87 - The Biscaye waves goodbye - Biarritz

Saturday, June 22

Today is an unwind and preparation day.  This gives me time to put my suitcases together, catch up on the blog, and do a bit more research for the coming days.   I had a few items to dry so the suitcases weren't completely packed till bedtime, but they're ready to go.  Since I don't have a scale, I'll have to hope that my big one measures in at less than 23 kg.

The race wasn't till 2PM, so I had a lunch of paté and this pain d'epi (formed to resemble a stalk of wheat)

The only other item on the agenda today was the open water swim (Traversée de Biarritz) in the afternoon.  I'd signed up for this swim a couple weeks ago and was looking forward to giving the 1.5km course a try.  What this race taught me was appreciation for the Meters for Mike race I've done in New Jersey.  

For starters, I think the lady at check in gave me the wrong ankle monitor (329 vs 229) and the schedule was delayed 20 minutes to wait for the jetski to finish placing buoy markers.  During the waiting time, weather conditions began to get a bit rougher: more wind, more clouds, and the waves started to get bigger.  So by the time the lead sauveteur was ready to discuss the course with us, we'd been gathered for 30 minutes in our swim suits.  Most people were wearing wet suits but I was one of the few in just a bathing suit so I was starting to get cold in the wind and drizzle.  It didn't help that when he gave the course instructions, he simply asked everyone to gather around as he just talked such that 2/3 of the crowd couldn't hear a word he said: there was already a microphone available and megaphones exist.  

Things were windy at check-in; even with this metal weight on the feet, the tent was shifting around with the gusts.

The weather is looking *simply* spectacular.  Ça te dit à nager?  

After the course description, we began to funnel into the staging area where someone was checking that all ankle monitors could be accounted for after the race.  This is when I learned that the name listed for ankle monitor 329 was not my own 🤦‍♂️ .  So after another 15 minutes of people funneling in, we learned that the course was being altered to accommodate rapidly deteriorating water conditions: instead of going out and around a large rock, we would be doing 3 laps within the protected area; the number of laps was abruptly dropped to just 1 and still the directions for the makeshift course weren't loudly spoken aloud for the whole group.  

So anyhow, I started out in the back of the pack and passed a lot of people working to the first buoy.  I followed the contingent that kept moving; I thought someone had said to keep to the buoy on the right but then I saw the lead sauveteur on a jetski zooming off towards the few people ahead of me on the left.  So that's how I ended up getting a few extra yards/meters in: by doubling up on the distance between the far buoys.  This also featured people swimming past/towards each other, which is probably a great feature to have in open water swims.  

We ended up having three buoys marking the course, the triangle basically indicating where there weren't rocks (based on my knowledge of swimming here over the past three weeks.

It was chilly but at least my new cap helped keep my head warm while I was developing la chair de poule (literal chicken flesh = goosebumps)

And here comes the rain; no surprise that the afternoon relay scheduled for after the 1500m race was canceled.  

I guess all of the changes were made for safety and its good that nobody drowned; but I still shake my head at just how disorganized the experience felt.  I suppose its a small consolidation prize to have had my 10 minute swim after shivering on the beach for an hour instead of no swim at all.  Of course, right after the course finished, rain started coming down sideways and the next swim event scheduled was canceled.  I didn't stick around for long after the swim; even if there was a buvette and a small snack stand for the swimmers; I had bread and paté (plus a nice warm shower) waiting for me back at the apartment.  

It didn't go as expected, but my first international open-water swim is done.  Whether my time was recorded under my own name is a different question but at least I survived this harrowing 500m 😂

An alternative to the swim would have been the cinema festival; who wants to sit in an air conditioned theater watching artistic French films when they could be mostly naked in 19C water??

Having eaten a whole container of paté over the course of the day, I opted to take dinner at a vegetarian restaurant near les Halles.  Towards the end of my meal, I overheard a Spanish couple asking the waiter about wines and it turns out all the wines available were from Spain.  Per the serveuse, it's easier to find certified vegan wine in Spain than in France; could the distinction be the use of animal derived fertilizers?