Had me some yummy fish and chips yesterday after the swim. Yes, fish and chips in Japan. And they were pretty good. After yesterday’s ows race, I thought I’d walk all the way back to Zushi station (about 5-6km). Enroute, I would stop at the Gazebo. It’s a small fish and chip eatery that I’ve seen on the bus on the way to Hayama. I keep telling myself to stop there. I walked about 3km to get there so was well due for lunch having already just swum 4.5km as well. It’s along the main road between Zushi and Hayama so you can’t miss it.

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

I haven’t had fish and chips in ages. It’s an Aussie thing. A shame they don’t do potato scallops here. Hmmm, have a real hankering for potato scallops right now. Ordered me some fish and chips and a beer. They have quite the decent alcoholic beverage selection ranging from beers, wine, and sparkling wine. They even had VB!

From Gazebo fish and chips

The fish and chips were yummy. Good clean fish and the chips were perfect. Even served with tomato sauce and vinegar for the chips! The homemade tartare sauce was really delicious too. Just like being back in Oz.

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

Was a bit of a glutton and also ordered a side of popcorn shrimp. Popcorn shrimp is my kryptonite.

From Gazebo fish and chips

This place is cool and casual. The owners are a Japanese couple. The guy had lived in Australia (Gold Coast) for a bit, so was happy to learn that I was from Australia. His wife waits on the tables, and he operates the fryer. There’s an older guy as well who helps in the kitchen. It’s all cooked right behind the counter.

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

A real shame I was too full to fit in ice cream:

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

From Gazebo fish and chips

Highly recommend!

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From Gazebo fish and chips

Gazebo at Hayama. About a 2km walk from Zushi station, or take bus No. 12 from Zushi station (heading for Hayama). Alight at Shoujouji (Shoujou temple) bus stop and then walk about 50m ahead. It’s on your left hand side along that road.

Another weekend, another swim. No rest for the wicked. So straight off the bat from last week’s 10km swim, I did another swim just yesterday. Wasn’t going to take it too seriously. It was going to be a nice fun training swim. Since the 10km swim, I only swum once during the week, a slow 2km. It was mostly a recovery week despite yesterday’s 4.5km swim. It was a Hayama beach area, so pretty convenient from Tokyo. It’s also “our local” open water swim “club” venue. It was organised by a private triathlon group so entry was pretty pricey -10,000 yen for a 4.5km swim. But it was well organised. And you bet we got a t-shirt and swim cap included.

It was on ridiculously early. Decided an early Saturday night was in order. Was in bed by 9:30pm. Woo hoo. Hashtag: Painting the town beige! Was up at 4:30am and on the 5:30am train to get the train to Zushi and then the bus the race beach. Caught up with some fellow swimmers on the way. I had a few swimming friends who were also racing today.

Registration was until 8am with our race starting at 9am! On a Sunday morning! It was a really good turn out for the race. Atmosphere was good and a well-organised event. Water conditions were good. Weather was hot and humid despite being hazy.

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

The water was surprisingly colder than what I was expecting. It was only about 22-23. Very fresh but comfortable enough.

From Hayama OWS

They had a lot of lifeguards and water support crew. More than I’ve seen at a race in a long while.

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

Warm up swim time:

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

It was nice that they had a wetsuit and a non-wetsuit category. This was a really professional race event. We even had ankle time chips! A rarity at a lot of swim races here. There were 3 distances – 1.5km/3km/4.5km. I went for the 4.5km swim sans wetsuit. It was going to be a good open water swim training session for the 10km open water swim I’ll do in about 7 weeks time. See how I go today and then double my time and then some. I also raced carrying two gels in my cossies as a practice run. I hadn’t planned on practising feeding, but I did end up consuming a gel during the swim. The course was a 1.5km triangular loop, with an land entry between each lap. Run up on the beach, cross the mat, pass the drinks table, and then back into the water. The drinks table didn’t have any water, only sports drink. I prefer water to get rid of the salty mouth. Pre-race photo op:

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

From Hayama OWS

Hayama Open Water Swim:

From Hayama OWS

Time to do our thing. The start was a bit weird. There was no countdown and I was expecting a horn, but all there was, was a whistle. Just all of a sudden we were waiting around and then it was time to race. Not much of a lead up. Anyway, you can see me here on the right side of the photo, just casually walking into the water:

From Hayama OWS

Water was murky and not as clear as I would have liked it. I actually thought the course was clockwise, but it was actually anti-clockwise, so just as well I followed everyone else. There was about 300 of us all starting at once. It was definitely a more aggressive race. I took a few blows and probably gave a few too. I didn’t mind it so much. It gets you revved up. The distance from the start to the first buoy felt long. And it felt long on each of the three laps. After the first lap I took a cup of drink from the drink station. Was disappointed there was no water.

On the second lap, I took my gel instead of their sports drink. It was more time efficient for my to drink my gel on the run rather than stop by the table as well. On the third lap, going back out there was a lot more seaweed and debris that we had to swim through. I felt little stinging things in the water. I get very bad allergic reactions to the waters in Shonan. I usually make it a policy to not swim anywhere in the Shonan area – Miura, Zushi, Enoshima, Kamakura etc. Actually swimming in Kanagawa prefecture in general is not that great. I find that because it’s close to Tokyo, the waters are bit polluted and not so clean. Much prefer Shizuoka and Chiba prefecture. I don’t get as much of an allergic reaction. Am now covered in an itchy rash all over my torso. Just the usual, I guess. I should be used to it by now. Am somewhat concerned about the 10km swim I’ll be doing (the Shonan swim). It’s from Zushi beach to Enoshima beach (a point to point swim) in the festy sea lice waters.

I have a bad feeling I am going to get a crazy allergic reaction after swimming there. Mark my words.

This 4.5km swim was a fun swim to do though. I did it 1hr 14min which was good considering lack of training and during my recovery week. I would have liked to have gone a bit faster, and to have especially beat Youri but he beat me 3min. I really don’t do enough sprint/interval work. Got 5th place in my age group. And 68th out of 117 in the non-wetsuit category. And what a better way to end your race than with some free sazae (Japanese for turban shell. which we got as a post-race snack (it’s food, not a souvenir). I hate this stuff – it’s super chewy and salty and bitter and tastes very offal-ly.

From Hayama OWS

July is gonna be a busy month and I don’t foresee much swimming training happening which concerns me. But hopefully will have lots of travel pics coming up soon.

An epic blog post for an epic swim. Ok, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. It’s not so epic. On Saturday, I did my first ever 10km swim. It’s called an openwater swim race BUT it takes place in a pool. Their rationale is that the pool is “outdoors”. Right beside the ocean mind you. “OWS” race. An open water swim it is not. Misleading advertising:

From Oiso 10km swim

Right beside the ocean:

From Oiso 10km swim

Housemate had done this swim race before, a couple of years ago so had convinced me to do it. 10km in a pool didn’t really tickle my fancy but it would be a good test swim for a 10km open water swim. Most 10km swims here have a time limit of 3.5 hours so I figured why not do the pool swim and see if I can even make the distance before attempting it in the ocean.

I had already done the 8km Guam swim just a couple of weeks earlier. It meant that I wasn’t really prepared for this race though. The 8km swim really took it out of me. I needed a week to recover which only left about 10 training days for this 10km swim. I didn’t get the mileage up. And still I had not swum more than 5km since Guam.

Here is my training mileage over the last 6-8 months. I basically went from swimming about 8km per month to 40+ km per month. Still, this wasn’t enough training mileage. I was doing about 10-15km per week. Ideally 20-25km per week is better. My training would get me across the finish line, just probably not as comfortably as I’d like.

From Oiso 10km swim

No correlation at all to the amount of chocolate consumed over the last 6 months:

From Oiso 10km swim

So Saturday was race day. Left home around 7:30am and we made the trek down to Oiso. The race was at the Oiso waterpark – part of the Oiso Prince Hotel. It was a cold and wet rainy day. Perfect for a first ever 10km swim race. This is how I felt about the race, incidentally one of my favourite swimming quotes by one of my favourite comedians:

From Oiso 10km swim

The pool though was really cool. It’s 500m! That meant I only had to do 20 laps. Albeit very long laps. Half km laps at that. Race atmosphere was a bit depressing. Overcast, raining, wet.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

The race was also being televised on a local Kanagawa channel:

From Oiso 10km swim

I was a bit out of my league in this race. The 10km was gonna be a fast field. Mostly college/university swim squads who are going to be future Japanese Olympic swimmers. They all finished in under 2 hours. The long pool: A dog-shaped pool. 250m each way, making a 500m lap.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

The water temp was the optimal temp for me – about 25 degrees. Perfect. And it rained a fair bit throughout the course of swimming.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

The small opening ceremony:

From Oiso 10km swim

We had about an hour or so to get ready and prepare. Stretch. Get in food and hydrate. Getting enough fuel to last 10km was important. Back at home I had eaten 2 pieces of toast with grilled cheese and tomato. On the train down, I ate lots of watermelon. Watermelon is my on-day swim race go-to food. Lots of water and sugar without being too heavy. It’s also not salty so won’t make you thirsty later on. It’s the ultimate food. Love me my watermelon. Had one banana and a couple of red frogs – my other secret swimming weapon. I love red frog lollies. Gets me through my training sessions. Also took a liquid gel before the race and water and gatorade. Slowly drip in the calories. We got given a shitty race cap. It was made of mesh. I hate it when we get mesh caps. I wore my own silican cap underneath. Lubed up with lots of Body Glide and was pretty much ready. I set up my drink station. BYO drinks. We were allowed to bring our fuel supplies to have poolside which we could grab at any time.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

As ready as I was ever going to be:

From Oiso 10km swim

The obligatory pre-race selfie:

From Oiso 10km swim

And then it was time to jump in. My housemate also did the same race again this year. He is ridiculously fast and a great swimmer. The men and women raced together. And they had the 10km swimmers start with the 5km swimmers. There were only 5 female swimmers in the 10km race. And over 25 guys. And then we were off. The first 20 seconds was awesome. With everyone sprinting off, the draft was amazing. I didn’t even need to try and swim, you just got drifted along.

The pool was only 12.5m wide on each side so it was a bit more confined than being in the ocean. There was also a current in the pool (not sure if deliberate or not). Got knocked in the eye by an elbow which pressed my goggles into my eyes more. The field was fast so everyone shot off and we were all pretty much interspersed. A lot of drafting went on as well. Even though there was always plenty of space, everyone was swimming really close to each other. One guy was practically swimming up between my legs, despite us being the only two swimmers in that part of the pool. Yo, there’s a whole frickin pool and here’s this punk literally trying to swim over the top of me. So basically round and round I went. For a large portion of the swim I was on my own. Most people were ahead of me. It then got to a point where the first swimmers were lapping me, there were all like 1km ahead of me and then 2km ahead of me etc. Nothing to do but just keep swimming.

I told myself I wouldn’t stop for fuel until I was at least at the halfway mark. ” Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner). I swam into the drinks station when I thought I had done about 10 laps or 12 laps. I wasn’t sure. I had lost count. Ugh, my first disaster at the drinks station was that I had lost 2 out of my 3 gels. I had prepared 3 gels. I had basically left two of them with the lid unscrewed by still place on top. The lids had totally got swept away in the pool somewhere, gels were floating around and had been filled up with pool water. I took a big gulp and realised that I had probably just drunk a cup of pool water and my stomach would probably pay for it later. Ugh. I had left one gel sealed, so I unscrewed the lid off that I only took one sip. I had wasted so much time already, and this gel was going to have last me for the next 5km. At this drink stop, I asked how many more laps I had left. They said 10. Halfway point. I swam on. I felt ok. I knew my speed had seriously slackened. I knew most people were way ahead, so I just took the swim easy. I knew I could finish it, so I just swam along leisurely. No point in racing and worrying about the competition. Just swim my own race. Finishing alone was going to be a massive achievement and whatever time I did was always going to be a PB.

One of my biggest concerns about entering this swim as opposed to an open water swim was the toilet situation – or rather the lack thereof. In the open water, you can pee as much as you like. In a pool, I was going to be a lot more hesitant about it. Even when I swim train I can’t swim more than 3km without having to jump out and use the toilet. I was dreading when the urge to pee was going to hit me during the race. I decided to make peace with the fact that it wasn’t going to be a matter of IF I would need to pee in the pool but rather HOW MANY times I was going to. I wanted to relax throughout the swim. I pretty much made myself at home in the pool and I am pretty sure I peed about 8-10 times. I lost count. I actually think I peed on every lap, but 20 times seems a bit excessive…although I wouldn’t put it past me.

JC (housemate) passed me 4 times. We’d see each other underwater as he passed me. At that point I knew he was about 2km ahead of me and he would be finishing soon. When I no longer saw him pass me, I figured he had finished. I did another drink stop at about the 7 or 8km mark and I saw JC outside the pool. I asked him for the time which he didn’t know. I had the rest of my remaining gel. At the 14th lap (about 7km) in, is when I started gettting shoulder pain. And only in my left shoulder. It got worse with each km. By about the 8km mark, I was hurting. I was basically dragging the shoulder through the water. It was hard to get it out and swim properly. It was super painful. I thought about quitting. But continued. All I had to do was finish. I didn’t need to go fast. So I just slowly crawled along. Between the 8-10km, JC walked alongside the pool taking photos and video footage. I could see him following, so I kept on going. The rest of the photos are courtesy of JC. He had finished the swim in 2hrs 5min, so had plenty of time to see me swim. Yeah, he’s fast and pretty hardcore: Look he even swims without goggles!

From Oiso 10km swim

(Ok, not really him. Just a photoshopped face of him on a swimmer’s body). This was my drinks stop at the 8km:

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

No time to chat…must be off again:

From Oiso 10km swim

Head down and back to work. That whole thing about swimming being confusing. Not sure if I am swimming to not drown or swimming for fun:

From Oiso 10km swim

A bit better here:

From Oiso 10km swim

That left shoulder was not pretty. It’s pretty painful and you can see it in my poor stroke here. I’m literally just dragging it:

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

Yeah, pretty much most people had finished by this point, so I’m pretty much swimming on my own:

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

I caught up to the 3km swimmers, that had started 2 hours after our race had started. I managed to overtake them. I was on my 9th km at this point and they were all fresh.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

Making my move:

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

The home stretch:

From Oiso 10km swim

Left shoulder killing me:

From Oiso 10km swim

I also found about 1.5/2 hours in that my hands were also hurting. Basically, using my handles as paddles, they were becoming stiff and cramped. I had to shake out my fingers and clench/unclench them just to get some movement back into them. Another problem I’ve been encountering is sore groin/uppper thigh/hip area. I never get this pain at swim training, yet I get pain there always in a race and always really early in a race, usually within the first 1km. Happened in the Guam swim too.

From Oiso 10km swim

Anyway, just cruising along. I was sore, I was tired but I was still going to bring home the bacon. And by bring home the bacon, I mean I was gonna haul my arse to that finish line.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

Coincidentally, I had also just finished reading the book “Born to Run” during the week. Lots of motivational stuff about endurance which can be applied to swimming and full of gems such as: “You don’t have to be fast. But you’d better be fearless”. And “If you’re going to try, go all the way”. Never would I have thought I would be swimming 10km races espeically at my age. I’m just your average slightly overweight office-worker who is obsessed with food and doesn’t even have a swim coach. Much to my housemate’s horror, I don’t even know how to do flipturns even after nearly 3 decades of swimming!

From Oiso 10km swim

Around the final bend:

From Oiso 10km swim

When you finish, you have to jump out of the pool immediately. Yeah, not so easy to find your landlegs when you’ve been horizontal for the last 2.5 hours or so. Had to return my swim cap. Look at dem shoulders! Redefining the term “a broad”.

From Oiso 10km swim

From Oiso 10km swim

Done. Holy moly. My shoulders were killing. JC got the camera a bit too close here for my liking:

From Oiso 10km swim

I’m clutching my poor left shoulder. And my eyes are all squinty from the pressure of my goggles. But I’m pretty damn happy to have finished. Feeling chuffed. Have just swum my first 10km race ever. And my official time was 2 hours 45min. I was happy that I did it under 3 hours. It was definitely currently assisted (around 1-2km per hour).

For reference my 8km swim was about 2 hr 23min for 8km in the open water. The advantage of the pool swim was that you didn’t need to sight or navigate. I was 5th female to finish. Granted there were only 5 females in the race, one of whom was a pro swimmer in the Open category. Came second in my age group though! Yay me. But I came about 29th out of 33 (male and female combined). Wasn’t the slowest swimmer, but definitely ain’t the fastest. Those young 20 year olds are fast – sub 2hours.

So yep, have now officially completed a marathon distance swim (a marathon qualifies as being 10km in the swimming world). We also both signed up that same day for another 10km swim and that will be an ocean swim. So today’s race was just a “training” swim. Will need to take this week off from swimming. Pumping the protein shakes at the moment. Tiger balm applied straight after the race. And I think a massage or two are on the agenda, as painful as it is to touch my shoulders, back, arms and neck. Now I’ve even got sore hands/wrist from typing out this race report.

The fun part about endurance swimming is putting all the calories back in. Red frogs, chocolate muffins – yes please. And I have decided that my post-race dish is potato bake. I baked one in advance on the Friday night, so when I got home on Saturday night, I had a nice hot delicious potato bake to dive into – potatoes, cream, mushroom, bacon and cheese. Hell yeah. It shall be tradition.

I’ve now got 2 months to train my next 10km swim – a proper ocean marathon swim. I think I have a lot of potential to beat my PB. I’d like to do that next swim in about 2.5 hours which is possible with some more training and cross-training. I basically haven’t done anything but swim, and I need to pick up the jogging and yoga. I know that increasing my fitness will definitely help with my swimming. I also hope the shoulder holds out. Shoulder injuries are really common amongst swimmers and I’ve been really lucky to not have it effect me until now.

If you’d like to see me do more swims and read more of these entertaining swim reports , please feel free to send me <a href=”https://www.google.com.au/search?q=red+frog+lollies&amp;hl=en-AU&amp;gbv=2&amp;prmd=ivns&amp;source=lnms&amp;tbm=isch&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=8mCyU4j0CcWRkAWqyoCYCg&amp;ved=0CAUQ_AU”>Red Frogs </a>my way.