Saturday

I am drinking coffee, blogging, and looking at the weather app on my phone. On the hour by hour predictions, the percentages they are showing are never above a 35% chance of rain for Lake Village, Arkansas at any time on June 4th. 

I wrote the paragraph above Saturday morning and then got busy with something and never finished my post. Not too late into the morning I went to the pond to try to refresh my endurance base one last time since I had started a radical taper over the past eleven days. Because it was supposed to rain, I was prepared to drive over to DSU if necessary; I really needed a good swim. I got one. The weather was perfect, and my guess is (I will watch WXVT weather tonight and see) the weather was perfect there too. We could have done the swim.

Oh well, I needed the time anyway. Somehow I managed to mess up my taper in part by running too much. Thursday and Friday I was so tired I did not swim at all and couldn't imagine starting out on a 21-mile effort. All I wanted to do was nothing. I won't make the same mistake next week. I am self-imposing a limit of two miles per day through Thursday. Friday I will do nothing more strenuous than sleeping as long as I can. If anybody thinks they want me to do anything Thursday or Friday, the answer in"no." Don't even ask.

So I went to the pond and swam a lonely 7.17 miles. The weather remained nice all day. It is now Sunday morning, and I did watch WXVT weather last night and Greenville received no rain all day Saturday which means most likely the lake did not either. Anyway, the forecast looks good for next Saturday, but we are losing some good crew members, namely Justin, who is a pontoon pilot, kayaker, and support swimmer. In addition to all of that, the rest of the crew loved him because of his personality and humor. We are also losing Danielle, who is leaving the country Monday. That is leaving me without any support swimmers. I suppose I can do without, but it sure helps to have someone get in the water with you from time to time. I did Chicot I and II without that kind of help so I hope to pull it off again. This swim, however, is much longer than those. Last year, Randy Beets swam two and a half hours straight with me and that was both enjoyable and much easier than swimming alone.

I'll holler back next week. In the meantime, keep praying for weather, crew, health, and all other things related to the swim. Thank you.