I am a toddler, maybe two or three, teetering between awake and asleep. My earliest memories, like this one, are dreamlike. I am in a metal-framed carrier way up high on my father’s back, walking along a pathway after a long day at some sort of festival. The visual details are hazy, but the memory’s … Continue reading
In February, I spent a lovely week with SwimTrek swimming in the Red Sea. My experience with SwimTrek a year ago (Long Distance Training in Gozo) was an extremely physically and psychologically intense one. That is not what I was looking for in this trip, as it was my first time swimming long distances in … Continue reading
My 10-mile swim in July (Kingdom Swim) will be in a lake—Lake Memphremagog, that is— so it occurred to me at some point that it would be important to spend some time training in a lake. So much open water swimming out at Coney Island and Brighton Beach could really give a swimmer a false … Continue reading
This is a post about attempting a six-hour swim in 15°C Mediterranean waters. Much of the post takes place inside my head. The first two paragraphs are repeated from the end of the last post, Systematic Breakdown of Body, Mind, and Limits (Malta post 2 of 3) DAY THREE Tuesday was the only day for … Continue reading
From Sunday to Tuesday, deep and dark inner recesses of my mind were discovered and battled with, my body (shoulders, elbows, knees, skin and mouth) was wrecked, and my limits were very seriously tested… About the Malta posts My trip to Malta with SwimTrek was an experience unlike any other. It is covered in three … Continue reading
Friday evening at 5:30pm I got on a plane to Rome. Sometime Saturday morning I got off that plane, wandered around the Rome airport for a few hours, and then boarded another plane, this time to the tiny island country of Malta, just south of Sicily. Sometime Friday afternoon I wandered off a plane in … Continue reading
I learned to swim as a wee one from my dad, who didn’t really swim himself, but was tall enough and encouraging enough to send me back and forth to the side of a pool. There were also the terrifyingly wonderful trips on his shoulders out into crashing ocean surf, which instilled in me a … Continue reading