Archive for March, 2010

In the bay there is a buoy that South Enders affectionately refer to as the “too far out buoy.” During a club swim if you are near the too far out buoy usually one of the pilots will direct you closer in to the waterfront because..well…you are too far out. This Sunday I will be doing a training swim from what I am calling the “way, way, way too far out buoy”. This buoy is 12 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge. To be completely honest, I am not even sure where it is. The captain of my crew has the longitude and latitude coordinates and we will be sailing out to it in dark of the morning on Sunday. I have been dreaming of this swim for weeks now.

A few weeks ago, I stopped at the vista point on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge to take a look at our beautiful bay. As I stood there, I thought to myself…I have swum from there to there…there to there…there to there…looking at all of the starting and finishing points of many swims that I have done in the past year.  I realized that the bay now felt like my personal swimming pool.  It felt very small to me. Then I turned west and looked out past Point Bonita and thought, that is where I want to be.  In the wide open space of the Pacific Ocean.  I am itching for an experience of not being able to see land from the water. A feeling of complete openness and vastness. I am desiring the feeling of being eerily alone in a large body of water. I think this swim will satiate this desire.

I will be meeting my crew in Sausalito early Sunday morning (3 a.m.).  Clad in glow sticks and blinking lights, it will be a dark start,  I will be swimming in on a 4.1k flood to Aquatic Park (ultimately the sauna). It is a much bigger tide than I prefer to be swimming in.  A flood that big will create some rough conditions because that will be a large amount of water being moved around. I will just be a tiny speck in the middle of it all and that is what I want most. So, check back after Sunday to see how it went.

Every morning on my way to the pool, I always miss the light at the intersection of  Hwy 89 and Squaw Valley Rd.  This usually upsets me because I am the only car on the road and there is no reason to be stopped. Today while sitting at the light, which is obviously on a timer, I sat and stared at the Olympic torch and Olympic rings at the corner. It made me think about the athletes that live in our area and the competitive environment that I live in.  On any given day I come in contact with amazing athletes.  Just up the road from the torch is one of the best training grounds for elite winter sports athletes in the country if not the world.  Lake Tahoe has long been synonymous with the Olympic tradition. This past Olympics our home town sent close to a dozen athletes to Vancouver and we were not disappointed.  They brought home 3 silvers and 1 bronze.  That is incredible!

Just in my time at the pool the other day. I came in contact with our USA swimming coach Debbie Meyers.  Debbie won 3 gold medals in the 1968 Olympics.  That same day I shared a lane with Par Arvidsson, who won a gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.  Without  leaving the pool area I had seen 2 more locals with 4 gold medals between them.

Along with these better known Olympic athletes, my home town is brimming with adrenaline junkies and endurance sports enthusiasts.  These are the athletes that I am really in awe of.   I am not just talking about winter sports either.  Our town is a perfect training ground for world class mountain bikers, ultra marathoners, triathletes, road bikers, rock climbers, alpine climbers and I am proud to say a marathon swimmer.

A few days ago I ran into a friend at the grocery store. As I was standing there talking to her about kids, school and general Mom stuff, I realized that I was talking to a woman that had summited Everest.  Just your average Mom that does above average adventures at the top of the world, no less. This is what it is like in my home town.

So today on my swim I pondered where I fit into this place with these people. I know that my liquid adventures to most are above average but when I stand with my fellow local athletes it makes me feel average. I couldn’t think of a better way to keep a balance in my life. The bar for athletic achievement is so high here that it forces me to have my ego in check at all times.  It also reminds me to go for the gold or as I like to say Dream it! Swim it!

There is something about living in the mountains that makes a person tough, especially girls.  I am proud to say that I have lived in the mountains now for 20 winters.  Measuring the number of winters that you have lived in a mountain town is a badge of honor. There are many people that move to the mountains with the hopes and dreams of having a quiet and peaceful existence far away from the hub bub of the city.  The reality of that dream is that the amount of chores you need to do to simply exist in the mountains in the winter are neither quiet nor peaceful.  There is no time for complacency. Proper preparation for and during a big winter season is a matter of survival.

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This morning when I woke up, I was greeted with an additional foot of snow.  Honestly that is a small amount for our area but there was still work to be done.  Just to get to the pool that meant shoveling a path out of my house to my car, clearing off my car and snow-blowing the driveway.   Remember when Rocky went to Russia to train? In a less dramatic way that  is my daily existence.

So I shoveled my way out of the house. I cleared a small path around my car and around the snow-blower.  I got out my new Blue Seventy Siren goggles (you thought they were just for open water swimming) and I cleared a way out of my driveway and I headed off to the pool.  On a dry day the nearest pool is a 30 minute drive. On a day like today, that drive can be 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours depending on who is on the road. Today it took me 1 hour and 20 minutes.
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By the time I made it to the pool I had been working to get there for several hours. It was  easy to convince myself to jump in and round out my week of training at 4o,oo0 yards. (36.57K).  So if you wonder how I could swim for hours in 50 degree water…just remember my secret…I am a mountain girl.

I have been so busy training that I haven’t had an extra second to write lately.  I am so excited for my redesigned website to be launched very soon. In the meantime here is what I have been working towards.  This article was written by Steve Munatones from the website  http://www.dailynewsofopenwaterswimming.com/