So it was supposed to be all rainy and thunderstorms and such this morning… it wasn’t… it was perfect! Turns out the calls I made to fix the weather, panned out. There was huge storm last night, poured rain, thunder and lightning… but the skies parted and the sun came out just as we were headed down to the lake.
Air temp was around 20C, and the water temp was a very comfortable 64F (18C)… don’t ask me why I measure air temp in C and water temp in F… I don’t know… I guess F is more accurate as it is on a larger scale… or just force of habit! The water was quite flat going out, but we were being helped with some nice playful rollers behind us on the way out… and swam a bit “uphill” on the way back… good training!
We had 14 swimmers out again! Great turn out. Peter came down to see us off before he went and coached his “Team in Training” running clinic… also Madhu (our resident English Channel swimmer), came down with his daughter and brought out Chris, a new LOST swimmer and an Ironman and, like Madhu, a recent finisher of the Marathon des Sables!
So we had 14 people this week and last week, the cool thing is that probably 3/4 of the 14 people were a different 14 people. We now have over 100 “members” on the email list, and I know that not everyone can make it out every week with family commitments, other training, races, etc, so I think it is cool that we can still get these kind of numbers out consistently, especially this early in the season.
There are several people that are starting to become regulars (me, Darren, Hugh, Mike, John and Jeremy) and several people I hadn’t seen in a while (Al, Ed, its even been a long time since we had Alex out for a LOST swim) and my favorite category the total newbies (Christina, Steve, Hamish, John and Chris), some were just new to LOST and some still pretty new to open water swimming. Some of the newbies came because they had heard of our group and just showed up and some came with current LOST friends. Either way, hats off to the newbies for having the guts to just show up… that’s more than half the battle… because the swim takes care of itself and everyone walks away happy they came. Really. Anyway, my goal is simply to introduce people to fun atmosphere of LOST swimming and open water swimming in general. Thanks for coming everyone! Hope to see you out next week.
PS. Actually, I won’t see you next week, you’re on your own! (but please keep the ball rolling without me!)… I’ll be swimming the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim at the same time as you guys will be doing the LOST swim! (plus a few more hours… it starts at 7:25 am… and goes for… well, quite a while… 46 km and a 9 1/2 hour cut off time!). The website is NYCswim.org, but I also hope to come up with a way to post some updates on this website too… so stay tuned!
Cheers,
Rob