Swim the Suck Part I

Wednesday after work and after napping with Luvie and Jeff, I went to the pond. The water on the warm side was 71 degrees. I swam three laps for a total of 2.24 miles which equals 3,604 meters. Seventy one felt pretty warm. Most of the pond was a bit cooler, but I didn't take time to measure it. It is always warmer on the  downwind side if the sun is shining.

Swim the Suck Part I

I never did get my hands on the underwater rope we were supposed to hold at the start. In fact I barely got in line when the horn sounded and we, seventy-four of us, were off on our ten mile trip down the beautiful Tennessee River. Like last year, we started at the Suck Creek Boat Ramp. Unlike last year, I went out hard, really hard, swimming like I was doing 100 meter sprints in the pool.

The plan, the hope was to go swiftly from the start and hold on. That’s the strategy I used at the Heart O’ Dixie Triathlon this year where I smashed my half-mile open water personal record by forth six seconds. I went out then like I was doing pool 50s and held on for dear life. Also I was thinking about the current. We started the third annual Swim the Suck Open Water Marathon near Chattanooga, TN at 9:00 am, the exact time the TVA was scheduled to cut off the river’s the water flow. My thought was if I swam hard enough, maybe I could keep up with the good current we had at the time.

Another thing different from last year was that Forrest and I were on time for the pre-race Friday night banquet. We hooked up with Randy Beets and his pilot, Robin Bond, and found a seat inside Outdoor Chattanooga. When “Big River Man” Martin Strel walked by, I jumped up quickly and asked him for a photo. He was very gracious and obliged. Martin is a marathon swimmer form Slovenia who has swum from end to end the Yangtze in China, the Danube in Europe, the Mississippi in America, and the Amazon in South America. A documentary on him, Big River Man, is one of the most inspiring and funniest things I’ve ever seen. Narrated by his son Barut, one of the opening statements in the movie is: “Martin is fat and drinks too much beer.” My favorite line from the film, though, is “Martin in drunk and driving 100 miles an hour.” A shot of Martin behind the wheel cuts to the car’s speedometer. “Martin is also studying English,” Barut adds, “and doing breathing exercises.” You gotta see this film.

If my Garmin was accurate, I swam the first mile in something like twenty-two minutes. I had my Garmin 310X under my swim cap and it was set to lap, buzz, and vibrate every mile. When it vibrated, I glanced at my Garmin 910 on my left wrist and saw the number 22. Now I am well aware that I can’t swim that fast, but we had good current at the start, and I was trying to bank all the time I could.

That unbelievable time fired me up so that I swam even harder. Forrest was scheduled to feed me at forty-five minutes for the first two feedings and then at every thirty minutes after that. When the Garmin buzzed the second time and I still had not had fed, I knew I was flying.

Not only did I get a picture with Martin Strel, but Penny Palfrey was there. She is my hero. At my age, I don’t have many heroes left and we live in a world that seems desperate to destroy anyone worthy of the title. I enjoy the ball sports, especially college football, but I do not idolize ball players. Neither do I idolize movie actors or writers even although I admire and respect both groups. My heroes are endurance athletes, but not the kind most people think of when they hear the term endurance athlete. It is not the marathoner or professional cyclist that sits atop the thrown of my admiration. I am drawn, rather, to a sub-culture of what most people know nothing of and if they have had any exposure to it at all think of it as extreme. They are right, it is extreme.

Ultra-marathoners, swimmers and runners mostly, are the group of people I hold in highest regard. Swimmers especially since they are the rarest breed. It is a world I have slowly entered and the farther in I go in, the more intrigued and admiring I become. These are the people who inspire me to step higher, who open my thoughts to new possibilities, whose exploits ignite my imagination into a forest fire of new worlds and challenges. Penny Palfrey is chief among these.

She has swum all the major channels, English (twice), Catalina, Molakai (twice), the Straits of Gibraltar and others, many others. She swam from Little Cayman Island to Grand Cayman Island, a distance of 67.25 miles. She even came to and swam Swim the Suck in Tennessee. She inspires me to dream big, far beyond what I previously had thought even possible, and to chase my dreams with faith.

I felt like a stalker as I watched her from afar, seeking an opportunity for a picture. We lined up for our pasta dinner, and since the line was long, I decided to make a trip back to the restroom. When I did, I found Penny Palfrey alone at her table. My heart skipped a beat, skipped two beats. Heck, I almost swooned. “Penny, may I have a picture, please?” She was very gracious and posed for a photo. I couldn’t have been more thrilled. I was star-struck, totally star-struck. When I got back in the food line and showed Randy, Robin, and Forrest my photo, their jaws dropped.