Runner Insight

The Great Chesapeake Bay Swim

 Hi ho…

Vision Runner here…

Today I’d like to share with you a blog post from a Twitter friend: triathlonmom. She did the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim last summer. OR perhaps I should say she battled her way through the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim…

I really like including the story of other people’s accomplishments here on the blog, as they really inspire and motivate me to focus on breaking through my barriers. The whole point of this blog is to inspire people to Dare to Envision a New Reality for themselves. Everyone has obstacles, whether they’re physical, mental, emotional, financial, spiritual or some combination thereof. So we all have barriers to break through and a story to share…

So even though this story isn’t mine, I’d like to share a little hope and inspiration with you.

I’ve included the first part of her story here, and there is a link at the bottom of this page to the rest of the story including her great pictures (check out her incredibly scary sunburn – yikes!) . So please enjoy…and be inspired!

As always, we welcome, plead and beg for comments below. Thanks!

How ’bout it?

-Vision Runner

I guess I should start in telling this story by telling you where my journey began. I’m not sure what year it was, perhaps it was 1983 when I was 10, or perhaps it was several years later. I read an article in The Washington Post. It was a first person account of swimming across the Chesapeake Bay — some kind of officially organized event…..The author described hearing this kayaker blow a lifeguard whistle repeatedly. The author/swimmer couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong, was he breaking some rule? Going off course? Later he found out that the man swimming beside him was blind and was following the sound of the whistle to get across the Bay.

I’m not exactly sure why, but I found this story incredibly moving. My dad is blind and I have watched him year after year as his sight has diminished. Bit by bit, it seems my dad was swallowed whole by his vision loss. And with each year there was less and less that he could do. In contrast, here was someone who was accomplishing something great, doing something that many many sighted people wouldn’t dream of attempting, and he was doing it in spite of his blindness. The blind swimmer had found a way to strip the power from his blindness. And while I watched my father take one path, I knew that when I grew up, whatever hardships I was dealt in my life, I wanted to be like the blind swimmer, not my dad.

I guess to help you understand this I should mention, that I have no idea what it would be like to go blind. I can’t imagine the pain that my father has endured at having his sight taken away from him bit by bit over all of those years of my childhood. But before you question me for judging him, I should also tell you that the blindness he has is heredetary. And while I am not a high risk to be blind myself, I could. Growing up, I had doctors visit after doctors visit where they were always testing me for it. And, I was always on the lookout for it come up behind me like a shadow over my shoulder. And more than one time in my life, I was convinced that I was going to lose my sight too. Mentally, I spent many years preparing myself to suffer the same fate, and many years I tried to push myself on the path of the blind swimmer, so if fate dealt me that card I would handle it better than my father, who allowed himself to be defined by his illness, growing more bitter and frustrated each day.

Simply stated, I was amazed — that there could be someone who responded to his fate so differently than my dad. At that time, I was not inspired to swim the bay myself, but just inspired by the will of that man. The passion, the desire for life. By the iron will that he found and the strength and courage he displayed, to try something great in the face of adversity.

Years later, in my 30′s after doing triathons for a while, on some race calendar or on some blog, somehow I was reminded again of the The Great Chesapeake Bay Swim. Instantly, I remembered being so moved by that article when I was so much younger. I searched for several hours trying to locate it in the Washington Post archives, but with no luck. I did learn the history of the Bay Swim though, and read a newer article about open water swimming by Caroline Kettlewell, who I actually got to meet at the swim.

Then, the thought crossed me. I could swim. Triathlons had served as a vehicle for me to realize that I could swim across the Chesapeake Bay if I put my mind to it. Last year, at this same time, I had conquered many fears and obstacles to complete my first half-iron distance race, Eagleman. That took me over 7 and a half hours and over 6 months of intense training. I could certainly swim the 4.4 miles of the bay. I’d done the 1.2 miles in the VERY choppy waters at Eagleman in 39 minutes. I guess this is what made me think I might actually complete the Bay Swim in 2 and a half hours or so.

After researching the history of the bay swim, I realized that maybe I was getting in a little over my head. Not only did I have to qualify for the swim, but also, I had to enter a lottery to be selected to participate.

Then I read this information on the Great Bay Swim website:
Is it dangerous? Among the difficulties that may be encountered during the
average 2 hour 25 minute swim are flailing arms and legs during the “Cuisinart
start,” cross currents, swells, chop, hypothermia if the water is cold, nettle
stings if the water is warm, and collisions with the bridge supports or rocks
surrounding the jetties, islands and causeways.The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has measured tidal, current and weather
conditions prior to the event and compared the results with predicted
conditions to determine the optimum starting time for the event. How does
it affect the race? As a result, 79-97 % of the starters finished the race in the
last 5 years. Prior to this, in 1991 and 1992, a strong ebb current of about 2
knots in the main channel beneath the 200-feet high spans (one and a half miles
from the start) precluded all but the strongest and most determined
swimmers from finishing the event (only 15-19 % finished the swim).

And, for some reason, I still signed up…  

Here’s the link to the rest of the story…. Great Chesapeake Bay Swim Race Report

(Side NOTE: when you get there, there’s a pink circle on the right that’s going to start playing music at you if you have your speakers hooked up. Click the bottom section of the circle to stop it if you prefer.)

Here it is again in longer format:

http://triathlonmom.blogspot.com/2008/06/great-chesapeake-bay-swim-race-report.html

Popularity: 1% [?]

^Click Arrow To Listen

Here we are at the end of an amazing and life-changing 2008. I thought I would take this opportunity to thank all of you: my loyal readers from the beginning four months ago, the ones that have joined us en route, and to thank and welcome all the new friends that have joined us from Twitter and MySpace and other avenues more recently. We appreciate you all, and truly hope that all of you are getting as much from this blog as we are.

I’ve had the website/blog up for four months now, with about 60 posts in those four months, and readership is continuing to grow! You’ve been hearing from me, so now I’d like to hear from you. What do you like about the website? What would you like to see more of? Is there something you would like us to do that we are not currently doing? If so, please leave us a comment. We want this website to be a place where you can come to be inspired, or even to have a laugh or two. We truly want to make your time at the website well worth spending here. So with that in mind, if there is anything we are doing right, please let us know, and if you want to see something else or even if there is something that we’re doing that you want more of, tell us that too! It would be cool to have enough feedback to put up a great testimonial page with written and photo and video testimonials from our readers! In fact, since I just thought of that … why not do it? I’ll tell you what. We’ll look into setting up a way and a place online for our readers to upload content…we’ll keep you informed, and let you know once we figure it out. In the meantime, use the comment form, and be sure to participate in our Top Ten commenting contest (explained below and on this recent Monday’s post).

I am absolutely having a blast writing the posts and making the videos. The videos have been especially fun for me, as I’ve always enjoyed the visual arts. It’s obviously harder now for me, with my vision issues, but I still love doing them, and I just have to ask for help from my lovely assistant and editor now and again.

As a recap of 2008, I started this blog at the end of August/beginning of September, with a desire to share my passion for running and inspiration for making great things happen in life. We’ve personally seen any number of miracles happen this year on several fronts, including in our health, our relationships, our standard of living, and spiritually. We’ve learned to expect great things to happen, and it is producing magic and miracles for us. We’ve got even greater goals to manifest this year, and I’m expecting huge, major breakthroughs now that we’ve cleared the way with some grace and spiritual healing. We’ve recently written and adopted the philosophy of Be Here, Be Open, Surrender and Allow…and it’s working. Great things are coming.

Once I started this blog, we quickly came to the conclusion that three times a week would be a good middle ground for the number of new posts I could come up with. More than that, and it would just be too much; less than that, and I wouldn’t be able to create a good connection with you. Although I have had multiple requests to publish new content every day, that’s probably not going to happen. Three times a week seems to be a good balance.

In order to make things more interactive, we held a Halloween contest, with several interesting submissions, and the winner’s true Halloween story about a Cowboy and a Princess was given the place of honor as our blog post on Halloween. We’re looking forward to even more great submissions for the contest next year.

I wrote a book this year, a simple little free downloadable eBook that’s available to everyone. It’s called “Gifts For Runners – More Than 50 Unique and Creative Gifts For The Runner In Your Life” We got this out just before Thanksgiving to satisfy the demand from holiday shoppers as non-runners looking for great gift ideas for the runner in their life. And the best part of the book is that there are easy links to online resources to see pictures and descriptions of the items mentioned, and some can even be ordered online, directly from the link.

As straight-forward as running is, it seems as though the whole psychology of running is kind of a mystery to the non-runner. And as my partner (still a non-runner…so far …diabolical grin) is wont to say “Why would I want to run unless someone was chasing me?” So, thanks to the non-runners and quite a few runners as well, we’ve had over 60 downloads of the free eBook in the past month, and it’s still available by filling in the form on the sidebar. And just to let you know, the gift ideas are not just for the Christmas season; they can be used all year long, for your runner’s birthday, anniversary, Easter, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, etc. So if you haven’t downloaded your free copy yet, you should do so immediately, if not sooner

And oh yeah, don’t want to forget to tell you, I’m working on another book that will be done sometime this year (2009) about my training as a legally blind runner to run in my first marathon. So watch for it!

We had a great review of our website come from Traxee.com, a website designed specifically for women runners. So thanks a bunch to them. They also helped to promote our give-away of the eBook, “Gifts For Runners” as did the blogsite RunWithDogs.com. So thanks to them as well.

We published a few articles online, as well as sent out a press release about the launch of the RunnerInsight.com website, so we’re getting the word out there, slowly but surely.

We set up a MySpace page this fall, and recently joined Twitter, so you can follow me on those sites as well. And Twitter is great for more frequent short updates of what I’m doing off and on through out the day.

We’ve had some great comments on the blog posts, and look forward to even more this year. Right now we’re looking to define the Top Ten Runner Insight Blog Posts of 2008, so vote for your favorites by leaving comments on your top ten favorite posts. Every comment left between now and Jan 30th will be entered into a random drawing for a fabulous prize. See all the details in our Monday December 29th post.

Once again thanks for coming back to check out the new content, and re-reading the old. And thanks for telling all your friends! Remember if you click on any of the links at RunnerInsight.com and end up getting something from that linked site, we get a small percentage to help support some of the costs of running this blog. Hey, every little bit helps. And don’t forget that you can subscribe to all the new posts on the blog via email or RSS feed absolutely free…There’s a spot to do that at the top of the sidebar

Okay. I guess that’s it for now, but I’m here to tell you that I’m looking forward to 2009 being even better with all new content and more exciting contests and some fabulous surprises, too!
Thanks again…We appreciate you!

How ‘bout it?

-Vision Runner

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