Swimming with Seals!

We had an awesome training weekend, our last big volume weekend. We drove to La Jolla on Saturday morning and upon arriving headed for the cove. We suited up and started swimming agreeing that we would swim 20 minutes out and turn around and head back.

There is a buoy that is a quarter mile out that I reached in about 7 minutes- that was fast! I ended up swimming much farther than I did last time. I felt good in the open water, much more comfortable. I really worked on keeping my head down which I was having trouble with the last time we swam in the open water. I turned around at about 18 minutes, thinking that I was getting pretty far out there and had gone at least my race distance. I swam back a little faster than I did going out because I really had my rhythm down and was feeling comfortable by then. I got to shore in a total of about a 35 minute swim.

My training partner must have swam to the beach on the other side because she was nowhere to be seen when I was out there. Once I got on the beach I could see her orange cap making it's way to the beach and I also noticed a huge seal swimming in the waves near the shore. He was swimming back and forth looking up at me on the shore and looked like he wanted someone to play with. Oh, was my training partner in for a surprise!

As she was swimming in to shore the seal saw her and swam right over to her, within feet of her, looking at her and she was head down swimming to the shore. I had told her as you swim in pretend you are in the race and run up and take your suit off so she was super focused headed for the shore to take her suit off and did not notice this gigantic animal staring at her at all. I thought for sure the seal was going to nudge her but he didn't, he just swam along side her. I wanted her to see him so I started yelling at her to look at the seal. She looked up and did not know what I was saying except that I threw her off so she put her head back down and swam right into shore without ever noticing this huge animal swimming with her. I wish I had a camera to take a picture of her head and the seals head only feet away- she would have flipped out! Once she was on the shore she saw the seal swimming in the waves and couldn't believe she didn't see it.

I still don't think she believes me how close he was to her though. Talk about focus- she was focused! Not even a gigantic sea animal could distract her!