In the Rough Water, the Tough Get Swimming : Swimming: La Jolla event brings out the best to test themselves in trying conditions.

Race day is also a change of pace day.

During the week, legions of chlorine-hating swimmers take to the cool waters of the La Jolla Cove to enjoy a relaxing splish-splash with nature.

Either solo or in loosely organized groups, members of the La Jolla Cove Swim Club commune with sea life and admire marine fauna during open-water workouts.

But that changes on race day, when a swimmer’s focal point is to keep from getting kicked in the head.

“I love (races); I look forward to them,” said Jamshid Khajavi of San Marcos. “But when you’re swimming with 300 to 400 people in your heat, everybody’s kicking you, trying to swim over everybody else.”

Such will be the scene Sunday when the one-mile La Jolla Rough Water Swim commences at the cove at noon. (There is a 250-yard event for swimmers 12 and younger beginning at 10.) More than 1,300 participants are expected to turn out for the 62nd swimming of this event, one of the largest and most prestigious races of its kind.

“There’s no other place in the world like this,” said Khajavi, a native of Iran who grew up swimming in the Caspian Sea. “I’ve been all over the world. There’s no place like this.”

The 300-strong La Jolla Cove Swim Club will be represented well. This is one of four or five races that many members make an annual ritual.

For Khajavi, 39, this will be his 10th La Jolla race, as it will be for club member Steve Frantz of Cardiff.

Some have been at it even longer.

La Jolla’s Jim Triolo, one of the club’s founders in the late 1970s, has competed in the rough water race almost every year since 1969.

But that wasn’t the first time he raced here. In 1931, Triolo finished among the top five, when the race started at Scripps Pier and featured local names like Florence Chadwick.

Now 78, Triolo has been the race’s oldest swimmer for the past three years. He plans to compete until he’s 80, maybe longer.

“God willing,” he said.

Triolo, a former All-American at Stanford, said if he wasn’t swimming in the open water, he probably wouldn’t be swimming at all.

“The freedom of the water, the openness,” he said. “It gives you an emotional lift. A pool is boring, it’s monotonous.”

Once you’ve tried the open water, the pool seems an awfully restricting place.

Frantz, 51, was a marathon runner before he started entering swim races in 1982. He has swum the English and Catalina channels and recently crossed the Molakai Channel in Hawaii with swim partners Dave Clark and Tina Moore.

“The pool is confining,” said Frantz, whose next target is the 16-mile Naples to the Isle of Capri swim. “I’d much rather swim two miles in the open water than in the pool. You can see the beauty of the fish; it’s more pleasant.”

Last year, Frantz had his most pleasant La Jolla Rough Water experience. After competing on a relay team in the Bud Light Triathlon in Encinitas that morning, Frantz took third in his age group at La Jolla.

“I didn’t think I’d do that well after competing that morning, but it was my best swim ever,” he said.

Khajavi’s not aiming for his best in Sunday’s race. He’s using this as a training race. Six days from now, he’ll swim approximately 22 miles from Long Beach to Catalina.

“This will just be for the fun of it,” he said. “It usually takes me two to three miles just to warm up.”

Next year, Khajavi is planning the ultimate test. He and five friends have devised a triathlon-type endurance race that weakens the knees of the most tested athletes.

In June, they will run the Western States 100, a 100-mile race in Northern California. In early July they will bike 3,000 miles cross-country to New York, at which time--Aug. 19--they will start the final leg of their feat, the 28.5-mile Manhattan Island swim race. Khajavi has already completed the Manhattan race twice.

Still, Khajavi said he loves coming back to La Jolla.

“There is so much happening, the marine animals, the seaweed, the kelp,” he said. “Every single day, it changes. Since 1980, I’ve logged my every swim, and no two are the same.”

The La Jolla race has widespread appeal, but the swim club stages its own New Year’s Day race, a night owl swim and its annual pier swim.

This year, it added the polar bear swim to its program. Four to five teams, with up to eight members logged their individual miles for a two-month span during the whale migration from Alaska to Mexico. Teams tried to duplicate the number of miles a whale would have traveled.

The prize for the team that won? None.

“It’s to keep people in the water,” said Frantz, whose team finished second.

Some people don’t need that kind of motivation. Not even the death of a friend could keep Triolo out of the water.

Several years ago, a priest, who was in his 80s, died of a heart attack after a wave hit him during a cove swim.

“For a swimmer,” Triolo said, “that’s not a bad way to go.”