So, Dad DNF, but he did darned well, anyway.

[xiphias]

We had to pull Father out of the water for hypothermia. At a bit shy of the five mile mark. At a bit shy of three hours.

He made nearly five miles in under three hours. In water temperatures between 59 and 63 degrees (15-17 degrees centigrade).

If Father can manage to gain about fifteen pounds over the next year, he ought to be able to make it all the way.

Edited To Add: A correction. I stated here that Father went a bit shy of the five mile mark. However, we were also taking GPS readings every fifteen minutes, and Lis and I just plotted how far he got at his final reading. At his final reading of 12:15, which was about five or ten minutes BEFORE we pulled him out of the water, he had swum 5.23 miles, just shy of five and a quarter miles. He made well OVER five miles in 2 hours 45 minutes.

Comments

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Long-distance, I'm ok with, and will just do laps back & forth --not fast at all, though-- in the pool unless someone gives me some other workout (i.e. as at Master's, where I'm irretrievably in the "slow lane" but that's fine, I like the people there), but I'm not so thrilled with the "open water" bit. I only just in the last year got over the thanks-for-your-novel-method-of-"waterproofing the kids"-dad panic attack over being in deep water. Water where things might be nibbling my toes still kinda freaks me out.

Where/how did your dad get involved? Via triathlons?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I believe it was Mom and Dad's friend Leah-ah who talked Dad into trying this stuff. He started swimming at the lake at the other end of Wayland, and found a group of other people to swim with.

Unfortunately, that group includes folks on the US Olympic swimmers, folks who are nationally-ranked in their age categories in long distance swimming, and, most damningly in this case, the this year's co-ordinators of the Boston Light swim.

He's been swimming a couple miles every morning with these folks, for a year or two now. And they've been hanging out some, too. Anyway, he'd gone out to the pub with them one evening, and he mentioned that, some day, when he was better at this stuff, he'd like to try the Boston Light swim.

They said, "Why not THIS year?"

And Dad was drunk at the time, so he agreed.

[rebmommy.livejournal.com]

yes, Lea-h got dad interested in learning the Total Immersion Swimming style for long-distance open-water swimming, but I will take credit for getting him interested in taking up the sport in the first place because I gave him Lynne Cox's book "Swimming to Antarctica" to read - the phrase "swimming to Antarctica" is a great metaphor for doing something really, really difficult, but in Lynne Cox's case, the phrase literally means that she swam to Antarctica in cold, cold water - this was one of many open-water swims she completed in frigid water - an amazing story - check it out