… or COWSS… as we like to call it! (COWSS.ca)
This was a brain child of mine from several years ago. I always thought it would be cool to have a whole series of open water swimming races across the country! But, alas, life is too full of other nuisances… like work and such.
But LOST kept growing… and so has the sport. And other people got involved to help me run it. Like our LOST Board… and Miguel, Katie and Shirley. And last year Steve and Bill contacted me because they wanted to start up a swim race on Toronto Island (2nd annual Toronto Island Lake Swim is part of COWSS too!). And I’ve gotten to know Richard, who runs the very successful “Bring on the Bay” in Ottawa… and he was game too! So suddenly, with all these like minded open water swimmers… we did have the initial momentum to get it going!
And one Saturday in the middle of January… when no one in Canada was thinking about open water swimming, except for the handful of us, met and put this thing together.
I spoke to a few guys I knew out in Vancouver and Kelowna… and they were in… with 5 races from out west! One of the original LOSTies, Alex, spoke to his brother out in Halifax and they brought in a couple from out there… then Miguel brought in Olympic tri coach, Barrie Shepley and C3… and they are putting together a couple more 
(still coming)…and all of a sudden we were up to over 10 races all across the country… before we had even announced the series! (and yes, we are accepting more!… see the website for how to get a race included in the Series!)
Now the cool thing is, it is set up so there will be actual “National Champions!” (4 actually, M/F Naked, M/F wetsuit… 10 year age groups will also be ranked and shown on the website)… and just by entering any of the individual races, you are automatically entered into the Series… at no extra cost!
The thing I especially like, that we all agreed on, is that you can earn up to 100 points per race, but you automatically get 50 points just for participating… and from 0-50 points for how you placed, based on your 
percentile finishing. (ie. if you came 10th in a 20 person race you don’t get as many points as if you came 10th in a 500 person race!). Because our goal in creating this whole thing is to promote the participation in the sport of open water swimming… so it’s not just for the fast guys!
So if you enter more races, you can beat someone who is faster than you… and become the National Champ!!! (of course, if you are fast, that doesn’t hurt either!) Anyway, I won’t write out what you can see on our new (and continually evolving) website at COWSS.ca, check it out!!!
This is really going to be a real game changer!
Cheers,
Rob