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Sports

Parkway West's Maurer Making Splash as Marathon Swimmer

Ballwin native Taylor Maurer of the Clayton/Shaw Park Tideriders performs well in the 2011 USA Swimming Open Water National 5K Championships in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Few would argue that St. Louis is a Mecca for the sport of marathon swimming.

For starters, the sport usually requires convenient access to an ocean, something that’s impossible in the landlocked Midwest. But an athlete with a strong drive to compete can be an unstoppable force and Sarah Findlay and Taylor Maurer of the Clayton/Shaw Park Tideriders performed well this summer in the 2011 USA Swimming Open Water National 5K Championships in Fort Lauderdale, FL.

Maurer, a resident of Ballwin who attends Parkway West High School, placed 17th at the Championships on June 12. A 5K race equals 3.1
miles.

“I went out fast and I just held it,” Maurer said regarding her solid finish.

No stranger to distance swimming, the Ballwin resident swims the 1,500-, 800- and 400-meter freestyle with the Tideriders. She also competed in a marathon swim at Table Rock Lake near Branson, MO last summer.

“This time around it was totally different,” Maurer said. “There were a lot more people in this race.”

Marathon swimming can be physical. With so many swimmers in a race, they often run into each other.

It wasn’t that much of a problem for me,” she said. “When you’re practicing in a pool, people often run into each other.”

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Having no ocean to train in to prepare for this race, the competition brought some surprises.

“In the pools we swim in, it gets too hot in the summer,” she said. “But the ocean is very cold. Plus, the salt water in your mouth burns.”

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Findlay, 14, a resident of Town and Country, will start eighth grade at MICDS this fall. Like Maurer, she swims distance with the Tideriders as she competes in the 1,500 and 800 freestyle. The 8th grader placed 34th in the race. The marathon swimmer said she was attracted to the field because she felt she had the physical shape for it.

“I have a body type that’s shorter,” Findlay said.

Unlike those who compete in a pool, a marathon swimmer has to master ocean currents, which can change from day to day.

“The currents weren’t that bad on that day, so there wasn’t a big difference there,” Findlay said. “But I remember being so tired when I finished. The distance is longer than normal.”

Because they can’t measure the distance they’ve swam by the end of the pool, a marathoner has to do something unnatural for swimmers. They must stick their head up to see how far along they are in the race.

Findlay admitted it was unusual for her to do this, but the number of swimmers in the race (76) also brought its challenges.

“It seemed like a madhouse when we started,” she said. “Swimmers will hit you from time to time, but I got used to it.”

Findlay said she loved the experience of marathon swimming and would like to compete again.

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