan. The monthly swim yardage peaked at about 40K in April. It went down in May due to the taper for the Columbia Triathlon.

Feb: 15K
Mar: 23K
Apr: 40K
May: 33K
June: 16K (1/2 month)

Welcome, nice to have a vet join us.

Welcome, Eric! And, as others have said, 4.4 miles??? Holy smokes! I can't imagine. I read your follow-up posts and it sounds like you are certainly ready for it. You must think the swim leg of a tri is a complete breeze! Lucky you! Be sure to let us know how the bay swim goes!

Kelly

I still have a long way to go before I consider myself a vet! Still less than a year into this new hobby, and learning every day.

A mile swim in open water with a couple hundred other age groupers is never a breeze! But I do have fun with it! If only the race was over after the swim.....

I am lucky enough to be able to benefit from my swimming background. I was a competitive swimmer in high school and college, with a specialty in long distance freestyle (500/100/1650 were my races). Of course, that was almost 15 years ago. But I do have the advantage of not going through the fear of the swim and the learning curve that some new triathletes must go through for the swim.