So if you were like most of the millions of people in the GTA you probably looked at the weather this morning… rolled over and went back to sleep. Bad call.
This was an unexpectedly great swim.
I couldn’t blame you if you did go back to bed, but there was two good reasons this was a cool swim… the weather and the people.
I’ll start with the people. We always have some really interesting LOSTies. I’m sure a lot of clubs say that, but we really do. And aside from the normal bunch of abnormal people that call themselves LOSTies, check out the cast of characters we got to swim with this morning:
Patrick McKnight – I got an email from him a while ago as he wanted to come and join us and do his qualifying swim for the English Channel! To do that he has to swim for 6 hours in water no warmer than 60F/15C. Without a wetsuit. Obviously. Oh and did I mention that he drove all the way from Fairfax, Virginia to do the swim with
us!!! He found out about LOST through this very website… and you know how I’m always BS’ing you about what a great place this is to swim and what a great group this is to swim with… well, would someone drive all the way here from Fairfax, Virginia to swim with us if we didn’t have something special going on! Oh, and did I mention, Patrick just got back from his second attempt to climb Mt Everest, both of which got cancelled by the weather. Very cool guy. And a big thanks to Madhu, Loren, Mark and Mike for swimming and kayaking with Patrick yesterday (he swam his test swim yesterday instead of today… good call! Would have been a tough 6 hour swim today!)… and he made it! He will be joining our own local LOSTie, Steve Faulkner, in Dover later this summer… to attempt to complete the Mt Everest of marathon swimming… swimming across the English Channel!!! Good luck boys!
Rick Born – another “International LOSTie”! He too found us online and took a bus, subway and GO train from York University to the Oakville GO, where I picked him up this morning! That’s another dedicated open water swimmer, that wanted to be a LOSTie! Rick made the trip from Boston! He swims with “Boston Open Water Swimming” (see them on FB). He was at York U for a conference, you see he’s a professor at the Harvard Medical School… in brain chemistry, no less! How’s that for an interesting guy to have swim and a coffee with?!
Paul “Turbo” Trebilcock – now this is a very cool guy. In fact, I’m envious. He makes a living at doing things like we LOSTies love to do! He goes on adventures and races all over the world and makes them into the TV show “Boundless” (on Esquire Network)!!! I actually had this idea about 10 years ago, but I never did anything with it… and much like the swim today or all the races and events that we do, you don’t get any credit for thinking about things, you are the sum of the ACTIONS you take! So hats off to Turbo! Oh and he had so much fun out there today he came over to me after the swim to tell me about it and I thought he was going to kiss me he was so excited! 😉 He’s in. And to show that he is a true LOSTie, he’s doing the O Til O with two awesome swimmers and big LOSTies, Christine and Ross! (PS. Ross won the LOST Race last year!). Check out O Til O, a crazy swim-run race in Sweden… that LOSTies Lisa, Art and Nick have done too!
Darren “Ozzy” Osborne – he’s baaack! He was just in Australia for work for the past couple of weeks and like the true LOSTie he is, he finds adventure anywhere and everywhere! I won’t spoil his story because I got him to write it up for me to post later. He’s also a great writer, so stay tuned for that!
The New Couple – everyone knows I’m notoriously bad with names, so I’m going to say “Beth and Chris”(?!). There were quite a few new LOSTies today, like there often are, and guess what? They didn’t have their own TV show, nor were planning on swimming the English Channel or a crazy swim-run race in Sweden or swim in Australia… they were from Toronto… and had just done their first tri. And it didn’t go that well. So they joined LOST to get more experience. And got a helluva day for their first time out. They confided that much to me after the swim. But they were still smilin’! So I think they’ll be back. I think they had fun too!
And the second part that made this a fun day… the WAVES!!!
I’m not sure if those were the biggest waves I’ve swum in, in Lake O… but they were up there! The water was 61F/15C, which was cool, but fine. The air was about the same temp… and windy as hell! But it was fun. It was too rough even for veteran kayaker, Mike Morton, to get out there! So he, Mark and Elizabeth were our lifeguards along the beach… thx guys! And you know why it was fun… because we got to surf the waves!
Good times!
Congrats to those that swam at the Global Swim Series race in Kelso today, “Mine over Matter”… and I hope to see a ton of LOSTies join me out at the “North Shore Challenge” tomorrow… it’ll be fun and “challenging”!
PS. the lesson to be learned today: “have fun and see you next week!”
PPS. Sorry I couldn’t make coffee… had to get a 180k ride in with Jo and Dylan… it didn’t go well…
Cheers,
Rob