A "Best swim EVER" kind of day.

There haven't been a lot of days lately where I get out of the water and feel like, "OMG! Best swim EVER!" Today, happily, was a best swim ever kind of day. The water was still hovering around 51F and the air was cooler than yesterday coming in at 54. There was something about the crispness of the air and sailboats on the water that made it perfect. Oh, yeah. There were sailboats everywhere. Nowhere near where we were swimming, but they were in the main channel just doing what sailboats do, tacking, turning, looking splendid. Something about the whole atmosphere today, since my vocabulary isn't stellar we'll just have to settle for... I don't know. Whatever word describes the feeling of a perfect moment, when anticipation lines up with reality and everything just feels right. Bliss is so blasé compared to today. So, if you have the perfect word, let me know.
Sailboats! 
The water just felt right. My body felt powerful and in control. My arms sliced through the water and pulled mightily, even my kick was strong- a solid 4 beat kick with purpose and drive. It's like my body had forgotten how to swim fast and efficiently in cold water but something about today made it remember and we flew. My average moving pace, according to Garmin was 1:35/100yards and it felt like it. Jeeze I can't get over how good I felt. To feel powerful and in control but completely detached and on for the ride, to just flow.
It wasn't just the swim. My favorite people where there too, swimmers and shore support. My mentor's wife is the best shore support in the whole wide world. She is amazing.  Her sense of humor and urgency are always appropriate to the situation. For instance, today I got stung by a hornet on my toe and instead of fussing over my lack of pants she looked at my foot because she knows how painful it is to have anything touch you when you're cold- much less get stung by some winged hell-beast.
The real DixieMerDog providing cuddles, I mean shore support. 
Just like yesterday, we warmed up on the beach swaddled in sleeping bags, wearing Yeti hats, nibbling homemade cookies, and drinking mugs of hot spiced Tang. If heaven is a place, it is today, on Yeti Beach in the sunshine surrounded by the best people a person could hope to meet.

Days like today are the reason I swim.






Okay, now back to the world of exams and papers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Buoy Repair 101

Image
Pinholes, cracks, abrasions. They're unavoidable and death for swim buoys. Fortunately, they can be patched and stretch out the life of the buoy.  Unfortunately, some holes are harder than others to successfully patch. To illustrate I have patched three different buoys of different construction with holes in different places. I'll follow up at the end and report which buoys are doing the best one month after being patched.  You will need the following things to begin.  1. Dish soap & bathtub or bucket full of water. 2. Rubbing alcohol.  3. Duct tape or masking tape.  4. Aquaseal brand wetsuit cement (Try others, but this is the brand I've used for years to repair gear. It can be purchased at REI, Wal-Mart, or most marine supply stores.) 5. Something to spread it with (I frequently will use cardboard and cut it into scrapers) paper towels.  6. Patience. 7. More patience.  8. If you're messy like me: Craft gloves. Aquaseal gets everywhere and does ...
Read more

Welcome to 2024

Image
The start of 2024 marks the start of training, and planning, for Catalina Channel- both of which are epic feats in themselves and happen before I hit the water in Doctor's Cove. In talking to folks over the years people are always wowed by the swimming part, but really it's the planning and the crew that are most impressive. So, on my journey to Doctor's Cove, I'm going to bring the whole Internet along for the ride, well maybe not the WHOLE INTERNET just the handful of folks that read my blog. To start things out, this is my spreadsheet: Catalina Training  Yeah, it's a training plan/tracker and you can follow along with what I actually do to get ready for the swim. I'm working on a Spotify playlist too, if you have recommendations for pump-up songs- put them in the comments! This past November I attended Swim Camp Catalina for my birthday and got to know the water there a little bit. I swam with bioluminescence for the first time, a truly mesmerizing experien...
Read more

RTAI 9.23.23

Image
Mid channel to Alcatraz  Round Trip Angel Island (RTAI) A month ago now I was walking out of the water (at about the time I'm starting this post) after swimming 7 hours 50 minutes and 9 seconds in the San Francisco Bay. The course was the famous  Round Trip Angel Island , one of the  Toughest Thirteen  according to MSF. Leading up to this swim I was a nervous wreck. This past summer was especially tough. After a successful, but painful,  Portland Bridge Swim  I had to cancel my planned  Three Islands Waldo Lake  route to focus on stroke work with  Intrepid Water  (more later in this post on my work with Shannon at Intrepid Water) and shoulder recovery. I felt undertrained and like I was still mending when my feet hit the water in Aquatic Park at 3AM on September 23. For all those feelings of trepidation, I made it through- in large part to my crew: Sue Phillips, Wendy "Pepper", Vicky Miller, and Sumner Williams; piloted by Tom "Reptile" ...
Read more