… so we had a special LOST guest swimmer, Ted Gregory, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvannia… he drove all the way up here this weekend just to get a swim in with us in preparation for his English Channel attempt in early August! At 73 years old, if Ted makes it across the EC, he will set the record for the oldest person to ever cross it! Ted needed some cold water swim training and his timing was perfect. Last week was so cold he wouldn’t have lasted long enough to do any good… and next week will likely be too warm for any good cold water training… today was perfect! It was about 57F… up 8 degrees from the bone chilling 49F last week… and I would imagine next week we should be up to the mid-60’s.
Ted will make a good EC swimmer, tough as nails, not the fastest guy out there, but strong and steady… and not nearly as slow as he keeps claiming to be either. And he even has the right personality for it, he was regailing us with ol’ salty dog stories over coffee. One such story was from last year when he did a famous swim in England, the 16k Lake Windemere crossing. It started in the pouring rain and 50F air temp… only to get into water that was the same temp, 50F too! Which is too cold for all but the heartiest (craziest) EC swimmers… he got pulled after about an hour. But to put that into perspective, that was about an hour in the same water that we did 30 minutes in last week … in wetsuits!… and about 30 seconds with our Polar Bear Dip! That’s cold… and that’s an impressive swim, even though he joined the vast majority that got pulled!
The other cool thing was that we set a new LOST record… 21 swimmers out this morning! Awesome… I think we are really gaining momentum and it seems like it is only getting bigger. The pic shows 18 (+me taking the pic) and then we had Peter and Eileen show up a bit late! We also had a dramatic increase in “naked” swimmers… up 300%!!! (okay, it’s usually just me… and this week we had me, Maisey, Madhu and Peter… but still, going the right direction! And not too shabby for 57F!).
The water was flat as glass and easy swimming… and not a cloud in the sky… and although 57F is getting chilly if you are going “naked”, I don’t think there was a single wetsuit swimmer that found it too cold… see how I’ve convinced you all that cold isn’t what you though it was. See how swimming with like minded swimmers helps your confidence… when you see others doing things that you didn’t think were possible, or that you didn’t think you could do, it makes you a much stronger person and swimmer! Let me tell you, I certainly wouldn’t have gone for 30 minutes in 49F last week if I hadn’t seen all of you guys doing it as well!!! Plus it is a pretty nice way to start the day!
I gave Ted a LOST cap so he could get a picture of him wearing it in the English Channel… I also gave a LOST cap to Peter who will miss next weeks swim as he and his wife are off on a cruise to Baffin Island, which would make a cool pic for the LOST pic page too!
So have a great trip to Baffin Island Peter… and I know everyone in LOST wishes Ted all the luck in the world on his attempt to swim the 34km across the English Channel in early August (although in my estimation he won’t need it, he looks ready!). Hopefully Ted will be back after conquering the EC and join us for the LOST Race on August 14 too!
Cheers,
Rob