History of Chicot Challenge (Part II)

The trouble with being hooked on open-water swimming and living in Mississippi is there are no events around here. Since I accidentally found That Dam Swim while poking around the Internet, I thought I could find a wheelbarrow load of races if I just made a little effort. I was wrong.

People in Mississippi don't do open water swimming. There is a one-mile event in Vicksburg and of course there are triathlons, but no marathon swims. I could not find any in Louisiana, Alabama, or Tennessee. I did find a 5K in Georgia and lots of event in the Northeast and the far West. But down here, nothing. And to make matters worse, That Dam Swim disappeared. Later I found out that the event was reduced to a 10K, but the race director never contacted me or responded to my inquiries into swims.

It was four long years later before I did another big swim. Once again, by accident, I found Swim the Suck Ten-miler in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a race named after Suck Creek that runs into the beautiful Tennessee River. I recruited Randy Beets to do the event and we got in on the race its second year. Founded by English Channel Swimmer Karah Nazor, this race quickly became a destination swim, and there I met open water swimmers from around the country and world, and just like with That Dam Swim, the experience was positive. I finished the race wanting more. 

We did our first Suck, as people call it, in October of 2011. Then sometime early in 2012, I received a text from Randy that he had just finished a neat kayak trip on Lake Chicot, thirteen miles of beauty, he said. I think he was scheming on me because he knew I had done a twelve-miler, and I had expressed to him the desire to swim farther. When I responded to his text with: "That sounds like it would make a nice open-water swim," he immediately shot back, "I'll crew you if you want to do it."

A shot from Swim the Suck.

When someone offers to crew you (paddle in a kayak beside you, feed you, protect you, and guide you), you don't say no. So a quick check of the calendar revealed that my birthday, June 2, was on a Saturday that year. We set that as the date, and I began to train. We called it The Fattie Chicot Challenge (later I reduced the name to The Chicot Challenge) and Robin Bond wanted to help. About three weeks before the swim, I decided to turn the Challenge into a fundraiser for diabetes. Since everyone has heard of the American Diabetes Association, I chose them as the recipients of the money. My interest in diabetes was fueled by my mother's experience with the disease and by me living long enough to run headlong into the condition over and over and over. I basically buried a church one member at a time due to diabetes. Diabetes ruined my mother's health. My mother's mother was a diabetic as was her grandmother and her great-grandfather. Both her sisters were diabetics. My wife became a diabetic. I could go on, but let me just say this. My dad raised me have a consciousness concerning heart disease. But over time I have come to see that it is not heart disease I need to fear but diabetes.

At the end of Chicot I.

To make a short story long, we did the swim starting at the State Park and going to downtown Lake Village and back. We raised a little over $1,200. Although Randy told me the course was thirteen miles, I had to swim 13.94 to make it back to the landing. Just like the other swims, Chicot I set my soul on fire. For a few days afterwards, I didn't want to think about swimming. But it wasn't too long before I yearned for more.

Randy shot and edited this video.

Note: On Chicot I and II, we did not strictly follow English Channel rules. We did on Chicot III - V.