Return to Sender [Chicken Swims]

I’m in the process of training for the long END-WET swim that takes place in North Dakota on July 13th. Training has not been going well, due to time constraints, and when the Smelts suggested a 10k postal swim I jumped at the opportunity.

I made up my little bottle of feeds in the morning, double checked everything on my list, drove for 90 minutes to the UIC pool and then realized I’d forgotten my suit, cap and goggles. I DID find a nose clip in my handbag and a snorkel in the boot of my car, so I wasn’t completely empty handed. For a change, I was wearing a bra and undies, so I could have relied on those. Thankfully my teammate Heidi had a spare suit and goggles, and another teammate Michael had a spare cap. No getting out of it.

People almost never ask me what goes on in my mind during my long swims, so here’s a yard by yard description of all my thoughts:

0-1000:
1000-2000:
2000-3000:
3000-4000:
4000-5000: hate swimming
5000-6000: hate swimming
6000:7000:
7000:8000:
8000-9000:
9000:10,000: food