Does this lake look scary to you? What if I told you that you had to swim around it? If neither of those questions are a yes, then you are braver than I. This was my challenge today. I am training for a triathlon and have never swam in open water like this. Sure, I've jumped off big rocks into Canyon Lake (a personal fave) and floated around lots of lakes (usually with a beer in hand) but actually swimming in a lake is another thing entirely. It's terrifying actually.

It didn't start particularly well. The guy who you check in with and hand over your $7 to looked at me and said, "You have a wetsuit right?". When I said no, he just sort of smiled and chuckled. He asked me if I had ever swam in open water and I said no. He smiled again and told me about how it's not shallow and most everywhere I would be swimming would be the deep parts. Then he handed me a detailed release that I had to sign in multiple places before getting in the water. So, needless to say, I was feeling less than confident.

I suck it up and start wading in and it was COLD! Now I don't mean cold like winter time cold but it did take the breath right out of me when I first went under. Losing your breath at the beginning before you even start swimming takes the wind out of your sails a little bit. I took a few minutes to adjust and started going.

I have a very overactive imagination, which does not serve me well in situations like this. When I get anxious, my imagination kicks into full gear and I can dream up all sorts of irrational scenarios. In this specific case, it was alligators, snakes and dead bodies. I have a feeling that the more rational of you are thinking I'm crazy. It's just a lake after all. Yes, perhaps, but it felt a hell of a lot scarier to me than just a lake, especially because I had to swim around it and out into the "deep parts".

The good news? I did it! I swam around it, albeit slowly and with lots of stops along to way. One of the hardest things about the actual swimming is trying figure out where you're going. You can't see much because the water is murky and who wants to look anyway? If I didn't look that much I thought I certainly had less of a chance of seeing alligators, dead bodies and the like. Even when I did look, I kept finding myself swimming off slightly in the wrong direction. In the end I made it back to the shore having kept up my crawl stroke most of the way. I never found myself clinging to a buoy for dear life either. I did not see any dead bodies, alligators or snakes. At one point, though, something sort of stingy and scratchy touched my hand and about gave me a heart attack. I'm guessing it was probably something benign like grass.

Now that I am back at my desk after a hot shower, I feel happy. I am loving that I challenged myself today. I love it when I muster up the strength to do stuff that scares me. For the rest of today I think I'll happily stay in my comfort zone. I also feel very certain that a cold beer is in my near future.