Year of maniacal thinking

Where to now?

In 2012 I was to have swum from the Bay Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge — or vice versa, tide depending — and completed a 10k open-water race.

I didn't.

I did:

• swim the length of my home water, Lake Natoma, finishing the 4.8 miles 30 minutes faster than my first attempt, the Independence Day before;

• cross Donner Lake for the second time, though many minutes slower than the year before;

• swim the Folsom Lake Open Water 2.4 mile for the second time, in about the same amount of time;
• use the full moon for light in a midsummer swim with friends at Folsom Lake;
  
• compete in several swims, including a three-mile race, at an alpine Oregon lake during a wonderful festival devoted to the sport;

• swim at least four times a week in Lake Natoma, through change of season and quality of light, through the slow rise and gradually painful fall in temperature, in fluctuating current, in mirror flatness, in heavy wind-churned chop, in summer clarity and winter murk, in heavy downpour and fog-white loneliness and the congestion of swimmers and darting devil-may-care paddle craft. I swam it with friends on the last day of 2012, and the first of 2013.

I hold the last most dear.

Take away all the rest, in fact, and I'd manage. Deny me my regular swims in Lake Natoma, though, and I'd mourn.

Every swim there is just the same, yet so different. From the south end of the lake, our swims hug the south shore, around a tiny island named (supposedly and as yet inexplicably) for Edgar Rice Burroughs, a distance that creeps up in my mind to 1.5 miles (it's probably just 1.3). From the north end on Saturdays, we swim across the narrow lake and then "upstream" around the trestles of a bridge and back in a big rectangle, about 1.7 miles.

With each swim I struggle and triumph, at different stages, to different degrees, for different reasons and periods — temperature, technique, hazards, work left to do at the office, going through my head constantly. Each high and low follows a cycle, its onset and duration a surprise. I learn little from each, except to know that they will return, sometime, in some way.

Long weeks will pass, for example, in which endurance suddenly escapes me. I'll go along fine for a half mile, a mile, and then one day just 100 yards will be hard. I end up counting strokes then, resolving to go 50, then 70, then 100, and on and on, for days, until I can resume my old stamina.

Sometimes the cycles are external. The stalwarts with whom I have swum the last year, for example, like to get in and swim as soon as we reach the water's edge; fast swimmers, they're soon way ahead. The swimmer I teamed with before (and if he's reading now, he needs to get his wetsuited fanny back out to the lake!) likes to get used to the water before starting out, kind of wade for a bit, let the cold take hold, which is more my style.

Lately a disturbing cycle has rooted, of slight dread. Not of the swim itself — once I'm in, then the struggles and triumphs, the sting of cold water on my forearms, the accidental swallow of green water, are so familiar. It's the going to and getting in that I resist lately. I overthink it and hyperventilate; I dawdle with the preparations (heat the water for the Thermos®© and for the hot drink on the drive over, pack dry clothes in one bag for the car trunk, and swim gear in another bag in the car seat so burglars won't be tempted to break in), so rather than getting in early before the fast swimmers arrive, I barely give myself time to start with them.

I know that sometime — who knows when? — this too shall pass and I'll be eager to jump in again. Maybe in three weeks or so, when the water will be its coldest.

Yet another cycle has waned (they often overlap): Call it acceptance, or resignation, or satisfaction of my Lake Natoma swim. It's been more than enough for me. And yet …

I'm curious again.

Last year began with big plans. Swim big, go farther, faster. I even attended a Bay Area workshop about swimming 10k races. Then I swam 10,000 yards in a pool just to see if I could finish within the time limit. I couldn't. I tried again; long before I could finish, an aquacize class had set up and moved my lane lines to one side of the pool while I was still swimming. The 10k race came and went without me, as did most of the other races I tried the year before.

I stuck to "destination" swims, mostly, so Donner's end-to-end course and mountainous beauty fit. So did the Oregon festival, even though the course was set by buoys, which somehow violate my notion of an open-water swim.

Something about the Oregon swims, maybe the high altitude, wore me down, making me tired for the Donner swim, and by that time all the fire I had stoked for big swims had died out.

I settled into the unsettled comfort of Lake Natoma, where I've been since. Out of the water, I read facebook accounts from swimmers around the world, their big plans for the new year. Ten miles here, 20 there, an English Channel crossing, a Catalina crossing, colder and colder water, much colder than ours. Amazing wild seascapes. More and bigger.

Now I'm thinking outside the pond. A 10k race doesn't appeal, but those iconic bridges still beckon. As does Alcatraz; I'd like to swim it again. To get a leaner, to get stronger. To think less and use what swim buddy Doug calls my "reptile brain." To swim outside my comfort zone.

Where to now?

swimmed swammed swummed

Found this boulder in the middle of the Umpqua River; glad I
didn't find it with my nose …

Vacation leftovers:

• Overwhelming thought: Homeward bound on my 5,000-meter race up in the Cascades a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't outswim the thought of how they do it … how all those swimmers can swim 20-plus miles across the daunting English Channel ('tis the season), the Catalina Channel, Lake Tahoe, or even a 10k race. I'm drained completing three miles.

• Retroactively thunk thought: Haley Anderson from Granite Bay (just a 20-minute drive from where I live) won the silver medal in the 10k race at the London Olympics. She finished the 6.2-mile open water swim just four-tenths of a second (!) behind the Hungarian gold medalist, Eva Risztov. Over the final 1,000 meters, the 20-year old swimmer churned from fourth to fractions of a second behind the winner. Anderson swam the race in one hour, 57 minutes, 38 and six-tenths seconds. That is still faster than I managed to swim half that distance up in the Cascades. I wonder if she'd join our ragtag swim group out on Lake Natoma.

Haley's older sister Alyssa shared a gold in the women's 4 by 200 freestyle relay at the London Olympics. Two Olympic medalists from one games, from one family. What're the odds? Alyssa can swim with us too, I guess.

• Canoe!: Canoes outnumber kayaks 10 to one atop cars in mountainous central Oregon (quite the opposite in my neighborhood). Though I like kayaks, I love canoes. It's tradition for our family (well, me, and sometimes my wife) to blurt "Canoe!" at the sight of one atop of a vehicle, the same way someone might say "Puppy!" (And Rat, according to Stephan Pastis' "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip, defines tradition as "a reason for doing something you can no longer think of a reason for doing.")

A canoe contains romance for me, and since I declare myself fairly accomplished at steering one, I yearn for quiet waters to rove on early mornings. My one material longing would be for an 18-foot Kevlar™®© or carbon fiber canoe, luggable by one person, with which to wander backwaters so deep the mosquitoes could airlift me back to my car.

I long for such a canoe the way some might crave a wristwatch that tells time at 20,000 times the price of a Timex™and is only recognizable by others wearing similar watches … I'm sorry: Timepieces.

•  Stay out of my summer!: C'mon, NFL, your meaningless preseason games have taken over the sports media. Your games, a week hence, are listed in the broadcast schedule in my paper above today's baseball games, and Major League Baseball is fighting down the home stretch, with the Giants, my favorite team, at first place in its division, the drama intense. Baseball stays out of football's way, for the most part. Why can't football go dark for another month or so? I know this happens every year, but it's on my last nerve this year.
 
• Shows what I know: Someone please enlighten me: How did central and eastern Europe come to dominate men's water polo? It's not the sport I'd imagine that part of the world to champion, but I'm picayune and too narrow minded. Croatia won the gold, Serbia the bronze. Croatia, Serbia and Hungary destroyed the U.S. men's team, the golden boys of swimming pools and SoCal beaches (again, picayune pea brain, that's me), made 'em look like they had just picked up the game the week before. What's the evolution of water polo in Europe?

• Shows what I know, II: Team handball would wear me out, surely, but there's something off about it. Is it the progenitor for all similar sports? Did someone playing it say, "This is fun and all, but if you really want a challenge, we should try to play without using our hands (soccer), or move the ball with sticks (hockey), heck strap on some skates (ice hockey) and make it really interesting. Did Dr. Naismith decide, "Let's shrink the goal to a tiny hoop and require players who wanted to keep the ball had to bounce it all the time?" Someone else must have said, "If you really want a challenge, let's do this in the water," and gave birth to water polo.

Having come late to team handball (and seriously doubting I'll see it again until four years hence) I'm reminded of finally seeing "High Noon," the seminal man-alone-against-the-world Gary Cooper western, and thinking it hokey because I grew up on a steady diet of Gunsmoke, Bonanza and every other movie and show turned original movie moments into clichés.

• Crass act: Why do athletes pretend to bite their medals? Whether this gesture derives from fact or Dickensian fiction, it's meant to show how people might tell if their gain is real gold, since the soft metal would show teeth marks; it implies the giver might have cheated recipients. Though the geasture might have lost its historical meaning, and athletes and photographers think it may be cute, it's rude to receive such a high honor, one of a kind, crafted to celebrate athletic achievement, and put it in your mouth. We get a two-year reprieve from seeing that.

• Fish, meet pond: Time was I swam in pools only because I knew no other. Now I'm in lakes most of the time and in a pool almost never. Stopping over in Eugene where our daughter goes to school, I ran out of swim choices except for a pool, within walking distance. The online schedule listed open times and prices, but did not specify that two separate swim teams would be going through their paces during lap swim and using all lanes. Lanes were marked "slow" "medium" and "fast" and I had no idea what the teams really meant by that. Finding a man alone in a lane, I got permission to swim with him, but he swam in circle within the lane, rather than up and down one side, so I would have had to look for him constantly throughout my swim because I didn't know how fast he swam and whether he would swim up against me. Plus, the pool water wasn't all that clear, and the high water temperature in the cool morning left the surface in a foam of mist, so I couldn't see much. I was out in 10 minutes. Keep your pool; give me the open water any time.

• Back home: It's a big change from 4,893 feet above sea level, to 128 feet above. Lake Natoma is so much easier to swim in, unlike the mountain lakes on our vacation. Not easy; it's never easy for me. But it feels so much better.