A glimpse at now (and where did 2022 go)?

 

Jersey UK, Summer 2022 MV Lionheart, our pilot boat

It has begun: Another year of training this middle-aged bod to be athletic for a long San Diego swim.  I say that in relative terms. “Long” isn’t doing the entire English Channel, but it’s not a 5k goal either. In 2013, I had yet to swim a straight 5k! In 2021 I finally edged up to 18.6 to swim around Coronado. I thought I was sated on marathon swimming until I signed up for another route in San Diego that intrigued me: Pt Loma to Ocean Beach, aka The 15k PLOB. October will bring this adventure, with swim pal Becky tandem-ing the entire route alongside. I’m thrilled (awed!) to swim this very cliff-lined coastal route and see a part of San Diego from an angle I’ve yet to see.

Since mid-December I’ve been grunting it out at weekly CrossFit p/t, sprinkling in swims and additional gym workouts, and focusing in on nutrition. The ravages of perimenopause are sucky! It takes all the interventions to feel normal, let alone athletic. Two months into training, the recoveries are finally snapping back more readily. It’s a process. My swim pace is holding well, so now it’s just building. This stuff doesn’t get easier when you take pauses away from it, so unless sick or injured, keep a routine going!

Another event that starts the training clock for me is a local mile swim (pool swim) called the Bellevue Masters Mile. I seeded my time at 29 mins and hit 29:04. I’ve swum this event between 27:43 and 29:25 depending on the year—2nd place AG four years in a row (no 2021 event). Everyone shows up to this meet wondering why the hell they signed up for it but then four laps into one’s swim, nerves calm down and it feels like another workout.  I say this from a mindset of distance swimming—not racing, since I didn’t grow up in this space. There were guys and one lady swimming sub 18 min miles in the first heat! We are all just doing what we can in solidarity.

Being surrounded by many swim friends in this community it’s also easy to get FOMO (fear of missing out) because there are so many fun swim opportunities!

I pulled out of a channel relay in the UK that’s been 2x rescheduled due to Covid. I’m not a bagger-outer, typically. After not feeling much team cohesion, pixie dust – whatever you might call it--and having a major source of work drop off my plate (I’d need to make up!), I know I made the right decision. FOMO is always a mirage. I asked myself: Why would I need to do this swim this summer if I wasn’t feeling it was a good idea for me? Lesson: Draw boundaries when you feel the need. Every year there's a group trip to swim Alcatraz, for example, but a few folks always fall off or go quiet as the date closes in, and that's okay. Genuine friends will honor that decision, even if they aren’t happy you’re bagging out. I feel lucky in that respect.

As for my 2022 recap –  I desk-worked my butt off (more like butt ON…the chair) the first six months, with less open water swimming compared to the year prior during marathon swim training. I’d gone back to Kaiser in Feb 2022 for another needle to the neck (CESI) because the pain into my right arm and hand became too tough to sleep through anymore. Those injections are amazing. A week later I went to San Diego with Becky for a training swim—which inspired her to successfully swim around Coronado later on!

Snuck in a Punta Mita MX spring trip, and by summer I was ready for a week of swimming in Greece (25k over six days, lovely!), followed by travel to Austria, Germany, then UK to join a Jersey-France relay with friend Kate and three others from around the globe. So technically I was also in France, too, for 10 minutes on a lonely beach in St. Germain by relay-swimming there! With Anne and Cheryl, we'd escaped to Florida, Santa Cruz, and with just Cheryl to escape Alcatraz. Then in fall, it was an escape to Costa Rica to watch my husband shred waves.  

So yeah, I’m okay hanging out on the West Coast for this year.  Next up? Seattle/Vashon crew heads down for a training swim in San Diego in three weeks with Dan Simonelli! And so it begins. -xo

 

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