The Puget Sound Blood Center put on a Swim for Life to raise money for the Bone Marrow Transplant Registry. What this means is: pay 50 bucks for the privilege of swimming 2 1/2 miles across Lake Washington on a Wednesday morning, and your registration fee goes to their registry.
When a friend of mine asked me if I was interested in the swim I told her quite honestly that, no, I'm not a swimmer. Then, it was suggested that I might be interested in being a safety kayaker. Well, that sounded fun, so I looked into it a bit more. It worked out like this: teams of up to four people could swim together and, hopefully provide a boater to paddle with them for safety.
I was in. All I had to do was round up a team.
I convinced 4 of my friends to do it, with one as an alternate. In the end, the girl who suggested we swim backed out and her husband took her place. And, the alternate ended up swimming for someone else. Our fourth member backed out a week before the swim. But, that was all ok, because the three guys that swam were all relatively evenly paced, which was ideal.
We practiced two or three times a week for three weeks. Each practice was in the lake and presented a fun and interesting challenge, not the least of which was that I was in a white water boat on flat water—it's not made to cut through waves, so I was constantly knocked about.
For our last practice we decided to go for 2 miles, which amounted to two out-and-back trips to a known 1 mile mark. On our second trip one of the swimmers got a leg cramp. He freaked out and after I circled him for a couple of minutes and insisted that he hang on to my boat until the cramp passed, he finally put a hand on the boat. I was relieved—no one dying on my watch. I ended up towing him back to the swim area. In the end, he was safe, but was very careful to get enough potassium and sodium to prevent any cramping during the event.
The morning of the swim (today) dawned early. I had to get out of bed and get moving at 5am. Some awesome coordination, and we all carpooled over to the East side of the lake for the swim.
There were over 250 swimmers, and 80 teams (including kayakers). And, roughly 1 power boat for every 5 teams. And chop. The sky was overcast, the wind was blowing, and the chop on the lake was intimidating. Amazingly, the water temperature was quite pleasant!
Since the guys figured a slow but steady pace we were in the last wave of swimmers to cross the lake. About 3/4 of a mile out the wave had started to spread out and it had become apparent that a small group of 3 or 4 teams were going to swim pretty much together. Just as we were settling into our comfortable stride, and a frequent scanning of swimmers to check for my own, a lone swimmer came up to the outside of my boat. After a few minutes I asked her, "did you lose your team?" She replied she had, and I said, "If you swim in the middle area there we can all keep an eye on you." She did as instructed and I called over to another boater to let him know she was there so he could also keep an eye on her. He seemed less than interested.
As the distance passed our group split up into teams, with two of the teams pulling ahead, and one falling behind us. The single swimmer tried to keep up with the teams ahead, but they didn't know (or, in one case, didn't care) that she was there. With every scan of my team I kept an eye on her, watching her pull further and further from me, and yet fall further and further behind the boat she was tailing. Finally, she was getting dangerously off course, and quite alone. I called to my team and told them I was going after her, and I'd be right back for them. Then I took off. I frequently looked over my shoulder to make sure they were ok, and at one point another kayaker paddled up to them and said (I later found out), "You guys look a little lonely." They reassured him that I'd be back, but I'm glad he was there keeping an eye out for them. I paddled up to the woman and invited her to swim with us, "I don't want to separate you from your team," she insisted. "Oh, we'll be fine." She thanked me, but didn't seem to eager to get on their course.
Fortunately, she was far left of my team, and Cyclist tends to swim left. So, we let him drag the team towards her until they converged and I was much more easily able to keep an eye on all four swimmers.
At shore she thanked me for keeping an eye on her and told me how she had come to be swimming alone. Apparently, her mother flagged out very early on, and the kayaker had to stay with her until a power boat could pick her up, but none of the other swimmers knew this, so they all kept swimming and dispersed. Honestly, I'm glad I could help, but how could the swimmers not know what was going on? My guys were constantly checking for each other. Quite reassuring.
Total, it took us roughly two hours, and no one cramped up or nearly died. Plus, honestly, having the lone swimmer to worry about made my trip across the lake a bit more exciting because I was constantly fretting about her safety and analyzing the situation. The waves were also a bit...interesting. Thankfully the water was warm, so as the splashed over the top of my boat (and me) I wasn't cold.
Would I do it again? Totally.
