Dear reader(s) and follower(s) (all 3 of you) will notice that I’ve been quiet for a bit. Well, that Nyad vote-out from DWTS really hit me harder than I expected…
Just joking. No, that’s not it. I’m traveling now, and will be out of pocket with infrequent blog posts for a few weeks. Don’t worry though. I am swimming. Many, many laps. Flip-turns galore. Getting so dizzy…
(Edit: You should constantly refresh this page.)
OK, I will again live blog our favorite anti-hero’s appearance on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. Stayed tuned for constant updates, funny or not, from 8pm eastern time on.
8:09: Drew Carey is dancing now. Not the worst. He obviously lost all the weigh in his legs, and not in his belly.
8:11: There’s DN in the background behind Drew. She doesn’t look bad, I must admit. She’s a healthy 60-something. I hope I’m still in good shape in 15 years.
8:12: Just found out that two stars will be eliminated. Uh-oh! Will our star still be here next week? Will Mike need to dream up a new reason for another blog post?
So, during the commercials I search for the terms “Diana Nyad DWTS” and get this interview she had with TV Guide. And I can’t even read it. Too much of a reminder of the weeks after her assisted Cuba-Florida swim.
8:18: I used to be an atheist. Did you know that, dear reader(s)? I gotta say that now that I just saw that Billy Dee Williams is safe…I am sure there is a God. And God is a big Star Wars fan.
8:20: Ah! Winnie is crying. Don’t cry Winnie! You’re dancing beautifully. She is so sweet and I love that she is a math geek. My 14-year old daughter has one of her books and I love that she busts the myth that girls are too dumb to do math. She and Amy Farrah Fowler…love them!
8:28: Danica is back! I love her.
8:29: OK, here comes Billy Dee. And I don’t see any stormtroopers. Apparentely Billy Dee was saved by the viewers. That’s nice. Good for him, dancing on TV in his late 70’s. Uh-oh, a bevy of beauties just walked in to his practice studio and now Billy Dee is re-energized. You go, Billy Dee!
8:33: Again, I’d like to be dancing at 77-something like Billy Dee.
8:35: Meryl is coming up! He better be careful with dear sweet Meryl. He keeps throwing her. Don’t break her!
8:37: Meryl is so awesome! Fembot and my kids think she looks like an anime character. What do you think?
8:45: Uh-oh, DN is up for elimination! OK, so Amy is okay. So is Candace. What about DN?
8:46: Oh well. DN is out. And she is a very diplomatic loser. Brava. Mike’s blog series is already done.
8:48: Her dance was pretty bad. That, combined with the fact that most people don’t know who the hell she is, is probably the reason she’s going home tonight.
My review of the marathon swimming movie, Driven, has been published in the April/May issue of H2Open Water Swimming magazine. At the time of my writing, the movie was not for sale (because the producers were entering the movie in film festivals). Check it out:
The movie is now available for sale, and like I say in the review, it is worth the money. Buy a copy here (available in DVD and download).
(Edit: You should constantly refresh this page.)
OK, it is day one of Dancing with the Stars (DWTS, you luddite) and this is my first (only?) day of live blogging. Why, you might ask? Well, because this season one of the contestants is very well known in the sport of marathon swimming. (Or do I mean the sport of ocean swimming?)
So, I am two minutes in and still no Diana Nyad. What gives? She’s the most important contestant this season!
8:05: Here they come!
8:06: She just danced out doing the drowning man. Oh God. At least Billy Dee Williams is there. He might be older than DN.
They just mentioned there will be twists this season. I’m sure it has something to do with helping DN win after changing the rules.
8:08: OK someone named NeNe is dancing now. She’s wearing some kind of flapper-type dress. OK, I’m changing the font for the word dancing now, because what she just did wasn’t dancing. Perhaps she’s got a new show coming out?
8:20: Some rocker dude just met the good-looking Aussie-accented great dancing partner that he took on a date and never called back. Jerk! Meanwhile, DN is wondering who they’ll pick from her past to pair her with after she becomes the newest professional dancer on the next season of DWTS.
Meanwhile, yours truly can’t wait to see the Olympic ice dancers.
8:30: Winnie is dancing!
8:34: Why are there Stormtroopers behind the scenes? Is that because DN is on the dark side? They must be with her.
8:38: Some hockey player is on now, and he’s wearing some kind of PFD in his practice for some reason. OK, I know this is only the 4th dancer, but he’s horrible. Put him on skates. He can run, at least. And catch. Karina is thinking, Crap, I won’t be on the program for long this season. Meanwhile the judges must be hockey fans or afraid of him. Or, they watched a different dance than Fembot and I did.
8:44: And still no DN sighting. Rumor has it she’s in the back with her stormtroopers applying her anti-jellyfish cream.
8:46: Stormtroopers made an appearance. And there’s DN standing behind the hockey player as he gets his scores, which are sure to be crap. Len is the only good judge. They didn’t deserve those 7’s.
8:49: OK, now I know why the stormtroopers are there. For 77-year old Lando Calrissian Billy Dee Williams. Fembot just figured it out; his grandkids begged him to be on DWTS. This is almost as painful as watching Kate Gosselin or Tom Delay “dancing.”
8:57: OK, the judges are gifting Lando with 5’s. Really not even worth that, but to judge by the audience, he just might be here next week! The people love him, despite his turning Han Solo in to the Empire.
9:00: Yeah! Meryl! I am so glad I get to see this dance she’s doing before someone (someone!) goes all Tonya Harding on her.
9:04: I’ll take this time to mention that the new sidekick to Tom Bergeron (Erin Andrews) is so much better than Brooke Burke, who had the personality of a salmon.
9:06: OK, dancing while lying on the floor. I’ve seen it all now.
9:13: OK, some sorta teen pop star, Cody somebody. I’m quizzing my girls now to see if they know him; they’re 11 and 14. The 11-year old knew him from a Build-a-Bear commercial. The 14-year old knows his name. And he’s not a bad dancer, as is expected for a pop star.
9:18: Drew Carey coming up. Miss his show. It was good.
9:24: Drew Carey just called himself old. Really? 55 is old now? Just wait buddy…you’ve got a 64 (65 now?) year old woman coming up who’ll show you what you can do when old. (How’s that Chris?)
9:33: OK, the paralympian is up. Double-amputee doing a great job dancing. I think her professional partner is more nervous.
9:36: OK, they just announced our (anti-) hero is coming up next.
9:43: DN is on! Showing scenes from FL in September. Definitely a fish out of the water, as her partner says. She’s complaining about high heels not being right for human anatomy. And I agree with her! And she hasn’t mentioned her age yet, which is nice. It’s like watching a dancer in slo-mo. There we go, she’s speeding up. Not very graceful, but certainly not the worst I’ve seen.
9:45: Ha! Bruno called her the million-dollar mermaid. How’d he know? Oh, we’ve got the Nyadites tweeting in. Apparently DWTS has been on DN’s bucket list. She’s not on the bottom, and she had a great quip after getting her 18: It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. And she just joked about helping Meryl with her turns. And then Bergeron out-joked them with “Diana has a dry wit and the judges are left all wet.” Brilliant.
9:54: Charlie White, the other of the pair of ice dancers, is on now. Guess what? He can dance! We certainly know he can do the lifts. Highest score of the night. What does Meryl think?
9:58: First big twist coming up, according to Erin. What will it be? Adjusted scoring for those over 60? Nope. Next week the dancers will be doing a dance based on the dance style the contestant is most looking forward to doing. Diana will be doing a cha-cha next week.
10:00: Until next Monday, dear reader(s), I’m out.
Oh, how exciting! Get your schadenfreude stick out. My sporting world’s favorite anti-hero will be on the latest season of Dancing with the Stars! That’s right folks. Diana Nyad will be a contestant on season 18 of DWTS (that’s what the kids do…they abbreviate shows. Go ahead. Search SYTYCD.)
Seriously though…no, never mind. I can’t be serious. I am going to have such a good time watching. In fact, I think I’ll live-blog it, which my teens tell me means I’ll do a post and keep updating it as the fun happens. So exciting. Aren’t you, dear reader(s), excited?
Things I’ll look for (and hat-tip to the comic geniuses at the Marathon Swimmers Forum, you know who you are): A camera malfunction preventing the audience (both live and TV) from seeing her entire dance; her special suit that’ll protect her toes from being squished by her partner; the sniping she’ll do about her fellow contestants; her claim to have cleared her special rules with the “sport of reality TV dancing”; her claim to have practiced all week without sleeping; her press release weeks after the final episode in which she claims to be the winner, based on the rules she was dancing by.
I could go all week. Hopefully she’ll stay in long enough that I’ll have some guaranteed posts for the next couple of weeks.
Dear reader(s) know that I have a bit of a laugh occasionally at triathletes’ expense. What with swimming with pull buoys during 2-mile open water swims, or standing up and walking in the shallows. But today I got to experience triathletes at their sportsmen’s best. And that made me very proud to be a coach.
Today was DC Tri Club’s Swim Meet #3, postponed back in November due to water temperature. (haha) The meet was held at Catholic University indoor pool, a cool little six-lane SCY pool, with a movable wall that separates the diving well (not big enough to make a 50m pool, sadly). Since today was Sunday, the parking lot and the street parking was free and available. The drive there went through DC, parts I hadn’t driven yet, and through the beautiful CUA campus. Oh, to have rich parents.
About 30 DC Tri club members and coaches signed up for the 10 events (not counting the relays):
The meet only cost $12 and you could swim up to 4 events. So of course, the cheap bastard I am, I signed up for 4 events. Yep, you guessed it, I signed up for the 800, 400 and 200. And, bonus event: 50 fly. But, recall that there were only 30 swimmers total, so the time between my 50 fly heat and my 200 free heat was the time of one heat of 200 free. OMG, I was tired. Then, upon completing the 200 free (heat 2 of 2), my fellow coaches came up to me and said, “Guess what Mike? We need you for the coach vs. board relay.” Crap.
OK, so times. My first event was the 400 free. Wow did I hurt. My arms felt like they did when I first started this LCHF diet. D-E-D, dead. My goal for the 400 for 6:00. I managed to beat that at 5:46. So far so good. Thankfully I had much time to rest between the 400 and the 800. There were 2-3 heats of each event, so I had a good 15-20 minutes before the 800.
For the 800, I decided (well, had decided a couple weeks ago) to treat it like a 4×200. I thought I’d go out fast in the first 200, medium in the 2nd, start to build the 3rd, then all out during the 4th 200. Well, I certainly went out fast. Or at least felt fast. Then I kept fast in the 2nd 200. And I felt good. The 400 didn’t feel as bad as the 400 I had swum first. I really wish I’d been able to check the time at my 400. It started to hurt after that. In fact, when I had 200 left, I couldn’t push it yet. I was leading my heat, so that was okay. But when I had 100 left, I pushed it. Really, it was the last 75 that really flew by. 12:12. Way faster than the 15:00 I was aiming for. Very happy.
Next was my 50 fly. The fly was delightfully easy, thank God. Just one lap felt so nice after all the previous laps. 0:39-something. The only problem was the 200 free right after. That didn’t feel so good. I figured I’d swim something like 3:05 or so. Nope! 2:44. So happy. And happy to be done. Except for the relay.
OK, so the relay. There were only 3 board members there. So that meant the relay would be a 150 free relay. Yeah, weird. Even the timers started looking around for the 4th swimmer. Anyway, we coaches destroyed the board members, w00t! 1:27 for our 150 free. Way to go team members, Jules and Bryan.
Friend of the blog and awesome marathon swimmer Franco Prezioso tipped me off on a new OW swim in this area. It’s called the Choptank Bridge Swim (yeah, I know, strange name), in Columbia, MD, and there are two swims available. You have the choice of the short swim (their name) of 1.6 miles or the long swim of 3.6.
I signed up for the 3.6 and for now, my May is almost full. I’ve got swims three of those weekends, so I’m happy. Girl #2 doesn’t have any swim meets in May, which makes familial logistics easier. Two of the swims are out in eastern Maryland, so it might be fun to do a one-nighter with the spousal unit and select non-employed children. Just what I need before I deploy.
The swim sounds awesome and a good price, based on my calculus.
Edit: Let me be clear: I am talking here about the cost for an open water event to the swimmer, not to the organization putting on the swim.
A fellow marathon swimmer made a comment to me recently that “$33/mile is not an outrageous amount” for an open water swim. On the surface, I think she was making a good point. But I think there is much more to be considered than entry fee per mile. For instance, I paid $250 to enter Swim the Suck a couple years ago. Looking at the entry fee per mile that’s $25. Not bad I guess, compared to, say, Nanticoke at $31.32/mile ($93.96/three). Or Swim for the Potomac’s 10K at $8.06/mile ($50/6.2 miles).
However, there is also travel to consider. For StS, with excellent internet searching I got to Chattanooga for a little over $200. Nanticoke will cost me about 300 miles, there and back, and with my gas-guzzling 11-year old minivan, that’ll be about 20 gallons of gas at ~$3.30/gallon, so add $66 to the total cost. Travel is where the 10K here in town rules: It’s only about 11 miles there and back, so less than a gallon of gas. Of course, the 11 clams I gotta pay for parking there makes up for the savings in gas!
Rolled into travel for some of these swims is not only airfare, but hotels and rental cars. I’ll probably get a hotel for Nanticoke, so add in another $100 (it is near the Eastern Shore, after all). Oh, and don’t forget paying for your support. Again, StS starts to add up. I, of course, paid for my Uncle’s airfare and hotel; granted, we shared a room. I paid for the rental and bought him food, although he treated me the night of the race to a celebratory dinner. Still, that $25/mile rises fast when (if?) you take into account all the costs.
Then there are those costs which are difficult to calculate. The effect of time away from home and hearth. The money spent that could go to things like housekeeping, home improvement, college funds, marriage maintenance. (This really is a selfish hobby, btw.) How much did it cost me in those areas when I spent four days in the UK by myself swimming my first 10K? How about the three days in Chattanooga?
And just because one swim “only” costs 10 bucks per mile, does that mean that particular swim is better or more worth your time than one that costs $33 per mile? There are those incalculables, like the iconicity (iconness?) of a particular swim. $10,000 for a channel swim? That ~$450/mile is probably worth it if you succeed (and if it only costs you $10K). I’ll say one thing: For me, StS was worth whatever the final cost was, both financially and psychically.
I don’t think there is a right answer to these questions, at least not one right answer. Not one answer that we could all agree on.
My new blog friend David Speier from the Nanticoke River Swim responded to my last blog entry about the cost of his 3-mile swim. I appreciate that very much, I really do. I’m so glad when folks not only read my work, but respond. And David did a good job answering my concerns.
David said his swim was harder than the Chesapeake Bay Bridge swim (4.4 miles) and the lake swims I’ve mentioned. I asked him why and he said:
The Nanticoke River Swim has a 1 to 2 mph current with three different conditions depending on the leg of the race. Leg one you are heading directly into the current, leg two you are being pushed to the left and leg three you are being pushed to the right. The chop in the water is about the same as the bay swim.
OK, that’s fair. The 10K in National Harbor has pretty much no current at all, so that’s a difference from the Nanticoke swim. There are currents in other lake swims, though.
Next I asked him why the swim entry fee is the same as the triathlon entry, to which he responded:
The time for both events is about the same with the fastest swimmer finishing in slightly over an hour and the same for the triathlon. The only paid volunteers (although paid less than their true value) are the beach qualified guards. We have 10 to 12 guards on boards during the race, most of which are to cover the 2 and 3 mile swims.
So are there no volunteers on the bike and run course? I’m asking because I don’t know. How about the transition areas? And the triathlon and 3-mile swim cut-off times are 3 hours each, so I get that. Also, according to David, the same percentage of your entry fee goes to their charity, no matter you’re doing the triathlon or the 3-mile swim. Not sure how I feel about that. I hate charity-required swims, that’s why I don’t do the Potomac River Swim (7.5 miles). But, I’m not a race organizer, so I don’t know the intricacies of putting on an event like this. And God forbid insurance requirements. Oy!
David also compared his swim entry fee to other swims in the local area. But let’s be fair and compare based on distance and possible time spent swimming (I can only compare by cut-off times):
So Nanticoke is certainly not the most expensive, but there are plenty of cheaper ones out there. Which leads me to the next thing David said: He’ll give me and all my blog readers a discount to enter the Nanticoke River Swim! He is willing to offer a 25% discount if you register for this swim!
Now re-read his above description of the swim. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? You get to battle different currents on different legs, twice! That’s good work for your navigation skills. So why not give it a try and come see the city of Bivalve in eastern Maryland? If you want to take advantage of David’s gracious offer, comment on this blog entry and I’ll get you in touch with David.
OK, race organizers out there, I understand that insurance is not cheap. I get that. But holy crap.
The Nanticoke River Swim is coming up in May. The swim is a 2-mile or 3-mile swim. There’s also a triathlon going on, if you’re into that sort of thing. But the swims. Nice and short. Not too far of a drive from the home. A couple weeks before another swim I’ll be doing (2-miler at Lake Audubon near Reston, VA). Seems like a no-brainer, right?
Well, I went to register, but first I had to get a Lin-Mark account. The race is using Lin-Mark for registrations. That’s fine. Just another website that I need to have a login and password for. What’s new. So I register. I search for the swims and find them and click on Register. So far so good. They asked for my USAT number. Uh-oh. A triathlete-organized OW swim. Again, fine. I’ve done those and I can laugh through them while swimming next to guys with pull buoys or arm floaties on. Whatever. Then I got to the check-out page.
$93.96 for a three-mile swim! Holy crap! Ay caramba. What the hell? $12 of that is the USAT one-day event fee. Jeez, but okay, they need insurance, and if they went USMS it would probably have cost 200 bucks. The swim itself was $75, the same cost as the triathlon (okay, that’s bullshit because there is WAY more logistics involved in supporting a triathlon than an OW swim). Jiminy freaking Christ, that is way too much. Then, even worse, the Lin-Mark site throws in a $6.95 processing fee. Holy shit! They charge about 7 bucks per swimmer (triathlete, too, I presume) to compile a list of swimmers for the organizers.
In comparison, my 10K (Swim for the Potomac) was $50, with no processing fees, for twice the distance (and only a 5-minute drive from home). I can’t remember exactly how much my Dart 10k cost, but that was in England, so even if it was $100, it was worth it!
But practically $100 for a 3-mile swim? Jeez Louise.