2011 Ederle Swim and Season Wrap-up

It's getting colder, and that's too bad, because this was an awesome summer full of big, long swims, tough challenges, great friends, and a bit of magic.

My final swim of the season was the 17.5-mile Ederle Swim hosted by NYCSwim. the event had been scheduled for October 1, but due to strong winds and a light craft advisory on the course, we got pushed back a day to Sunday, October 2.

The swim is historic, following the route that Gertrude Ederle's 1925 swim took between Sandy Hook, NJ and Manhattan. Being from New Jersey, I had been to Sandy Hook once or twice as a kid and remembered it only as a nudist beach. But as it turned out, it was a really nice place to start a swim, complete with all that famous Jersey shorebreak I loved so much on LBI.

Mark couldn't make it down for the weekend, so I conned Greg into coming along to crew for me. We drove down after work on Friday and arrived in lower Manhattan right around 10pm the night before the intended 4:30 am meeting time. I figured the sleep debt from Memphre would have trained me to handle this small problem of limited sleep, but all the same, I was not looking forward to that alarm going off at 3:45 in the morning.

As it turned out, our late arrival into town ended up being a good thing. We were still awake when we got the call that the swim had been postponed, and we were able to cancel the wake up call and reset the alarms.

That left us at loose ends on Saturday. Here we were in the coolest city in the world with no plan and no real idea of what we wanted to do. We wandered over to the site where the Twin Towers once stood and checked out the new exhibits and memorials in progress there. It was a sobering experience. After that, we headed uptown to go to the Empire State Building. But, seeing as it would cost each of us $22 to go up to the top of the building, and there was a perfectly good brewery right next door, we decided that drinking that $44 was probably the better bet. So we had a couple (delicious) pints and began a half-assed pub crawl around Midtown.

Next stop was the Triple Crown bar, a staple for every visit to Manhattan since Mark and I found it upon getting off the bus for the first MIMS swim in 2009. Then we attempted to check out another place a little further uptown, but it was closed on the weekend. This is when it started to pour buckets, so we hailed a cab and headed back towards the hotel.

Despite getting to bed early, the alarm still went off too soon on Sunday morning at about 4 am. We had to gather up our things, check out of the hotel, go claim the car from the garage, and get to North Cove for a 5 am meeting time.

Everything went smoothly and we were on the boat headed to Sandy Hook for the start of the swim by 6am. It was still remarkably windy and as we drove into the wind, I was glad that I would not have to be swimming into it. I got my fill of headwind during Memphre! I was frozen the whole way down,despite being all bundled up in a damp comforter. The sun rise beyond the Verrazanno Bridge and the lovely views of a slumbering Manhattan made up for being cold.

When we finally got the signal to jump in and swim to shore for the start, I was so glad to get off the boat. We were rolling a lot in place and I was starting to feel a bit seasick, and I was still frozen. I knew the 70 degree water would feel like heaven after that.

I got to shore, chatted with the other swimmers and before we knew it, we were off, swimming towards Manhattan. The wind stirred up the water and created rideable waves, and I felt like I body surfed pretty much the whole way back to the city. I felt great, and everything went like clockwork for the next several hours.

However, within about 2 miles of the finishline, the wind shifted out of the east, and that nice little wind assistance I'd had for 15 miles suddenly disappeared as we neared the Statue of Liberty. The last 2 miles were something of a struggle, so I was glad to finish. Because it was so windy, our boats collected us rather than having us swim into South Cove, and we motored on to North Cove to get back on dry land.

It was a great, well-run and organized swim, and even though it got delayed a day, it all went perfectly. We had a beautiful day and a straightforward swim. And it was just so much fun to be back in the thick of things in NYC.

So with that successful Ederle Swim, that brings my total of big swims this summer to three, with some milage behind them- 27 miles during the 50/50 in July, 25-miles during In Search of Memphre in September, and 17.5-miles during Ederle in October. I think I'm ready for a nap.

We are still laking it a couple days a week, but it will soon be too cold for that, and it will be time to head back to the pool for the winter. Ugh. I am not ready for it, but Mother Nature is, so I'll just have to find a way to cope. And in the meanwhile, I will start planning for next summer. Lots of big swims on my wish list, and with any luck, I'll have some sorted and scheduled for next summer soon.

For now though, it's time for a beer or three and a little nap before the hard training begins again. Good thing it's pumpkin beer season...