Sharky Swim

This morning (830) I did the Sharky swim, an annual event at the LaCamas club I go to. 5000 meters continuously, sort of. We had 5 people per lane and did pulls of 100 meters out front, so every 500 meters you got a few seconds rest as you waited for everyone to go by and jumped back on the back. The Ironman Florida group and the masters swimmers had the first few lanes. Our tri group had the next two lanes. Then others in the last couple lanes. We started out and I was in the back to start. I felt great for the first 1500 and around 2000 it started to get hard. The longest I had ever swam before was 2200 meters, so at 2500 I was in new territory. Around 3000 meters I wanted to quit, but kept going anyway. At 4000 meters, I went on autopilot with no thoughts other than counting and moving my arms and pushing off at each end. Suddenly Cecilia says there's only 400 more and we sped up and it was over. 5000 meters!
In my lane I'm the guy in the red wetsuit, Julie is to my right leaning over, Jan is in the corner looking away from the camera, Cecilia (track coach) is laughing and stretching, and Gloria is the one without a wetsuit on the far right.