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| That's me, mid-photo far right behind the blue paddleboard, at about mile 2 |
Last weekend was a milestone in my open-water swim career:
At 48, I swam my first 5-mile swim.
Honestly, it amazed me, even though I wasn't surprised.
I've done several 3-mile swims this summer (having done my first official 5K two summers ago), and knew I'd have no problem -- absent some major unforseen occurrence -- making it.
Still, 5 miles is a lot more than 3-miles (well, 2 more, to be exact -- see, I can do maths!) and, the morning of, missing one of my two usual swim cohorts, I arrived at the beach with an abundance of butterflies in my stomach.
Did I make it? Yes.
Was it harder than I thought? Yes.
Do I plan to do it again soon? Hell, yes! I can't wait to try longer than that.
If you're interested, here's my quiet, spare account of the swim on my other blog. And here's a more detailed account on the blog of our West Neck "Fairy Pod Mother," The Water-blog.
In the meantime, the morning temps are dropping here in NY, and I've got lots of swimming left to do before the winter sets in.
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| The beach at around 11:30 am on 8/25/12, after my 5-mile swim. The resident (un) friendly swans were waiting for me when I got back to home base. |
xox gae
So incredible. The pod blog post is amazing, too. As someone who can just STOP (or at least coast) when he needs to rest, I have to ask how on earth you rest while swimming! Or maybe you don't?
ReplyDeleteI chose not to rest, Christopher. I was pretty adamant about that.
ReplyDeleteWhen we "stop to feed" we just tread water while we remove the stuff from our swim bags, or the kayakers hand it to us, or whatever.
A few of the other swimmers who did rest actually either got out on shore for a bit, or rested on a floating dock if they found one.
But, if I wanted to rest, one can actually lie on one's back, and use that nice little orange swim buoy as a pillow. ;) Stopping at all on the way back in the water was impossible, as the current was so strong, you lost lots of "ground" if you tried to do so, even feeding...
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