The start/finish was a challenge. There were periods of calm surf and then periods of intense waves (3-4 feet) coming in. It was all a matter of luck if your start/finish had relatively calm waves. For the 3 mile, we had some rough waves coming in while we waited for people to come down the stairs for the start. It became "bowling for swimmers" as the swimmers in the front would get knocked down by the wave and proceed to knock down a couple of rows of swimmers. Luckily it slowed down a little when the gun went off. As the swim began, I will admit it was the roughest start I have encountered including the Ironman starts of 2000-2500 swimmers. I spent the first 100-200 yards swimming heads up since there were a pair of kicking feet where my head wanted to be in the water. After that, it was a solid bump and swim for over a mile. The water conditions were reasonably rough this year with 3-4 foot swells and a light chop on the water. The swells did not bother my swimming much, just made sighting challenging. The chop worked well to fill my mouth with water whenever I took a breath. Eliz put it well that there were times where 3-4 breaths in a row would be with only salt water and no oxygen. Panic would start setting in hoping that the next breath would have air instead of salt water. Thank goodness for low altitude where we don't need as much air. After the turnaround, I was able to get out of the crush of swimmers. At about 2 miles, my throat was raw from the salt water. I lucked out for my finish with the relatively calm surf. Just a few minutes later the surf picked up and I saw a group of about 6-8 swimmers nearly get slammed into the stairway. In my ignorance, I assumed this rough water was "normal" for event. I did start hearing some of the locals commenting that it was one of the rougher years. Comparing the results to last year, the winners were about 7 minutes slower this year so it must have been rougher then normal. BTW, we did have the US 10K Olympian in the 3 mile race. Amazingly enough, she was only the 2nd woman (5th overall). If you are wondering, she did slaughter me by over 10 minutes. There goes my hopes for an Olympics 
Below is a picture of me finishing in relatively calm water. I was reprimanded for not passing the woman but stopping to tell her that she had not crossed the finish line yet.
Below is a picture a few minutes after I finished showing how rough the finish could have been.
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