Swim With Friends and "Gridley Monsters"

I heard that my friends Kate and Rachel were going to be heading to GSL to swim this afternoon, so I invited myself to go along with them.  They brought along two friends, Renee and Esther, who had never been in the Great Salt Lake.  They came on a great day, because the water was just over 70 degrees.

Chad pulled into the marina after I had been there for about 15 minutes and brought the wind with him.  For about half an hour it got REALLY windy.  We took cover in our cars while we waited for the rest of the swimmers to get there.  Luckily it didn't last long and was pretty calm by the time Kate, Rachel, Renee and Esther got there.

It was a pretty laid back swim and I wasn't worried about trying to get in any kind of distance.  We swam out of the marina and re-grouped at the red buoy.  From there, Chad and I swam out to the white buoy and back and the ladies swam to the green buoy and back.  Kate talked Chad and I into trying to swim fly.  It's awesome in the GSL!  You ride so high on the water that it makes it a little more effortless.

On the way back we spotted a few half submerged tumbleweeds in the water.  Chad informed me that these are now called "Gridley Monsters" because they can scare the crap out of you if you unexpectedly put your hand into one while swimming.

It was a fun swim and it was nice to just relax and have a fun time instead of stressing out about trying to get a long distance swim in.  I ended up with just over 1500 yards for the day.  Here is my Hydro Tracker data:


1 comment:

Gords said...

I've come close to running into those tumbleweeds before. Wouldn't enjoy it.