Sylvia “Sugar” Vela learned to swim at 55 and became good at it out of necessity.
On Sunday she’ll swim in the first of a four-race series of ocean swims in Florida, at 60 aiming to place atop her age division, compete in all four races and earn the title of best overall swimmer in her division.
The 1.2-mile race is at Coquina Beach on Ana Maria Island about 45 miles south of Tampa. It will mark her evolution from someone who couldn’t swim at all to a confident marathon ocean swimmer.
Vela first swam competitively in August 2015, completing the swim portion of a triathlon swimming backstroke because she still couldn’t swim the more efficient front crawl. She finished the race but her time wasn’t great.
“It lit a fire under me,” she said Tuesday. “I said I’m gonna learn to swim and learn to swim well.”
She continued to compete in triathlons during 2015, 2016 and 2017 until an injury in 2018 in a 5K race forced her to retire from triathlons.
She joined the South Texas Surf Swimmers, and “the lifeguards helped me gain the confidence to go out there and overcome the fear,” she said.
Today she trains at Pendleton Pool in Harlingen, swimming one mile three times a week, and when she can, completing a one-mile swim from the jetties on South Padre Island to the Pearl South Padre Beachfront Resort Hotel.
“There’s nothing like a beach swim. Nothing,” she said.
Vela, a Harlingen native and Brownsville resident since the late 1980s, made her first competitive ocean swim in November 2019, in a 10K event at Bridgetown, Barbados.
“I went big, I went the 10K, which is 6.2 miles. I knew I had six hours to finish. I finished in five hours 15 minutes, dead last,” but the swim qualified her as an official marathon swimmer. She fell in love with ocean swimming, finishing fourth in a 1.2-mile swim at Fort Myers beach in February 2020 before the pandemic shut down competition worldwide.
In December she finished third in a similar race at Fort Myers Beach, sponsored by the same Salty Sports Society that is sponsoring Sunday’s event.
As part of her training, she’s added dry-land stress training five times a week, working two days a week with her personal trainer on her upper body and three on the lower to make her stronger in the water. She made the one-mile swim on the island last Wednesday.
Beyond competition, swimming has numerous benefits, she said.
“At 60 I’m on no medications. It helps me mentally and physically and it gives me a goal. It’s good for my overall health,” she said.
Long-term, she hopes to compete in a swim festival on Spain’s Mediterranean Coast in March 2022.
