Open-Water Swim

Well, sort of.

I've been at my family's cabin on Lake Superior for the past few days.  Due to global warming and whatnot, the usually-frigid lake water is, if not bathtub-warm, at least tolerable.  I'm not usually much of a swimmer; I'm plenty bouyant (fat floats, you know), and since I'm already bobbing around like a little cork it doesn't take too much work to propel myself in a given direction.  But actual swimming strokes are, for the most part, just not happening. I dislike water on my face, up my nose, or in my ears, and I have an almost phobic inability to exhale when my face is in water--I always freak out and try to inhale instead.  So really, the only swimming stroke I can do with any facsimile of appropriate technique is the side-stroke, which doesn't tend to get me very far very fast but does a nice job of allowing me to keep my face out of the water.  As does the dog-paddle, which I've also been known to use.

So anyway, I began my open-water efforts by swimming to the rock pictured below--the rock is, naturally, know to my family as "The SwimOut Rock."  In my pre-global-warming frigid-water youth, we swam out to the SwimOut Rock (a process known, in the family vernacular, as "hitting The Rock") only after a nice hot sauna.  Now, though, people hit The Rock willy-nilly, and it's rare for a warm sunny day to pass without a cousin or two ending up on the rock.

Last weekend the Rock got a particularly strenuous workout, because we had a family reunion (known as BWAC, "Before We All Croak") at the cabin.  This was the second BWAC, and the first, two years ago, had featured the setting of the first -ever "SwimOut Rock Record"--25 people on the rock.  Naturally, we had to try to best the record this year.

The first attempt fell a bit short--like 17 people short.  Here I am, officially Person Number 3, emerging from the water in most ungraceful fashion (and yes, there are a few even less-flattering photos of the process...I wish I could remember who I lent my camera to for this photo-documentation...)

Later that evening, we did manage to shatter the old record--31 people on the rock, from a life-jacket-clad 7-year-old to my 78-year-old uncle. 



The day after the Record on the Rock, a bunch of us went swimming again.  We started at the SwimOut Rock, then headed to the Underwater Rock, which is just visible in the photo below and which I had finally, for the first time in my 48 years, swum to the previous night.  (My cousins assure me that I'm the last of us 10 to achieve this milestone, and am only 35 years or so behind the rest of them).

See it there, just barely visible above and to the right of the SwimOut Rock?  It's even harder to find when you're in the water.

Emboldened by my success at once again achieving the Underwater Rock, I followed the other swimmers about 200 yards down the shore to another rock that (bolder than I am) people jump off of.  I side-stroked and dog-paddled my way down the shore, pausing to rest at another underwater rock at the mid-point.  Watching the others jump off the Channel Rock was a nice rest break, and then we swam back to the SwimOut Rock and, finally, to shore.  About 400 yards of swimming, at least four times as far as I've swum at any one time since my fourth grade swimming test. 

Swimming is a weird workout.  Your arms--and to a lesser extent your legs--get tired before you're really breathing very hard, but you're also afraid to breathe very hard because you know that any breath could include just enough water to ensure that it might be your last.  Slightly wavy lake-water heightens this risk, which does not make for a terribly focused or high-effort workout.  So while the swimming was fun and I was happy to have finally achieved the underwater rock, don't look for me to be switching from long track speedskating to triathlons any time soon. 

Besides, I'll take a skinsuit over a swimsuit any day.