How I swim cold water

Today's temperature in Lake Natoma, which I swim at least four times a week, is 46.9 degrees Fahrenheit, or 8.3 degrees Celsius.

The temperature is rising, from a mid-January low of 44.3 degrees F (6.8 C).

To swim it this time of year, I imagine blue flame blooming from my arms, about 80 strokes in. The prickling becomes the delicate flames igniting and spreading, jacketing my arms. The stinging intensifies until, 40 or so strokes later, it levels off, the flames hold, their tendrils snapping off into the green water, and I can go on.

Except …

For some reason, I haven't needed to visualize the flames this winter, even though the water has been colder longer than the last two winters. Last year, the temperature dipped to 47 F for just one mid-January day before steadily rising. The same thing happened the year before, except the temperature dropped to 46.

Besides falling below 45 this year, the water temperature has held steady for more than a month, rarely rising above 47 before dipping again.

I don't know whether my mind has grown to know exactly what to expect when I dive in now, or I've gotten used to swimming immediately on entering the water (instead of wading a while, as I used to), but the low temperatures I had dreaded for two months don't bother me.

This is nothing, though. Through facebook™®©, I've come to know many swimmers — mostly in England and Ireland — who swim regularly in much colder water. Several of them abide by "channel rules:" Goggles, a single latex cap and a swimsuit, no wetsuit, as required of swimmers who brave the English Channel, the Mount Everest for long-distance swimmers.

I swim "channel rules light," with a neoprene cap and two slightly thicker silicone caps. No wetsuit, but my head is warm.

One London swimmer, John Donald, reports almost daily on facebook®©™ of swimming more than a mile, "channel rules," in his stainless steel community pool (or lido, pronounced LIE-doe … the things one learns on facebook™©®), where the temperature is 3 degrees Celsius, or 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

I encouraged him to get in touch with the International Ice Swimming Association (yes, it's a sport!), which has documented a small number of people worldwide who have swum a mile in temperatures 41 F and below.

It's a big deal, requiring a doctor's documentation of the swimmer's heart health, careful temperature readings of the watercourse, and layers of safety and recording and certification. Local long-distance swimmer Brad Schindler swam an ice mile unofficially last year at Lake Tahoe, and plans to repeat the event soon for keeps.

This London swimmer achieves this feat almost every day, apparently, with no attention save for a bitty post on a facebook®™© group page for swimmers.

The painting above illustrates, literally and figuratively:

• I look at my hand too much. With my head positioned correctly, I should barely be able to see my arm pass in peripheral view, and I try hard not to look. But on a long swim, I can't help but imagine the world below the dark green of the water, and how clear my arm looks in the void;
• I need to work on my watercolor skills. Or Photoshop®™© skills. Probably both.

Getting along swimmingly

See no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil:
Being a Giants fan in the home stretch
requires iron fortitude and

• Keep Calm and Swim On

'Tis the season for the world's most stalwart swimmers to complete or try lunatic expeditions.

I say that with the utmost jealousy.

One guy this weekend, Jamie Patrick, (beware this link: It will absolutely blast a song by the pop group Fun, and the off switch is way down at the bottom of the page) will attempt to swim the circumference of Lake Tahoe, about 68 miles. He has swum twice Tahoe's length, 44 miles at one go, and last year swam more than 100 miles down the Sacramento River.

I follow his progress through Facebook. I also follow a doctor, who amazed me for his daily reports of swimming at least six miles in the ocean, apparently by himself. I wondered how he found the time, for one, and the courage, for another.

He did all that to train for a crossing of the English Channel, the Mt. Everest for swimmers, as I've heard it described, a 21-mile tidal battle that requires swimmers three times farther from England to France than a gull might fly.

Another swimmer from down the doctor's way, San Diego, also completed the English Channel. On a page called "Did You Swim Today?" on which swimmers from all over the world post their jaunts big and small, she wrote

Not today but yesterday I swam from Engand to France (-:

Still others whom I follow on Facebook have completed solo or relay crossings from one of the Channel Islands onto shore in Los Angeles or Ventura counties.

Dyana Nyad last month tried a fourth, and maybe last, time to cross through sharks and jelly fish and storms from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, 103 miles.

People may congratulate me for my daily one or two miles in the nearby lake by telling me how few people would really even get into the cold water, let alone swim that distance, which is always a struggle for me. But I'm in awe of so many swimmers who can swim day and night, thousands and thousands of strokes, and still emerge from the brine at the end of their goal.

• Keep Calm and Watch the Giants

I've let those Giants get to me, after all. I greet wins with calm, because that's what I expect, wins. I curse losses and errors and a paucity of hits and runs, because the Giants are supposed to win and hit and score and play perfect defense.

Why? I don't know. Win or lose, I still get nothing for it, as I've said before.

The Giants swept the Houston Astros this week, something they should have done, though each game proved a battle. They face the Chicago Cubs over the weekend, and then the Arizona Diamondbacks early next week. With a Los Angeles Dodgers loss, the Giants could pull away to 4 1/2 games up in the National League West.

It's the home stretch and they're fighting, and it's almost hard to believe. I didn't write about the Giants losing its star left fielder, Melky Cabrera, for 50 games (and probably his Giants career) for taking synthetic testosterone. Everyone else was writing about it, and I wasn't going to add anything new. But more than hits, Cabrera brought a joy to his play, smilingly mocking opponents, holding the baseball for an extra moment and daring baserunners to try an extra base before he mowed them down with his arm.

His joy was juiced, and now it looks like he'll never play for the Giants again. On the other hand, the Giants welcomed relief pitcher Guillermo Mota after a 100-game suspension for taking performance-enhancing drugs, and the Giants say they're convinced the guy took one of his children's steroid-tinged cough medicines by mistake. OK. Who knows?

The Giants acquired right fielder Hunter Pence from the Phillies a month ago. The guy always seemed to hit at will against the Giants when he was an opponent, but he hadn't really started to hit for the Giants until this week, against his old home team, the Astros. Until then, he has become almost unwatchable, the antsiest, most jittery player I've ever seen. The man can't stand still, and gets in the batter's box rollicking like a washing machine with an uneven load. He swings as hard as he can at everything, chases breaking balls in the dirt, strikes out and then returns to pace the dugout like a caged animal.

The Giants act like a team betrayed by Melky Cabrera and now on an angry mission to prove he wasn't the team, and they're finding ways to win despite flubs and foul-ups and bad breaks, which is what the top teams do in the home stretch. Now it's a race to the playoffs with the Los Angeles Dodgers, who have paid huge sums to get the players that will overtake the Giants. So far for the Dodgers, not so good.

annus mirabilis

One year ago, I first fell headlong into the murky, unremitting, unforgiving, frigid embrace of the open water, and never got out.

Except for a really good reason — backpacking most of a spring week with my son — I have swum open water at least four days every week since February 20, 2011. I have managed to find a lake or two even while camping on vacation, not to mention a few points along the California coastline, and wondered when I would get back in a pool.

(In fact, I finally canceled my gym membership after a long absence from the pool. Not my best move, it turns out; more on that later.)

The milestone felt like a millstone as the months crept up to the anniversary. A feat I feared I'd never reach actually passed two weeks ago, and I've wrestled with getting around to writing about it, almost — almost! — letting it pass without notice.

But to have done so would have eventually burned a hole in my gut. So much has happened that I hadn't expected ever to happen, that I need to let it out. I've swum from Alcatraz Island, an event for which I planned even as I doubted I really would or could; I've swum, however briefly, in chilled 39-degree chop in crystal clear Lake Tahoe; I've swum well past the length of a pier at Avila Beach, a pier from which long ago as a teenager I looked out and wondered idly if anyone had swum that far out — and wondered why anyone would.

It turns out that one would swim that far just for the delight of waving to people standing high on the end of the pier, wondering why anyone would swim that far.

That's the real, selfish fun for me. I have managed all that time to swim without a wetsuit. Only a few people I know do likewise in the open water in these parts. It's amazing to me to be able to do it; though I don't wave my arms and make a big show when I emerge from the water, I enjoy when onlookers ask every question but, "Are you nuts?"

(Last February, a man walking his dog asked us, "Why?" with such fervor that he leapt into a mild rage, his hands shaking and balling up as he asked, "Really: Why?!" He wanted a rational answer other than, "Because it's fun." I think he felt responsible in case we turned to frozen fish sticks and he had to alert the authorities.) 

At once practical and medicinal, open water swimming has also served as catharsis, as most hobbies do in their ideal, creating a restorative outlet for much of my free time. As one prone to funks, I have found in the open water a forum in which to deal frankly with myself, and renew hope and set goals and reexamine what may be redeeming about me.

In so doing, I have come to know and befriend interesting people who share the love of open water swimming, but have introduced me to many different ways of regarding the world — whether as ridiculous spectacle to laugh about, or as a constant challenge to we human inhabitants, in mind and body. Besides, a grey cold day and choppy green water is best faced with at least one other fool.

They have encouraged me with words, and shown and shone by example.

Through facebook I have met more swimmers from around the country and all over the world, who have revealed that open water swimming is a joy shared globally. I remember being a kid and visiting my parents' longtime friends. Mr. Benjamin would show off his ham radio, and after patiently fussing with the controls, occasionally a voice would squeak and squall through the box, a voice from Norway or Nova Scotia, say. It was fun, but it was hit or miss.

Say what you will, good or bad, about social media, but one wonder it provides is the chance to correspond instantaneously with a swimmer in New South Wales who has just sent a photo of a neon blue and yellow Eastern fiddler ray he swam near, or with a world renowned open water swimmer who must train in a net in the ocean to save herself from lethal jellyfish and sharks.

I have also come to know a place. Two places. I swim at either end of the the long, snake-shaped Lake Natoma, that is really a section of river dammed above and below. Each day that I swim, I take in the usually still water and the dark forests, and note the changes that each day brings, subtle though they are. Early blossoms, say, or the ring of bright water signaling the presence of a river otter, or the sudden coke-bottle clarity of shoals of riprap.

I have watched the arc of the sun dip and rise and now dip again; I have noticed the work of the earth lost to me from inside my car and room and constraints of time. I catalog these passages in my head — a swim buddy and I have even begun gathering daily data — and have seen what a year does to these places. I'm looking forward to getting to know these quiet places better.

(Just an aside, but I'm upset at the mild winter. Last February, first fighting with the cold water, my skin turned bright pink and spongy, and the sting of the cold felt like knife points to my face. Now I'm used to it, and as the temperature dropped degree by degree over the fall and winter, I spent at least one swim in slight pain getting used to the new low level of cold. My arms and hands stung, and I visualized fins of blue flame shooting up my arms, pretending their heat was what really stung; my lips numbed and I couldn't close them to speak; a day later, I was used to the cold, and I was looking forward to facing the water at 46 degrees, the lowest the lake fell last year in the snow and rain. A feeble winter means less snow to melt into Folsom Lake, then to drain from the lake bottom into Lake Natoma, which means the water won't get that cold again this year. I'm so disappointed.) 

It has been, as I said, annus mirabilis, a wonderful year. Or maybe in a more nuanced translation, a year of wonders. Or maybe even as the poet John Dryden intended when he wrote under this title in 1667 after beplagued London burned: It could have been worse.

Now a new year of the open water stretches before me.

Um.

I wonder what the new wonder will be. Right now, I can barely see it for all the numbers. Like cutoff times for a 10k swim. Or consistent times for 100-yard sets. Or negative splits. Or hypoxic breathing. Numbers are not my friends.

This year I want to do the same, only moreso. I might join in fewer races, staying in some favorites just to see how I'll do compared to this year. Maybe I'll swim Alcatraz again, though that can be expensive.

Foremost is swimming at least one 10k race. One is scheduled for early June. I have done diddly about signing up. I have nudged the whole idea with a tentative toe, paralyzed by the idea of swimming that distance in the 3 1/2-hour limit.

I'm hung up on the idea of getting faster. I don't know how to do it, and stay true to the sometimes maligned Total Immersion technique that has gotten me this far, literally, without tearing up my body.

One way, according to conventional wisdom, is to use a swimming pool. So, having just canceled my membership, I now show up from time to time, pay a drop-in fee, and swim. I have proven to myself I can swim the 10k (6.2-mile) distance. I just can't do so within the time limit.

So I'm stuck, mentally anyway. I need to go back to the Total Immersion resources and find the refinements that will help me go faster. I need to research sets that will speed me up and make me stronger. I need to do more than swim, like strengthen my core through other exercise.

And I'll get to it. I will. Whatever keeps me in the open water.

But you know what? The open water is enough for me. I can't say it's freedom, because for me it's a struggle, enduring what are for me long distances. Some people call it wild swimming, and I love that term. It's an honest engagement, an endeavor of mitigated danger, mastery of which lay juuuuuust beyond my grasp.

On the far shore, where I'll always be headed.

What does not kill me …

A funny thing happened on the way to the Craziest Thing I Have Ever Done (To Date): I stumbled upon the very people who inspired this stunt.

The mission: to swim in Lake Tahoe in mid-January in only a swimsuit, a couple of swim caps and goggles. Distance: Unknown. Survival: Uncertain. Who am I kidding? I was getting out at the slightest discomfort.

So why do it? It's tantamount to jumping off the roof of a house just because a friend did — and my mom's not around to hound me with rhertoric. Swim buddy Jim Morrill passed along news of a woman named Karen Rogers, who was attempting an "ice swim" in Tahoe.

Karen is an open-water celebrity in northern California, having swum the length of Lake Tahoe 21.5 miles, and from San Mateo Bridge to Golden Gate Bridge (about 14 miles), among others. The rough Pacific prevented her two years ago from trying to become the third person to swim more than 30 miles from the Farallones to the Golden Gate.

"Now, what have you done today?" Jim posted about Karen's ice swim on facebook. "That's the coolest thing ever."

So to speak.

"Let's go!" I answered, not really meaning it. In a perfect world, loads of time, nothing else to do, I'd go in a minute … ha ha! … lighthearted joking, you see.

Then Brad Schindler responded on facebook: "I'm ready. Let me know."

Ulp!

Brad and me in a moment of sanity. Photos courtesy of Nancy Turner.

Brad is an elite swimmer and, in the small world of open-water swimming, well known for his exploits. Only a couple of dozen people besides Karen have ever swum Lake Tahoe's 21.5-mile length without a wetsuit, and Brad's one of them. He completed the Maui Channel Swim, beating several relay teams while contending with 10-foot swells and tiger sharks.

He swims nearly three times faster than me. Not that he would include that in his curriculum vitae.

By contrast, Brad was not joking about swimming Tahoe in January.

Deciding it was something I would probably survive, we set a date (last Sunday), and my wife Nancy came along to fish our bodies out of the water and take us to the hospital or morgue as events warranted. We picked Sand Harbor, a state park on the north shore in Nevada, a tranquil beach nearly a mile long where we swam a couple of times over the summer.

On the way up to Tahoe, we joked how crazy we were, how any amount of time in the frosty water would be worth the trip.

Small world that it is, news got around that Karen Rogers was attempting an official "ice swim" at Tahoe that same Sunday, and that Jamie Patrick, an ultra-distance swimmer (and World Open Water Swimming Association 2011 Swimming Man of the Year), would be helping as part of her support team. Jamie swam the length of Tahoe twice in one go (nearly 44 miles) two summers ago, and last year swam 111 miles down the Sacramento River. In swimming, this is sort of like having Christian Bale and Kate Winslet wander into McDonalds while you order your burger. Brad tracked the news of the swim attempt on his smart phone while we drove. He knew everything about it except where the swim would take place.

Karen Rogers and Cathy Delneo start on their icy mile swim. Jamie Patrick (right)
helps document the attempt.

Descending from Truckee, we could see whitecaps on the lake even from a distance. Along the shoreline, we saw that those white caps tipped three-foot rollers beating up the beaches. Winds snapped flags to full attention.

Not the conditions I hoped for. Lake Natoma, my home pool, is usually glassy calm.

Sand Harbor looked raggedy like the ocean after a winter storm. If heavy waves had come in like this during the summer, lifeguards would have ordered swimmers out of the water.

We backtracked to an adjacent sheltered boat launch, where the water looked calmer, a low-level squall. We just needed a day pass, we told the lady in the kiosk, because we didn't have a boat. We were going swimming!

The lady looked out over the endless crest of waves in the wind, and then at us. "OK," she said.

Not a flinch. Not a "You're crazy!" Nothing.

We soon found out why. Out of 72 miles of coastline around Lake Tahoe, and dozens of beaches, Karen Rogers had chosen this place to try her ice swim. Crazy swimmers had already passed by the lady in her kiosk, and the novelty for her had worn off.

Four or five cars were already parked on the boat ramp, and people ran back and forth from the cars to the dock to the beach. One of the trucks had a logo on the tailgate, "The Tahoe 360," which is Jamie Patrick's next adventure this summer, swimming continuously along the lake's circumference.

Our unwise quest had suddenly become surreal. Brad didn't want this, mostly because he didn't want the swimmers to feel he was horning in on their endeavor. He tried to keep a low profile — these other elites would recognize him — and asked me to find out what course they had chosen, and see if we couldn't swim where we wouldn't be noticed.

A gift from my daughter … which might
explain so much.

The PR guy for the team told me Karen Rogers and Cathy Delneo were basically using the whole cove. We could waste an hour or more looking for another place to swim, or we could wait. As Jamie Patrick later told us, "This is the calmest water on the whole lake today."

So we waited and became the swimmers' groupies; Karen and Cathy found out Brad was there and came over to meet him. We also became witnesses in case anyone disputed the women's successful attempt.

Waiting presented problems, though, the least of which is that my carefully timed tall cup of hot electrolytes had gone to waste. Waiting gave us time to chew on the reality of what we were trying to do, and watch swimmers struggle with what we were attempting, disappearing at times in the deep troughs between waves. The team of handlers and documentarians and emergency medical technicians — especially that last bunch — made me question our endeavor.

Waiting also let the water temperature drop. It was 41 Fahrenheit when the swimmers began, and 39 when they finished their mile. Lake Natoma is between 47 and 48 — a huge difference, keenly felt.

First in! Also, first out!

After roughly 45 minutes, Karen and Cathy completed their official ice swim. In humanity's obsession to codify its obsessions, ice swimming is international and has rules. For example, the water has to be 41 degrees or lower, measured at specific depths within specific timeframes, and swimmers (wearing only a standard swimsuit, goggles and a silicone cap) must complete at least a mile. My favorite rule — swimmers may push objects, such as ice, out of their way.

Shouting and gesturing, the support team hustled the swimmers one by one off the beach, into towels, into blankets, out of their swim gear, into baggy sweatsuits, then into separate cars with the engines roaring heat full blast.

Our turn. Sigh.

Our meager support team mounded blankets and jackets and sweatshirts in a sunny spot near the dock. As I stripped down to my jammers, I noticed even the loose beach sand was cold.

I got into the lake quickly, as I usually do, to get a cold shock and soak down so I could recinch my suit back on shore. "Don't do that, with the wind chill …" Jamie Patrick tried to tell me. Eh — what did he know?

Brad swims …

In mid cinch, I realized Brad had already jumped in and attacked the water, in his style. I followed, but as always, I was far behind immediately. Suddenly our plans had gone from, "Let's hug the shoreline in case we have problems," and "If I'm in just five minutes, that'll be fine with me," to the makings of a challenge.

… and swims, a mile in the chill waters.

Brad's challenge became much, much different than mine. With a quiet demeanor that belies his big prizefighter frame, Brad is nonetheless fiercely competitive. Brad quietly grooved into the track the two swimmers had just left, churning between a collection of boulders to the boat launch docks. Eighteen lengths, we learned, comprised a mile.

My challenge was to make it to the rocks and back, if I could. My hands usually sting on my daily swims at Lake Natoma. But at 39 degrees, the water pressed into me like an iron maiden tipped with cactus spines. My hands and arms hurt immediately. Next my fingers swelled; perhaps the water in my fingers was expanding as it cooled; I don't know, but my fingers became squishy and painful.

Then my breath got only halfway in and out of my lungs. Cold? High altitude? I'm not sure.

My first thought seeing this pic is I looked like the sailor in Winslow Homer's
Gulf Stream, just as doomed.

The lake was beautiful and clear and majestic, as always, though impossible to enjoy. After two lengths, I walked back onto the beach, saw Brad still going, and tried returning to the water, hugging the shore as we planned. Two more lengths, 10 minutes later, and I got out, not sure where my tolerance threshold lay but not wanting to exceed it and become a victim.

In Lake Natoma my arms reach a numb stasis and I can keep swimming without problems, but I didn't know if my arms would comply in this cold, and wasn't going to chance finding out.

In short time, Nancy and I became Brad's support team as he swam length after length, attacking at the same pace. He'd swim back to the dock, redder and redder each time, give us the diver's hands-on-head signal that he was OK, and keep going.

After 30 minutes, Brad finished his mile (faster than the two official swimmers), and did what he notoriously does: Shiver violently. We packed a blanket on him, gave him hot liquids (which he spilled at first in convulsions), and got him to step out of the heated car to get dry clothes on before he got back into the sauna that was our Ford Focus.

A paddler escort for the two women hung back on shore, looking sidelong at Brad to see if he would need medical help.

Eventually the shaking subsided, and by the time we got to Truckee on the trip home and fueled up on McDonald's burgers, Brad was talking more and fidgeting less.

"We did it!" he'd say, every so often. Also, "Lake Natoma is not going to feel nearly as cold when we go in now."

Karen Rogers told us that if they had known Brad was going to stop by, they would have made him part of the endeavor. I don't doubt Brad will be back soon to make an official ice swim.

I'm not deterred, either. Maybe a mile is possible for me in that water. Karen advises acclimating in one-minute increments at that low temperature. I'm willing to make a few day trips to try. And I'd love to try the lake in winter when the water is smooth.

It's on my list of swimming accomplishments someday, but for now, I give Karen Rogers the last world, from Unofficialnetworks.com's coverage of her ice swimming: "The difference between stupidity and bravery is in the outcome."

Swimming across America

Who knows what evil lurks in the floral depths of Diamond Lake?
Just plants … probably …

In my futile, doomed, disorganized, happenstance attempt to swim in every lake in America, I can at least cross two more off my list. It wasn't a big list to start with: Folsom Lake, Lake Natoma (Sacramento and Placer counties); Lake Tahoe (Nevada and California sides); Spring Lake (Sonoma County); Ozette and Cascade lakes (Washington state); (does San Francisco Bay count?). The list remained small because I had held to the wisdom, broken but a few years ago, to wit: "What fool would swim in a lake?"

(Lake Pend Oreille {Pon-du-RAY} in Idaho doesn't count. That was more of an organized attempted drowning when I was eight or nine; but that's a story for another time.)

(On second thought, if I include Lake Pend Oreille, I could try for a more bucket-listy swim-one-lake-in-every-state goal … )

Over a farewell-to-summer camping trip with my family the last long weekend, I swam in Lost Creek Reservoir (wonder why it's lost; maybe because the creek got turned into a reservoir?) and Diamond Lake in south central Oregon. Two more different lakes would be difficult to find, but I'll keep trying.

Neither lake caters to swimmers. Lost Creek Lake sets aside a paltry misbegotten swim area on the other side of steep peninsula from the narrow marina, where all the action, if you can call it that, was. The reservoir holds back some of the Rogue River, and the water level has dropped 20 feet from its max, leaving swimmers with a long, gravelly, weedy, desolate walk to the water.

At Diamond Lake, the swim area is even tinier, a rectangle of no more than 10 yards wide and 20 yards long on a narrow beach in front of its resort (where it's always yesterday, and the last good yesterday appears to have been 1964). I did not swim in Diamond Lake's swim area; since the water would have not even gone up to my waist, I would have had difficulty swimming there.

I swam in the middle of Diamond Lake instead, off the deck of a patio boat, the rental for which we splurged. I mean, how many chances are you gonna get to rent something called a patio boat (which is exactly as you would imagine, a floating patch of shaded indoor/outdoor carpet on pontoons, complete with deck chairs — it was missing a Weber™® grill — and an outboard motor on the back)?

We made a three-hour tour … a three-hour tour … around the lake, stopping to eat, stopping to look, stopping to swim, tootling along.

I didn't swim for long, because of the sudden realization, after I jumped in, that I would have a difficult time getting back on the boat. Much like an actual patio, the boat lacked rope ladders.

Knowing the effort back on the boat would be a pain, I didn't stay in the water more than long enough to note that it wasn't very deep (maybe 20 feet where we were) but very dark green and full of plants whose long tendrils crept just within the clearer water closer to the surface, to resemble fingers reaching up for my feet.

I'm not usually mindful of the flora and fauna below me as I swim, but these fingered plants made me want to get back in the boat quick. More and more these days, I'm mindful of the rhythmic risk-and-rescue that swimming is: Alternately submerging your face into the dark dense unknown and lifting it for a quick saving breath, just to risk all once again.

Shallower places along the lake were crystalline green, but I didn't get back in to look, a decision I regret.

Lost Creek Lake flat-out does not welcome swimmers. It's a powerboat/ski boat/jet ski lake (Diamond is a trout fisher's paradise where most boats plod along), so swimmers face high risks venturing beyond the swim area. My daughter spotted a floating swim deck in the middle of the lake (which seems stupid because of the high-speed boat traffic), but I didn't feel safe crossing the boats' paths to make the half-mile journey to the deck. My daughter and son and I were confined to the swim area, where the wind and chop had churned in the fine red dirt near the shoreline to a rusty murk.

It made me thankful for cool, green Lake Natoma, where a low speed limit discourages motorized boats. Except for a few racing kayakers who think it's funny to race right through a group of swimmers, most people on the lake leave swimmers alone.

Let me know of a swim-friendly lake in your state. Maybe I could make this a bucket list after all. Though I'd swim Pend Oreille again just to make matters kosher.

Far away and so close

I can actually see the finish gate! This is going to be a breeze …

The first I'd been to Donner Lake, the storied Sierra lake near where the Donner-Reed Party camped, was when I swam its length, 2.7 miles, Saturday.

It was the 31st Annual Donner Lake Open Water Swim. I met a swimmer there who had competed in 26 of them. This was one down for me, more to go, I hope.

Neither the distance nor the water temperature (warm, for me) scared me — not even the more-than-a-mile-high altitude (strangely), because I held to the Underachievers' Code of Adequacy, to wit:

1. Be thou not last.

2. Be thou not one of the swimmers that the police boat will pluck out of the water if you're still in the race after two hours and 30 minutes, or if you haven't reached halfway down the lake in an hour and 15 minutes.

Though I achieved both tenets, they gave me much to think about along the long swim, such as:

How can I keep from being last? I imagine the last swimmer gets more attention for that fact than he/she really wants. More than I'd want, certainly. I don't want to be last. How can I keep from being last?

What is half of the length of the lake? How will I know I'm there, short of a police boat lifting me out of the water?

Can I really swim this before two hours and 30 minutes pass? What if I'm a coupla hundred yards from the finish; will the police boat really pull me out of the water and shuttle me to shore? That would really ramp up the unwanted attention factor — hundreds of people on the shoreline, many of them having finished the swim, watching as the police boat putt-putts you from within shouting distance to dry land. It'd be like a Monty Python sketch.

Race officials denied moving the finish gate farther back
during the race …

Eventually, I finished in one hour, 36 minutes and 24 seconds. I keep changing in the standings, according to the online posted results, between 199th and 200th overall, out of 230 swimmers. I was 13th in my 45-49 age group (out of 13; that number keeps changing as I revisit the results; the oldest swimmer, 71, finished more than 20 minutes faster than me). I swam at a pace of 35 minutes, 42 seconds per mile, which is the first I've seen that statistic provided in a race.

(The fastest swam this in 54 minutes — faster than it took my wife to walk from start to finish; I hope the last swimmer didn't notice that race officials had already dismantled and packed away the race clock before she reached shore.)

In the end, I swam as fast as I expected; I had swum a 2.4 mile race earlier in the summer in about the same time (maybe I improved my time, but I also ran back onto shore during that race after the first 1.2 mile lap to fetch a different pair of goggles because my brand-new ones flopped uselessly on my face, and ran back in to finish).

But it was long enough in the water to think thoughts. In addition to the above, I wondered:

Why didn't a T-shirt come with the entry fee? It's a really nice shirt, designed by a swimmer/artist/cellist named Deborah Brudvig, but I had to pass, saving the pennies here and there. I had plenty of time to estimate the fees generated by the race, and what they might pay for.

Where is everybody? I stopped a couple of times (halfway?) to see one swimmer waaaaaaay over to my left, another waaaaaay to the right. Why were they so far to the side of me? I saw a few dark shapes in the shimmering water behind me, the remnants of the few (about 30) slower swimmers. I was not last, at least not to that point.

Why is the water so dark green here? Lake Natoma is more of a kelly green. San Francisco Bay in June was a translucent jade. I was color swatching as I swam. The sun at my back cast my shadow deep into the water before me; hundreds of sunlight shafts danced around my shape like an aura.

Where is the damn finish line? I saw it so clearly in the mountain air, 2.7 miles away, before the swim began. Then I hit the water and the more I swam, the farther away the finish line drifted, as did the peak I used as a landmark to guide me. At one point, the bright orange finish gate disappeared. My friend Jim Morrill predicted as much: "The swim's gonna feel like forever, like you're never going to finish."

How can anyone swim farther than this? Jim Morrill, who talked me into this swim long ago and proposed way back then of us swimming from the finish to the start early in the morning, and then joining the race back to the finish, 5.4 miles total. (The Facts of Life got in the way and he couldn't make it to the swim at all, much less swimming a round trip; I'm sure he was chewing through his goggles when he realized he couldn't go.) I swam 4.8 miles from far behind him in Natoma, but as I swam Saturday, I couldn't process swimming any farther than I was going.

Another swim friend, Brad Schindler, later this month will attempt a solo crossing of Lake Tahoe, 22 miles, to be begun at midnight. As I write, 61-year-old Diana Nyad is two days into a 103-mile swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Fla. It would be the longest continuous swim by a human.

(I just learned this morning Nyad made it nearly halfway through her swim before calling it off because of hazardous conditions. But still, nearly 50 miles of open ocean  …)

Just so hard to imagine swimming so far.

The constant question — the yang (more of a yammer, really) to my almost constant yin of mindful swimming — was, why am I so slow, really?

I'm following faithfully the technique I've learned over the last three years, or at least I think I am, and I'm continually adjusting and reassessing, when I'm not thinking other thoughts.

Theoretically, I'm not swimming any differently than Sun Yang, the Chinese swimmer who at the end of July set a new world record in the 1,500 meter freestyle at the world championships, breaking a 10-year mark. Terry Laughlin, developer of the Total Immersion technique I practice, hails Sun's performance as the new measure for swimming efficiency. For the first 1,250 meters, Sun used only 27 strokes per length (the jaws of experienced pool swimmers are supposed to drop here, because that is a phenomenally efficient stroke), 28 strokes per length for the next 200 meters, and 32 for the sprint in the final 50 meters. The highly efficient Grant Hackett, an Australian who held the record for 10 years, swam an average of 31 strokes over his record-setting race.

Laughlin says though he can't presume that Sun is using Total Immersion, his swim was a textbook demonstration of the technique he promotes.

I'm a tin Sun Yang; I'm swimming mindfully, methodically, trying to make sure each stroke is patient, catching as much water as possible, all the way to a quick flip of my wrist at the end. I'm making sure my hands enter the water as quietly as possible with each stroke, that my hips are high, and that my kick (which most people who've seen it regard as violent) is instead just enough to turn my hips over.

I'm doing all that, but I very quickly watch the pack of swimmers disappear ahead of me, and open the gap with aggression on the glassy water, which quickly turns to chop by the time I enter their weakening wake. It's a scene I'm getting used to. I don't blame anybody. My friend Kathy Morlan steamed the water to a personal best of 1:04 and change, and I think she should bottle and sell her secret.

I can do two things about this: Be content with swimming, realizing that very few people swim long distance, and I can do so and still be upright at the end, walking and talking without pain, with the pleasant memory of having slipped through wild water, over unknown depths. My wife prefers I think that way; she likes that I can do this at all.

For the most part, that's how I feel. As with the Fire Cracker swim, I felt I could go no faster, and if I tried, I would have floundered in the middle of the lake, out of whack and out of breath and energy. So I spent my time thinking thoughts and talking to myself about how I was doing.

Or I can figure out how to swim faster without loss of technique and sanity.

Leslie Thomas, who runs a wonderful coaching and expedition swim enterprise called swim-art.com out of San Francisco, happened to participate in the Donner Lake (and finished in 1:14 and change) and said her swim was rough until she finally settled into a groove. I found myself slipping in and out of at least eight different grooves, trying to hold onto one.

But comparison is impossible to avoid — it's literally staring me in the face, as I watch the mass of backsides receded to the finish line in front of me — and numbers are mesmerizing, if not intoxicating.

I should be able to swim faster, but maintain my technique. Maybe I can wring more out of my stroke, by turning over faster over the length of the swim.  I should be swimming sprints in the pool to build up my anaerobic tolerance; from what sprints I have swum before, I'm not anxious to continue: They hurt. Maybe I should leave it all in the water, and emerge at the end crawling up to shore, exhausted.

I don't know.

I was a lot more tired than I had expected, because when I swam with friends the next day at Lake Tahoe, I gasped for breath just swimming out to the buoy line to begin our practice. But I slowed, took a few deep breaths, and continued, getting one syrupy mile out of the morning before I swam back in.

I'll be back for Donner Lake's 32nd run, and I'll plan to swim it faster.

How?