Swim For Life
August 13, 2008
By LaVonne Finnerud

2.25 mile swim

Swim for life is an open water swim that goes across Lake Washington, from Medina to Madison Park.  It's a grassroots event that is put on by and benefits the Puget Sound Bood Center.   You are grouped in teams of 4-6 people of your ability level or can form your own team, and are supported by a kayaker across the lake.  You are not supposed to be more than 25 feet from your kayaker, so if your paces are different, the faster needs to slow down so you all stay together.  This year they unexpectantly had 150 swimmers show up, over double from last year!  They raised over $20,000 towards the purchase of two new bloodmobiles. 

My team was Karra Whitmire and Kris Solem, plus 3 random people we picked up at the start so we could get going with our kayaker.  The event was a bit disorganized because of the number of people, but they did the best they could.  They main problem was they didn't have enough kayakers to support the teams.  Luckily Kris found us one through Eastside Runners at the last minute, so we didn't have to wait until the very end to do a mass start.

It was a beautiful day - sunny, calm water, and friends.  The swim went well - we went steady and I only had to backtrack a couple of times to pick up our slower swimmer - who will be not named, but just know she has not swam since her Ironman and she kicks my a## running, an ability I would take over being able to swim fast!   :-)  It was nice to be able to work on my stroke, sighting more efficiently and swimming in a straight(er) line. It's supposed to be 2.25 miles, but our kayaker with a GPS said we were around 2.6 miles (although he went in a less straight line than us, backtracking, circling, etc.), but I'm sure we were not direct!  Plus, I didn't get any chafing from my wetsuit as I used massive Brave Soldier on my neck!  Afterwords we ate bagels, bananas and hot chocolate and waited for our speedboat to take us back across the lake.

We saw a bunch of friends - Teresa, Betsy, Eileen and JFT2 teammates including Jill and Jessi HS.  It was a great morning!  

Total time:  1:30

Teresa Nelson, Karra and me - afterwords at Madison Beach!