Team RBG 2.0 & the Swim Across the Sound

Friends,

As many of you know, I'm competing in this year's Swim Across the Sound to support St. Vincent's Hospital's Cancer Center.  The Swim is a 15-mile open water event that starts in Port Jefferson, NY, and finishes on the far side of Long Island Sound in Bridgeport, CT.  Team RBG 2.0 is entered in the Classic (No Wetsuit) category, which means that we'll swim as a relay, taking half-hour pulls while a boat motors slowly alongside us.  We have a team of legitimately talented swimmers -- Andy and I both swam for the Army Swim Team, Class of 1995, while Chris and Stephen are experienced triathletes (and Navy vets).  However, we'll have the tide against us this year, making this a serious challenge.

We're going to beat it, though, and we're going to beat cancer, too.

Swim, Bike, Run, Live, Love, Repeat

“I want it all.

“I want it all.

“I want it all.

“And I want it now!”

― Freddie Mercury from Queen’s, “I Want It All”

I trained through the fall and into the spring, improving my fitness while remaining conscious of the fact that I could no longer afford the kind of single-minded devotion that had made me a champion in the pool.  I wanted to race and do well, but I needed to be a good father and a good husband, and I needed to find meaning in my professional work as well.  I had to find balance.  I ran Brian’s Beachside Boogie, an off-road run-bike-run duathlon, in the spring of 2009 and followed it up in June with the HealthNet Olympic Triathlon at Connecticut’s Indian Well State Park.  This was my first Olympic distance race, and it proved to be much more of a struggle than I’d expected.  I finished in just over three hours, realizing in the process that I would need to recommit to training longer before my next Olympic distance race.  

Swim Across the Sound 2017

Alright folks.  As promised, here's the fundraising pitch:

Click here to support St. Vincent's Hospital and me!

I’ve just entered the 2017 Swim Across the Sound to support St. Vincent’s Medical Center.  For those of you who don’t know, cancer pretty much wiped out my family, taking both grandmothers, my grandfather, my mother, and even hitting my father, though he survived.  This particular event is therefore very close to my heart.  If you have a bit of time, I would very much appreciate your support.

My friend Ben took this during the 2015 Swim Across the Sound.

The Swim Across the Sound is a relay marathon swim.  We swim 15 miles from Port Jefferson, NY, to Bridgeport, CT.  My part will probably be about 4 miles, which is a long way but by no means the upper limit of my swimming abilities.  I did this event in 2015 and really enjoyed myself.  I’ve been swimming a lot this year, especially open water, and my wife encouraged me to enter after a recent 3-mile swim a few weeks ago.

More details, including support information, are included via the link below.  Please feel free to forward the link to this post to anyone you think might be interested in supporting the cause.  I’ve gotten a late start at fundraising and have been assigned to a team that needs a quite a bit of support right now.

This is a blatant emotional appeal to all the Army grads out there.
I know you can afford to support my cancer charity.  PLEASE HELP!

Click here to support St. Vincent's Hospital and me!

Thank you very much !

Swim Across the Sound

I'm signed up for a team for St. Vincent’s SWIM Across the Sound Marathon Swim.  It's an annual charity swimming race that supports cancer prevention, education and assistance programs.

St. Vincent's Swim Across the Sound.

If you didn't know, my entire family was killed by cancer.  Both my grandmothers, my grandfather, my mother, and Sally​'s father all died as a result of cancer, and my father got cancer but survived, though it was one of the critical elements in his later descent.  If you can help support this charity, I think it is a worthy cause.  For me, it's a uniquely personal cause.

Click here to support our team!