Don't look so sad, I know it's over

Third place in age group! Guess how many other pre-midlife
crisis men competed in the same age group!
It looks like the swimmer is fighting against the spin cycle
in an industrial washing machine here — not too
different from the chop off Point Richmond.

But life goes on, and this ol' world will keep on turning … *

The open-water swimming season in this north stretch of the state ended Sunday with the Second Annual Swim for Kids' Sake at Keller Beach off Point Richmond in the East Bay.

Don't cry for me, though it's nearly as sad as the hapless San Francisco Giants (not just hapless, but in serious hap hock when the next season begins) collapsing our collective dreams of a repeat world championship.

I'll keep swimming Lake Natoma — just because I choose to be crazy with some swim friends, and to improve gradually. But the races are over for the year. The Pacific Masters Swimming group, which sanctions the races, says that was it.

For the finale, the gray sky over San Francisco Bay billowed and puffed like a great parachute, hiding and revealing the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, Mount Tamalpais and beyond. The jade water frothed and smoothed, frothed and smoothed, settling into a steady chop by the time the races began. 

I didn't want to swim. That's my usual approach to these events: I'll drive there but I won't swim; I'll tell my wife soon enough to thank her for coming out with me and try to reclaim the wasted day by going somewhere nearby to sightsee and relax. Then I decide to swim at least some of the race, and maybe see how it goes. In the end, as always, I take three deep breaths and swim the entire thing.

The organizers sent the two-milers off first. I'm smack dab in the center of the
picture, taking my own damn time getting started.

I felt strong in this event, compared to last month's Donner Lake race in which — because of high altitude or high ineptitude — I never felt right. When I finally finished Sunday, I glanced at the race clock: 56 minutes and 26 seconds for two miles. Phenomenal! That's less than a half-hour per mile — nearly 15 minutes faster than I hoped I could swim. Somehow the Underachiever's rhythmic stroke chant ("Do not drown, be not last, do not drown …") must have helped me.

A race volunteer politely beckoned me off the finish line and over to a portable shower, which spat warm water, down the beach.

"How fast did you go?" My wife asked. I looked back at the clock. It still posted 56 minutes, 26 seconds. For a moment, I thought the race officials had memorialized my unexpected finish.

"Oh, that clock's been broken for a while," my wife said.

Officially, I came in 1 hour, 4 minutes and 51 seconds and change, about five minutes faster than I figured — and that's with the leisurely refreshment break after an hour (the video for which is available but embarrassing).

But …

I finished third among men 45-49 without wetsuits!

Of course, my wife just hadda go ask the timekeeper THE question: "How many men 45-49 swam without wetsuits in the two mile?"

Of course, you know the answer:

I could have floundered and come in just under the two-hour limit, aggravating all the young lifeguards floating on paddleboards along the route, who probably had homework overdue on this blustery blue-gray morning on the coldish water. I could have walked onto the beach after the first mile, played a game of Frisbee, rolled around in the sand, enjoyed a second banana among the array of food and drink set aside specifically for the two-milers to keep them out of the path of the half-milers that would finish their race about the time we made our first lap. I could have done all that, and as long as I finished within the two-hour limit, still come in third among men 45-49 swimming the two-mile race in nothing by my black jammers.

Fast Dan (right) took second in his age group (and placed in his group
overall for the Pacific Masters Swimming open-water season), but
liked the third-place ribbon better and got it instead.
Even faster Kathy took second overall in the two-mile behind
a world-record long-distance swimmer.

(I'll spare you video of my swim stroke; it's textbook Total Immersion, but it … is … so … slow. Though it looks like I'm la-dee-dah'ing it all the way to the finish, in reality I was giving it all I had.)

It was a fitting and funny end to the season, which began with me hoping against hope for one or two open-water swims, and continues with me swimming almost every day in open water.

Along the way I've swum the lengths of Lake Natoma and Donner Lake, swum from Alcatraz, and more, and met many new friends who are less likely than land lubbers to die of boredom listening to me  ponder the open water.

I keep pretty fast company too: Kathy Morlan and Dan Winterrowd, with whom I swim at least twice a week in Natoma, each placed in the top three of their age group for the open-water season. You get a certain amount of points for every top finish for a certain number of sanctioned races; I don't know exactly how it works, because it's not a problem I expect to have. Kathy may likely place among the top overall women finishers.

Not bad.

Non-breaking news: Diana Nyad could not finish her second attempt swimming from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida. Two separate run-ins with Portuguese Man-of-War, (which look like jellyfish but turn out to be separate organisms working together that just look like jellyfish), ended Nyad's swim after swimming 92 of a planned 103 miles (just 11 miles left!) on Sunday. It was about the same time we had finished our Keller Beach race.

(Now her website says she was stung by a box jellyfish, supposedly the most venomous, capable to causing death — to humans? — in two to three minutes.)

Even having failed twice to make her goal, Nyad has twice done something amazing. She is a worthy inspiration for anyone, though she advocates specifically for older people (she is 62) to seek their adventure and not turn inward. By every measure and angle (perseverance, courage, commitment, strength, organization, planning, human spirit) it is a phenomenal feat. I get all of that; it's wonderful.

But Nyad undermines it all with a nauseating torrent of self-promotion and ham-handed public relations. Since her previous attempt, I have received a steady flow of watch-my-documentary-with-your-friends, watch-me-talk-to-you-about-my-thoughts-on-the-swim-a-week-after, etc. So much me-me-me has come from Nyad's fan page, that I shut my brain to it; which made it a startling surprise that she had begun another attempt.

She (or someone in her camp) at one point during the weekend wanted facebook followers to change their profile pictures to her Website logo as a show of support for her effort. Come again?

The silliest, sadly, was the facebook notice announcing the end of her swim, which is, as verbatim:

After more than 40 hours of swimming and two Portuguese Man-of-War stings, Diana Nyad decided to end her swim today at 11 a.m. From the water, she called out to her flotilla of four escort boats and addressed each of them in a strong voice. “The medical team said I should not go another two nights in the water and risk additional likely Man-of-War stings which could have a long term cumulative effect on my body. But for each of us, isn't life about determining your own finish line? This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is, and that dream continues.” Nyad swam more than 67 nautical miles. Steve Munatones, the independent observer for the International Swim Federation who is accompanying the expedition, noted that Portuguese Man-of-War stings have doomed many a marathon swimmer.

Nyad is a talker  — more like a jabberer — but did she really say all that, in corporate-speak, like it came off a clumsy news release? What was this, sermon on the surface? Did she address of the escort boats individually with the same strong-voiced soliloquy in succession, or gather the boats for one unlikely address?

I'm a fine one to talk, though, given you've gotten all the way down here in a blog about me, me, me … thanks for sticking with me!

* "For the Good Times," Kris Kristofferson