This impacts my thinking directly every Thursday morning as I pull myself out of bed at a ridiculously early hour and head north to the ocean. Although we are just mid-way through April, the sun has gone from friendly and warming to intense and blistering in what se
ems just a handful of days and, for as early as it is, it is just peaking over the buildings around our house--to the east, but not over the ocean. This feels wrong.
The drive to the Rat Beach (child-named for the gigantic rats that inhabit the riprap there) takes me east then north then east and finally north again. Always waiting there on a Thursday morning is what I could refer to as my "training group" but that would intimate that we are fit individuals and strong swimmers with rapidly improving times. In fact, taken as a group, we are all of those things, but individually none of us has managed to be all three of those things. However, in spite of our individual limitations, we are "in training" for this:
Fahal Island/Shark Island
It has been commanding my attention for almost two years, sitting temptingly off the beach in Qurm and, what luck, it plays host to an annual swim every spring. In spite of appearances, it is nestled 4 km offshore and my "training group" has determined that we will, in fact, be participating this spring because that is, apparently, the cool thing to do during the month of May.
Thus, as it has been decreed by the most senior members of our group, and as we have evolved into a tribal little group, in five weeks we will be swimming, at 6:30 in the morning, from Fahal Island to Qurm, along with 100 other individuals. It is said that some of those swimmers will take just under an hour to complete the distance. Unreal.
I am hoping to just complete the swim without being bitten by a sea snake or eaten by a shark, although that would make a good blog, wouldn't it?
It amazes me that you have the time and energy to do something like this having three children and I am assuming that you're still working as an instuctor. Maybe I am just getting old and can't remember ever having that much energy and drive... Fossilitus must have set in for me.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I guess the blog you write about getting bitten by a coral snake or eaten by sharks would be a good one cause that would mean you weren't! Be safe, but wow, sounds like quite a goal. You'd boat back, right?
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