Best seat in the house

Though I can’t shake the image of this swimmer knifing past me
at unbelievable speed, the swimmer found me easy to shake.

Imagine sitting right behind second base and watching a double play unfold in front of you. You’re so close, the players’ cleats kick red clay across your shins. So close, you can see the subtle, lightning exchange of ball and hand and glove that enable the second baseman and shortstop to nail down this out and still throw ahead of the runner churning toward first.

So close, you can see the players’ eyes shift from moment to miniscule moment, hear the snorts of their staccato breaths, feel the thunder of the play.

You do not hinder the action one jot. You're witness to what few others can see, where few can see it, but you're virtually invisible.

Open-water swim races are like that for me. I’m simultaneously participant and spectator, smack in the playing environment with the elite athletes of the sport, yet harmless to their goals. I’m privy to details of the swim that most shoreline spectators miss — the churn of bodies, the choking spray and chop, the warp of sensory deprivation, the fishy gasoline taste of lake water — but I’m not in the way, however close.

I’m an obstacle easily overcome; those elite swimmers need only swim past me. Most are way ahead of me before I even start most races, but in the latest race, the Hot August Chill 1-mile at Donner Lake last month, a group of young swimmers started five minutes after the adults, and most soon overtook me.

That group included this swimmer above, who must have been an older teenage boy, a young man, mostly chest and shoulders. He knifed past me well before the first buoy in the triangular course.

Breathing on my left side, I was able to watch the brief moment he boiled past me. In that moment, he moved fully in view; in the next he was gone. Somehow he propelled himself almost two of his body lengths with each stroke. The only reason I told friends on shore that he jetted just one body length per stroke is that I didn’t think anybody would believe the truth. I’ve felt compelled to draw that moment when I saw the swimmer in full, before he disappeared from view, and I’m trying to figure out how that was even possible.

More young swimmers soon followed, breezing past me like I was leaf litter on the water. They were part of USA Swimming, which as far as I can tell (the Web site is not crystal clear on this) is the sanctioning body for child and teen swimmers.

Breaking news! I interrupt this riveting post to tell you my swim friend,
Brad Schindler, on Aug. 29 completed a solo crossing of Tahoe: 22.5 miles in 11 hours, 26 minutes, two miles an hour. (For perspective, a strong backpacker traversing over level terrain can expect to move about two miles an hour.) It is a phenomenal feat capped by the fact that Brad popped out of the water and ran onto to the beach as if he had swum just a mile, not a mile plus 21 and change. He began at 12:28 from Camp Richardson on the south shore, and made a beeline to the Hyatt Beach pier at Incline Village on north shore.

Brad is only the 18th or 19th swimmer to cross (clear information is hard to get), and may be only the fifth or sixth to have crossed without a wetsuit. Though not the fastest, he was easily among the fastest finishers in a tradition that began in 1955 with sporadic challenges ever since.

Brad crossed at what is now considered the longest possible axis of the lake.

He inspired me to swim without a wetsuit, when I saw him swim 1.5 miles in the bone-chilling waters of Lake Natoma in February. As shaken as he was by the cold afterward, he looked like he was having fun, so I ditched the wetsuit and swam in the waters for longer periods until I got used to it, and haven't put the wetsuit on since. Brad also inspires me and many other swimmers to just keep swimming!

Adults have U.S. Masters Swimming, which sanctions most of these open-water swims and requires membership in order to participate. The name intimidates, even though I am a member and now realize it can’t be too masterful if it lets someone like me be a member, I’m still wary. Minimum requirement: Swim the length of a 25-yard pool.

As an outsider to the Masters (I’m “unattached” to any Masters swim club, mostly because clubs swim at pools which require fees which I don’t wanna pay), I can’t help but see it as a largely competitive organization. Sure, plodding swimmers like me are let in, but the races are to the swiftest — and the swift overrun the plodders.

My swim friends who are Masters would quickly reject that notion and insist that it’s a welcoming, nurturing organization; hell, I’m sure I’d become a faster swimmer by taking advantage of Masters coaches, but that gets back to my allergy to fees.

I accept that so many are going to swim so much faster than me. What else can I do? Some try to console me by saying that I’ve only been swimming in open water for a year, and success takes time. I agree with my new swim friend George, who says he revels in the fact that few people his age could swim the 2.7-mile length of Donner Lake, as we realized with both did earlier in the month. Swimming is about the journey more than the destination, he says.

But I can tell from the sheer power of these swimmers that time alone will not make me faster.

Three races took place at Hot August Chill. In addition to the 1-mile race I swam in, the event hosted a half-mile and 500-yard race. The latter is billed as a good way to introduce newcomers to open water, but it’s really a flat-out sprint.

Opting out of the other races gave me a chance to watch their finishes, and they were each the same. The top two finishers, men of renown in the open-water circuit around these parts, finished one-two within seconds of each other, well ahead of the next swimmers. My swim friend Kathy, extremely fast, came in early in the next knot of swimmers, each time competing against her long-time “nemesis.”

All of these, even the elite champions, swim purely for the participation, the satisfaction, the glory, maybe even acclaim from peers in a niche sport. It’s not for money, certainly, or even the occasional prize, which often comprises wetsuits, which most of these swimmers wouldn't want, anyway.

I can’t fathom swimming such distances, stroke for stroke over the entire course with someone fast as your equal, mere seconds apart; nor can I imagine having a nemesis against whom I’ve swum year after year, with whom I have traded victories over time.

But right in the wake of these champions, I get to witness it.