We came. We saw. We kicked ass.
No, Team RBG didn’t win the Swim Across the Sound this year— or even place for that matter. What we did instead was raise $6200 for St. Vincent’s Hospital’s Cancer Center, helping real people battling real cancer within our own local community. We finished in fine form in just under 8 hours, having each put in four half-hour pulls starting at 8:45 am at Port Jefferson, NY, and finishing around 4:30 pm at Captain’s Cove in Bridgeport, CT. We had Terry as our boat captain again this year, marking his third turn with our team and our third team appearance overall.
Team RBG on the ferry over to Long Island
I was really proud of how our team did. We’re all old guys except Jake, who’s been out of the water for six years and only just started training again five weeks ago. Chris and Stephen have been in for similar amounts of time, with Chris having put in half his training at a lake in Maine just this past month. Meanwhile, Stephen hasn’t swam for any reason other than water polo in… maybe a year?
My personal highlight came right off the beach. I met this 20-something-year-old kid from the Yale Water Polo Team wearing a racing wetsuit while we were waiting for the race to start. We exchanged pleasantries, and then the gun went off, and he smoked me right off the bat. I thought, “Well, this kid is literally half my age and wearing a wetsuit. It sucks, but I better just let him go.”
I lost sight of him.
Yours truly on the opening leg of the Swim.
Turns out, that kid started WAY too fast and cracked. I actually came out of the water several hundred yards ahead of him!
Beyond that, I personally had kind of an unremarkable day. Not sure I managed my taper right, honestly, so that I am today wondering if I didn’t leave myself substantial room for improvement next year. But at the end of the day, no one really cares. We had fun, finished well, and raised a lot of money. These were our actual goals.
According to my watch, I swam a total of 4.1 miles in my four half-hour pulls. It’s kind of hard to evaluate that without a better understanding of the impacts of the tidal currents, but I felt fairly good throughout, and I got faster as the day progressed. In training, my primary goal was always to feel good as the day went on, and that, at least, worked out as planned. I still kind of feel like I should have been faster, but “fast” is quite a relative concept when it comes to marathon swimming, especially in Long Island Sound.
At the finish
I should note, too, that I won the Swim’s DREAM OF LIFE AWARD this year for my work with the Swim since 2015 and especially for organizing Team RBG. So I took the award home, but it was very much a team effort, and winning it made me feel incredibly grateful to my teammates. Getting your buddies together to raise $1500 apiece for a freaking marathon swim is not particularly easy. I am intensely grateful to the guys who’ve answered the call year after year.
Chris, Stephen, Andy, and Jake, you guys are the absolute best. I literally could not have done any of this without you.
Thank you again for your support with the Swim. It means a lot to us, and it means even more to the people whose lives are falling apart as they struggle with cancer. We can’t cure cancer, but we can at least try to help people as they struggle to fight it themselves.
That’s our mission at Team RBG. Thank you for being there for us.
Go Team RBG! BEAT CANCER!!!
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