Passed 59th Street Bridge.  Passed 4th swimmer, in third.

She is in the water.  The air and water temperature is about the same–71.  That is a little warmer than Michelle would like considering she trained in Nahalem Bay with water temps in the high 50’s and low 60’s.  Jane and Cathy have her in sight (the first 20 minutes of the race or so, Michelle is accompanied only by a kayak).  She has passed the Brooklyn Bridge looking strong. 

Michelle, Jane and Cathy have made it to New York.  Michelle concluded a conversation with me by saying: “I have to get off the phone now.  I have to breathe.”  She was anxious.  She said Jane was the most calm.  That makes sense.  Jane has been in more events of this type.  Jane knows Michelle is prepared and ready.  Jane knows what to do.  Thank goodness for Jane.

The plan for today is to participate in the swimmers’ session from 1:00-3:00 and then relax before the race tomorrow.  The race begins around 9:15AM or when the tide is right.  Jane and Cathy will be at the pier by 6:00AM to meet the boat that will accompany Michelle.  The large boats meet up with their swimmer in the East River someplace.  They depend on the kayakers to help them find their swimmers among the field.  It is good that Jane knows Michelle’s stroke and I believe she will be able to pick her out easily.

Until later. 

OK just for a brief recap, for those who don’t know me, I’m Leroy ( yeah yeah you already know that!), Michelle’s, strange friend from across the pond, and yes I’m a procrastinator. I’m also an example of why you should not respond to people sying hello on MSN that you don’t know. Three years later, she’s still trying to get rid of me.

I had the privilege of updating Michelles website, when she made her swim across the channel, I still say it would have been easier to take the ferry, but nooooo she wouldn’t hear of it. She informed me that it would take about roughly 12 to 14 hours to cross. So therefore I thought there would be time in the middle to meet some friends for previous appointment, and allow the folks back in the US some nap time, and come back to report on final 6 hours of so. Nooooo Ms Macy decide’s to confound everyone and do one of the fastest times that year! 10 hours 2 minutes

So anyway as you can see from the map, this swim is 28 miles, 7miles longer than the channel swim. However as this will be done with the aid of the tide, Michelle is expecting to do it in roughly 9 hours. So adding what I know of michelle , I reckon knock an hour off that sucker… they’ll probally be checking her for hidden propellers.

Anyway the course details can by found at this link http://www.nycswim.org/Event/Event.aspx?event_id=1804&from=course, but I have posted below a brief summary of what Michelle will be doing on the 7th.

The Course

The race starts and finishes at South Cove in Battery Park City on the Hudson River. Swimmers begin at South Cove, navigate around the Battery then head north up the East River, counter-clockwise around Manhattan Island. They swim north into the Harlem River, through Spuyten Duyvil, and then south down the Hudson River to the Battery. There are 4 check points: Hell’s Gate where the East River meets the Harlem River, Spuyten Duyvil where the Harlem River meets the Hudson River, the 79th Street Boat Basin in the Hudson River, and the World Financial Center.

I hoping she doesn’t follow the course I marked out, as thats actually 29.4 miles!

Anyway in conclusion , yet again I find myself amazed that I know someone, that does such amazing things, which inpires me, to get off my behind and hit the gym, which is a miracle if you know me All my best wishes and those of Chelsea Football Club, of which she is a proud fan ( OK that last bits a lie, but I’m 3000 miles away, so got a good head start )

OK heres a swimming poem to finish off,  an no I did not write it , google is your friend, all hail the mighty google.

Swimmingly

Swimming is feeling grace in water,
smoothly slipping thru light blue fluid,
propelled by kicking feet
and winged arms.
Measured breathing
in sync with rhythmic strokes,
swimming is a dance with slippery water,
my partner in physical exultation.

Harlan Simantel

PS It seems I have been informed that I did not try hard enough getting pics of Manhatten! Seriously guilts trips from 3000 miles away, butI adore her anyway … So with acknowledgements to flickr, some gerat shots of the wonderful city, michelle will be circling :

The toes and fingers are painted, bags are halfway packed, and the flight is tonight at 9:30.  I couldn’t find “The Lifeguard Makes Me Blush” nail polish (The EC nail polish), but I think I found adequately named ones.  The nail salon couldn’t believe that I was picking colors based on names, but I never was normal.  On the toes we have “Grand Central Carnation” a lovely deep muavy purple.  On the fingers “See ya later Sailor” which is a soft iridescent blue.  Now all you marathon men out there, it is time to take the plunge and get a signature color on those toes and fingers!  (Come on Mark you know you want to!)  The nail person did give me a lecture about placing too much on the names of the nail polish.  I just smiled and nodded.   For the record, I don’t think a nail polish name is going to get me around Manhattan, but if it makes me smile and think happy thought and gives me a giggle, well then I’m all for it.

What else.  Oh yes, I need to post a map of Manhattan outlining the course.  Um I don’t have time for that now.  Perhaps if Leroy is procrastinating he can get one up here for you, as he still has access to do so. 

Mom will be posting updates of the swim, but don’t expect the google pinpoints.  She will explain things the best she can from the information that Jane and Cathy provide. 

Ok, I have to finish up some work stuff and the packing.  I’ll talk to you all when I get to Manhattan.

The Manhattan Island Marathon swim begins at 9:15 EDT on July 5.  It looks as though there will be 24 solo swimmers and some relays.  The swimmers range in age from 24-60 (all of us could do this too if we were so inclined).  Michelle is the second youngest of the field of challengers.  Of the 24 registered, 9 are women.

The top two finishers from last year were women and they are swimming again this year.  In 2007, they swam the course in 8 hours and 36 minutes and 8 hours and 46 minutes respectively.   The final finisher clocked the race at 10 hours and 32 minutes.  I don’t know if Michelle has a goal time.  If she does, she only would share it with her crew chief and team.

The race is 28.5 miles long and goes from Barttery Park on the south tip of Manhattan up the East River under the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge.  In this leg, the swimmers are guided by their team mates and dodge float planes that take off and land in this section of the river.  At the end of this first leg, the swimmers pass Roosevelt Island.  I wonder what swimmers see from the water, and if they can see these monuments, does it help pass the time? 

The second leg encompasses the Harlem River.  Swimmers enter the Harlem River at Hell’s Gate.  In this section they must watch for boat traffic including the Circle Line.  I think swimmers give way to those craft.

The final leg begins where the Harlem River joins the Hudson River at Spuyten Duyvil. Swimmers pass under the George Washington Bridge and must stay far enough away from Manhattan to not be sucked into the sewage disposal plant between 145-135th Streets.  I hope Michelle’s suit is very, very tight at this point.   The flotsam is dangerous and jetsam here might be especially nasty.   Besides the ever present sewage danger, swimmers must watch for boats leaving the many piers during parts of this leg. 

Finally, the swimmers pass the financial center of Manhattan and back to Battery Park.

On the English Channel swim, Jane Barry timed Michelle and managed her nutrition.  She is the head crew person this time too.  She will be joined by Michelle’s friend and physical therapist, Kathy.  Those two will help Michelle pace herself, maintain fluids and energy sources, and guide her around things in and on the river.  Jane is great and has fun in a very no-nonsense way when she is on a boat helping Michelle.  Jane just finished her own great accomplishment–the ironman in Idaho two weeks ago and here she is on a boat around Manhattan.  Tom and I will be managing the updates to this site.  Once on the boat is enough.  We know so little and take up space from those who should be on-board.  As exciting as this is to watch, it is hard too.  We will see which is harder, being up close or at a distance. 

Michelle and Jane fly to Manhattan tonight (Wednesday) on the ‘red eye’ from Portland.  They land early tomorrow with enough time to get the lay of the land before Saturday and then fly back very, very early on Sunday and work on Monday.  What a life!

Next, the race.

It is the last weekend before Manhattan.  Thank goodness for tapers!  I only needed to do a 3 hour swim and 2 hour-ish respectively.  Since we are now on summer hours at my job, I typically get in one of the swims on Friday afternoon and the 2nd weekend swim on Saturday.  This allows me to have Sunday off which is a nice luxury for me. 

Before getting into the Friday afternoon swim, I needed to make a complete ass of myself.  I received a few questions from Steven Munatones and it was signed “open water enthusiast.”   Now I try to respond to everyone that has questions on my blog, because I feel we open water swimmers need to stick together and share as much information as possible.  I know that there were a ton of swimmers who helped (and continue to help me) me when I joined the community.  Per normal, I started answering Steven’s questions.  I tried to be as detailed as possible to give the full picture.  I went into the details around marathon swimming, the cold and how/why the body loses so much weight.  I also took time to check out Steven’s website, which I was already pretty familar with due to his listing of top 50 open water swims and the Ocean’s 7.  However, I didn’t see a whole lot about Steven’s open water history.  At the end of my response to Steven, I asked “What is your connection to open water swimming?” 

Steven responded very quickly and started to explain his open water history.  As he detailed the over 30 swims and his professional swimming career my brain decided to kick in…”Oh crud, you are that Steven Munatones.”  Just so you all know I went on to explain in detail open water marathon swimming to one of the great marathon swimmers (one that is inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame no less)!  Ah yes, my foot tasted wonderful.  Steve was a great sport and really an overall good guy.  I recommend checking out his site if you haven’t already www.10Kswimmer.com.  There is a ton of useful open water swimming information in there. 

I can’t thank my friend Courtney Remes enough about convincing me to do this blog.  It has introduced me to so many wonderful people around the world, even if I do make a complete arse of myself sometimes. 

Back to the training, so Friday I decided on a 3 hours swim.  Tim and I went back out to Hagg Lake which has warmed to 72 in the top 12 inches and about 66-68 in the bottom layer.  It was a comfortable swim.  Nothing to out of the ordinary until…the dark shadow appeared.  Tim and I were taking our normal bobbing break.  Ok I was breaking and Tim was humoring me when all of a sudden there was this huge shadow in the water coming right towards me.  I had visions of jaws running through my head.  Where to go?  What to do?  Then I remembered we were in fresh water.  It must be the Loch Ness monster relocating to warmer territory.  I quickly screamed and kicked and swam for broke.  I’m sure I would have beaten Gary Hall Jr.  As I started to dart away I got a good look at “Nessie”.  It was this huge monster of a salamander out enjoying the lake.  (Ok ok it was about 3 inches long and one of the cutest things once Tim grabbed it by the tail).  We spent some bonding time before we watched it swim off.  I began to get jealous of it’s tail as it swished and vanished into the murky waters.

Back to swimming again.  We were on the other side of the lake in our “pier to pier” swim.  (Side note: I misrepresented one of the names of the locations on the lake.  It is not Balthazar, the 3rd of the 3 wise men, but Balder which I don’t have time to google to explain).  Ok so we were over by Lincoln and there was this woman on the boat that kept waving at us.  Now I thought is was my good friend’s mom, Cary, but she was just waving and not saying anything.  I did the required safety check at this point.  Am I still swimming?  Yes.  Am I moving? Yes.  Is Tim still swimming and moving?  Yes.  Are we about to get run over by a boat? No.  Am I bleeding? No.  Is Tim bleeding? No.  Ok all systems are go, what is going on?  Finally Cary did say “Michelle” and with that I knew it was her.  We swam over and spent some time chatting.  It was really a nice little break even if we were treading water.  The rest of the swim was very uneventful if not warm.

Saturday Tim and I drove down to Nehalem Bay at the coast.  It was time to hit the salt water at least once before Manhattan.  I was just going to use this swim to stretch out and warm up.  1-2 hours tops.  As we walked down to the water and stuck our toes in we both realized it was back to the cold water.  Nehalem was running about 52-54 degrees.  Yowsah – that was cold after yesterday’s 72.  But swim we did.  Unfortunately the water was a little cloudy so I didn’t see nearly as many crab as I hoped.  Tim did see them doing their normal dance, which made me very happy.  1 hour 15 minutes later we climbed out of the water and drove over to the showers.  One great thing about Nehalem is there is a campground nearby where we can shower and gradually warm up after our swims. 

Those were the weekend swims.  Nothing too exciting.  Well except for Nessie. 

Monday I awoke with a pain in my right ear.  Not NOW!!!  I quickly scheduled an appointment with the Dr.  It is either swimmers ear or an ear infection neither of which have I had for years.  Oh well, we are treating both and hopefully it will be calmer before I hop on the plane Wednesday night.

Another thing I wanted to mention.  I think I may have to continue to do these crazy swims just to receive Dave Radcliff’s crazy packages.  He is so creative.  My kit included: a surgical mask to keep the water away from the mouth, surgical gloves with strainers attached to sift through anything in the water, Baby Ruth’s so I can study the difference between the good and the bad brown clumps, and a few other humorous items.  I don’t have photos at this time, but I’ll try to post.  It definitely broke some of the tension that I was experiencing last night. 

I believe that Jane will be contacting my Mom through out the swim and Mom will be updating the website.  So keep your eyes peeled.