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I'll start with the wonderful thing, which is the thing I WANT to talk about, and so you can skip the horrible thing, which I DON'T want to talk about, but can't avoid talking about.
The wonderful thing: this morning was the Boston Light Swim, an eight mile swim from off of Little Brewster Island, where the Boston Light lighthouse is, into the L Street Bathhouse in South Boston. Eight miles, open-water, wetsuits not allowed. Father tried it last year, and made an impressive five miles, and then we pulled him out with hypothermia.
This year, though? Four and a half hours, and on the beach.
Everything just came together. Dad was keeping track of the boat we were in, so he was able to let us guide him (in the past, he's had problems just sort of randomly swimming off in weird directions, but this time, he didn't veer off). I keep track of how many strokes per minute he does, counting each arm as one stroke (so left-right-left-right would be four strokes, not two strokes). He normally does about fifty strokes per minute, and if he drops much below that, there's a problem.
This time? His stroke count was normally between fifty-four and fifty-eight. Once, it was sixty-one strokes per minute, and we had to tell him to slow down! He never even got as LOW as his usual speed.
Lis did a bunch of research on sports nutrition for open-water swimmers, and a lot of the credit for how well we did goes to her. But a lot MORE goes to Dad for really doing some serious training this year, and really kicking ass.
( I'm putting the horrible thing beneath a cut-tag so people don't have to read it. Nothing bad happened to any of us in our family. )
Back to good news: my mother had a hip replacement, and is recovering from the surgery amazingly well. They're now doing the minimally-invasive surgery using surgical robots, so Mom only has three small incisions -- and, just a couple days after the surgery, two of the incisions don't even need dressings.
The wonderful thing: this morning was the Boston Light Swim, an eight mile swim from off of Little Brewster Island, where the Boston Light lighthouse is, into the L Street Bathhouse in South Boston. Eight miles, open-water, wetsuits not allowed. Father tried it last year, and made an impressive five miles, and then we pulled him out with hypothermia.
This year, though? Four and a half hours, and on the beach.
Everything just came together. Dad was keeping track of the boat we were in, so he was able to let us guide him (in the past, he's had problems just sort of randomly swimming off in weird directions, but this time, he didn't veer off). I keep track of how many strokes per minute he does, counting each arm as one stroke (so left-right-left-right would be four strokes, not two strokes). He normally does about fifty strokes per minute, and if he drops much below that, there's a problem.
This time? His stroke count was normally between fifty-four and fifty-eight. Once, it was sixty-one strokes per minute, and we had to tell him to slow down! He never even got as LOW as his usual speed.
Lis did a bunch of research on sports nutrition for open-water swimmers, and a lot of the credit for how well we did goes to her. But a lot MORE goes to Dad for really doing some serious training this year, and really kicking ass.
( I'm putting the horrible thing beneath a cut-tag so people don't have to read it. Nothing bad happened to any of us in our family. )
Back to good news: my mother had a hip replacement, and is recovering from the surgery amazingly well. They're now doing the minimally-invasive surgery using surgical robots, so Mom only has three small incisions -- and, just a couple days after the surgery, two of the incisions don't even need dressings.