Incredibly we are starting our 13th year of LOST Swimming. Wow.
Register here. Yup… it’s still just $45 for the whole summer… and the LOST Race is still just $50!
When this all started 13 years ago, it was because I decided to try and swim the English Channel and I needed a place to train.
At that time, absolutely nobody swam in Lake Ontario. I had lived in Oakville by the Lake for 10 years and I had never seen anyone so much as dip a toe in the Lake. Maybe if you went to the Beaches in Toronto or Burlington Beach to splash around, but certainly not to train for open water swimming.
Not that there was much open water swimming to train for. There wasn’t a single open water race in Ontario then. My buddy, Richard Pessah, in Ottawa started the very successful “Bring on the Bay” race in 2007, and one year before we started the LOST Race, but there was nothing in 2006.
The following summer I kept swimming and a few of my triathlon and running buddies. We’d meet down at what was to become LOST Beach on Saturdays at 8:00. We’d get 8 or 10 of us out. We kept at it over the years, just because it was fun. And it grew. A few years later we were getting 30-40 people out… now we regularly get over 100 swimmers out! All just word of mouth and it just kept growing.
And it hasn’t slowed down. Have a look at several records we set last summer:
- largest membership = 222 members!
- largest Saturday LOST Swim = July 29 – 122 swimmers!
- largest first LOST Swim of the season = June 3 – 82 swimmers!
- largest number of swimmers for the LOST Race/Mile = 176 swimmers!
- coldest (& foggiest) LOST Race (not all 176 swimmers swam!) = 48C/9C
But don’t worry about the last point, we’ve moved the LOST Race to the 3rd Saturday in August from now on. It has traditionally been warmer then (mind you the water was 69F 12 hours earlier too! haha).
I’m sure you are all aware of the Global Swim Series and that it was members of LOST that started it and run it. Well, we are adding a new Canadian race this year… “The Toronto Mile” and it will also be “The GSS Canadian Championships“! The cool thing is that it will be a part of the Toronto Triathlon Festival too!
One other thing we are going to add after Saturday swims is… LOST Running! We plan to add a 10k-ish run after our swim! For those that want to get a run in too… but you can also head over to Bean There for coffee, if you’d rather… or do both! More to come on this!
Also this year we have the LOST Shack! Which just allows us to have all of our equipment down there. But that will only make the swims better with more buoys, kayaks, SUP’s, etc. We now have a LOST kayak and a LOST SUP that you can use during our Saturday swims. Cool way to test it out if you haven’t done it before, or a fun way to get your friend or family member involved too! We are always happy to have more spotters for our swims!
I’m also working with the Town about a LOST Plaque and Patio… hopefully we get the go ahead, so stay tuned for that!
This is going to be the best summer of LOST Swimming ever… so sign up now and we’ll see you at 8:00 am on June 2nd!!!