Training at Altitude

The altitude today was sea level :-).
On the schedule for today was a 30 minute ocean swim followed by a 3 mile run on the beach.
We arrived in Daytona at 11pm last night and I must have been really tired since I slept in until about 7:30. Ate breakfast and woke the family so we could all goto the beach. Got to the beach around 9 and I put on my wetsuit and got ready to swim. The water temp was 72 degrees, the waves were 2 to 4 feet and my Dad tells me there was a shark attack two days ago about 10 miles south of here. Sound like fun? So I head out into the water and the waves look a lot bigger when they are crashing down on you. It takes me 6 minutes to get past the breakers and the surfers, somehow my goggles stayed on, but the left side was filled with water. Drained the goggles and started to swim into the current. I swam about .25 miles ( measured it later while running) in 16 minutes, dodging pelicans and surfers and waves that kept crashing on my head, then turned around and swam back. The current was very strong as it only took me about 6 minutes to get back, once again I had to dodge the surfers that kept looking at me funny. Then I got to body surf back into shore. When I got out I was tired, my legs were tired, my arms were tired and my lower back was tired. It is much harder swimming in the ocean with all the different forces pulling you this way and that. Luckily I avoided all the sharks, but I have to say there were a couple times while I was out there that I thought about it...
After changing out to the wetsuit and into my running shoes, I headed south into the wind. I was supposed to run 3 miles at 9:30 pace, but into the wind the best I could manage was 9:45 after a mile I turned around as I didn't want to make the family wait too long for me and I was ready. Running back with the wind was much better, I was doing a consistent 8:45 pace and feeling much better. It is much harder running on the beach and my hamstrings were telling me all about it. Finally I saw the end. Then I did a couple of sprint races with the kid, to the life guard, she won, then back to grand pa, she won again.
It was a tough workout, but I really enjoyed it.