Peddie Lake Swimmers Train for Triathlons

Every Friday at around 6 p.m., swimmers descend on Peddie Lake, some swimming a couple of laps, and others swimming for almost two hours.

Tom Eng has been organizing these weekly swims for the past couple of years, and swimming has become a central part of his life. Eng, who resides in Robbinsville and works as a realtor, took up swimming only three and a half years ago, when his friend encouraged him to push himself out of his comfort zone.

“I was good at running 5k's, and [my friend] said, ‘do the triathlon, it’s more interesting. You’ve mastered that, now do the triathlon.’”

Triathlons consist of a 5-kilometer run, a 20-kilometer bike ride, and a 500-meter swim. Two laps around Peddie Lake approximately equals the 500-meter sprint swim, according to Eng. 

Most of the swimmers who come to Peddie Lake are also triathletes, and this summer the lake has been filled with swimmers training for the New Jersey Triathlon, which took place in Mercer County State Park on July 19 and 20.

A majority of the swimmers in the group participate in three or four triathlons a year. Eng himself recently completed the Brooklyn Bridge swim, and will be swimming the Hudson River at the close of the summer.

The group is insured with the official USA Triathlon and had to draw up a safety plan to be approved by the Borough of Hightstown. A lifeguard from The Peddie School keeps watch from a rowboat in the middle of the lake, and a team of volunteers keep track of the swimmers carefully.

The swimmers primarily hail from around central New Jersey, and Peddie Lake is one of the few open water sites in the area.

“The nearest opportunity is either by the ocean, or down in south Jersey [where] there’s a lot of lakes in the Cherry Hill, Medford area, and that’s too far,” said Eng. “You can’t swim in Mercer County Lake, or the Delaware River—it’s all illegal. So this is the only place around here.”

Swimming in open water is an entirely different beast to swimming in an enclosed pool, according to Eng. In open water, you cannot see the bottom and the water is usually too murky to see too far down. Sprint swims often get crowded with so many bodies close together, which compounds the challenge as well. 

“It’s like a big washing machine filled with arms,” said Eng. “People hit you by mistake with their elbow, their feet. So, it’s chaotic.” 

Eng’s first swim was entirely overwhelming and it took him a while to get used to swimming in open water.

“I thought, well, it can’t be too hard,” he said. “I was counting on being able to walk. And then I got to the point where I couldn’t stand anymore, and I panicked. I had only started to swim a few weeks before that, so I didn’t have any training. I’ve been training every day for years, so now it’s easy.”

To make sure that the water is safe to swim in, Eng must send a sample of the lake’s water to a lab weekly. This year’s rainy summer has made for a lot of swim cancellations, due to the runoff from the streets polluting the water.

“When it rains, all the storm water from the streets go into the lake and create a lot of pollution,” said Eng. “If it rains a lot…there’s a lot of turbidity, so it’s really hard to see past the top of the lake. If someone goes underwater even a little bit, we won’t be able to find them.”

To find out more about the weekly swims, visit the Hightstown Triathlon's Facebook page.