Swim with the stars in St. Croix

In St. Croix, and have been managing to dodge most of the rain showers. This place is so humid right now it really doesn’t matter as I seem to be dripping with sweat as soon as I leave the room regardless.

We all got 1 chance to swim the course so we went down to the swim start Friday at 11am and dove in as a group. I found myself at the front as I am sure the better swimmers waited to get in a bit longer but it was pretty short lived. I saw a couple guys swim by me on the right hand side in between some pick up efforts I was doing, and I decided to go with them.

At the Turn buoy one of the guys stopped to show me a spotted ray right under us. That was cool, but even cooler was the fact he was wearing some black and yellow goggles… Lance… NFW. I do not tend to get overly excited to see particular stars, but it was pretty cool to be out there just chatting about sea life with him. I told him if he pulled the rest of the way in on the swim, I would of the work on the bike. J He smiled and we were off again.

I have to admit at that point I wanted to keep up because I thought, damn, people pay like 10K a crack to ride with the dude, why not go for a swim? I hit his feet a few times, but nothing major and I kept thinking it was cool to be right behind the guy that I watched for so many years, win the Tour and seemed to be a figure kind of like MJ (Im from Chicago) who would always just be that guy on the TV, here I was not hitting his feet and I kept thinking about all the victories those feet have pedaled him too.

I couldn’t figure out who was hanging around on my right shoulder, but he wasn’t giving up any groud and to me, it seemed like we were swimming pretty well. When we finished the guy next to us said “Damn, you swim OK for a cyclist- It was Terenzo Bozzone, another guy who is damn fast and was an honor to swim with.

The coolest part of all was to have all the hard swimming I had been doing this year pay off and to see at least that day I could swim with those guys.

When we climbed up the ladder out of the ocean, I went my way, and he went his. He was mobbed, and I was proud of myself for just playing it cool like I was swimming with just anyone else.

I would post pictures, but I told Lance “no pictures please” J