Angie Swims

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" ...

Well, here we are again. It's the start of another summer swim season the Columbia River hit 50° this morning, so I suppose Cold water swimming is now over. As if a good testament to this statement, I swam for half an hour wanted to stay in but realized I had to get out to go to work. I'm sitting in my car rewarming and it occurs to me that when I started this Open water Swim journey almost 8 years ago I never would have thought that a half hour swim at 50°F would feel easy. but, here I am wishing I'd gotten up just a little bit earlier so I can spend more time in the water this morning. It's supposed to be my rest week. see how good that is turning out? I'm already plotting another swim on Friday morning and getting here even earlier. It's just so lovely when the day is new and fresh and I haven't logged on to my work computer yet to see how many patients I have for the day. it's a neat feeling. This morning we saw a first at the beach, a go...