Getting home to wash away all the dirt and sand, I was told we need to go to a friend's house that very evening in order to make the 3K swimming competition at 9am in Tateyama since there is no train available to move us from Tokyo to the beach early enough. I was bloody tired (I really need my 8 hour sleep a day to function properly). I packed my bag getting ready to go Tokyo station then my friend called again that he's found a train leaving Tokyo @5am would be able to move us to Tateyama by 8am.
Happily unpacking my bag, I set 2 alarms and fell deeply into my long awaited, much needed sleep. Waking up at 4am, getting on the train by 5am, we are ready to rock.
The Hojuo beach is actually very nice, the sky is blue and clear, as soon as we arrived, we were tugged into the registration desk. They drawed the registration number on my both arms with markers and we were asked to wear the transponder on the ankle for finishing time marking. The sun is strong and it was quite nice to jump into the cold water. All these 200 people are like pros, they paddled away like mad. The waves were so strong, it is so frustrating because no matter how hard I stroke, I felt that I am not moving forward at all. There are also fishes swimming 2 meters down, very distrating. They made the 3 floating buoys, distanced 500m from each other. It is so easy to get disoriented after the 2nd buoy, you are far away from the shore and especially very far behind from those pros, I am completely alone! I paddled in the wrong direction for a while, then the lifeguard (on surf board) had to came by and told me to swim in the right direction.
50minutes later, I finally finished the race, thankfully I didn't get picked up by the boat (if not able to complete the course within 1 hour). I won the last place in my age group! Um, the beer tasted very good afterward. I think this is the toughest weekend I ever had for a long while.
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