Today I’m in a hotel in Durham, NC and the view is not as spectacular. But I wanted to see if I could upload a pic and a post via my trusty iPhone.

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No, it is not 1945 and we are not referring to Undersecretary of State McCloy’s attempt to prevent the medieval city from destruction via artillery. It’s 2009 and this rolling thunder refers to hordes of tourists (American, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, and German) dragging their wheeled luggage boisterously across cobblestone streets. These modern day foregin invaders are here this time to take photos of the walled city, not to raize it. One wonders if this is not the more insidious kind of destruction.

Welcome to tourist Germany.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber – Rothenberg on the river Tauber (or ROT), is a well preserved medieval village and that is what saved it hundreds of years ago and that is what makes it popular today. ROT hit its stride as one of the 10 largest cities in Europe a milenia ago. Sitting on a hill protected on three sides by steep river embankments, an Imperial decree from the Holy Roman Empire, and stout outer defensive wall encircling the city, ROT was well protected. Blessed by 400 square kilometers of land situated at the nexus of two important trade routes (Rhine to Bohemia and North Sea to Rome), fertile soil, and 180 small towns to tax, Rothenbergers had it good and it shows today.

Though the city was only ever captured once and that was after a 3 day battle towards the end of the 30 years war, that final surrender left it torn asunder. Pillaging was the order of the day and after the 1600’s, the town never, ever recovered. Protected by poverty, the city was forgotten. Rothenbergers barely had enough resources to subside with let alone modernize buildings so the cute antique walls, homes, and squares kept preserved until the late 1800s when tourists re-discovered the town in a time capsule. Since then, tourism has been a source of fortune, and perhaps misfortune.

While it was Rothenberg’s status as a mediveal city that kept the Allies from finishing with artillery what air bombing started, tourism has been the town’s lifeblood for over a century. The city is awash in tourist dollars leaving a visitor feeling processed in a commercial sort of way. That’s not to say that the people are not friendly – they are, nor that the buildings are fake – they are not. The fact remains that an authentic German medieval experience this is not. Think more Epcot center than Disney, but with much higher-end shops.

Perhaps the best lessons one can draw from ROT is how absolutely difficult life has been on this planet for most of human existance. For the vast majority of time people have been concerned with having enough food and water to survive a winter or a seige. The largest concern has been death by privation, fire, war, or pestilence. If by some manor of success people can now afford to travel and view the world as it once was, so much the better. Moeny is far better spent purchasing coo coo clocks, steins, and currywurst than making cannons.

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Some people calmed their nerves by chatting with family. I adjusted my
headphones and started my music. Waiting for the starting gun, I focused on
my opening swim strategy.

Opening Strategy – Part One

Since my plan wasn’t to win the race, just to complete it, I would let the
sprinters get ahead and busy myself with regulating my breathing and
calming my adrenaline. Even though I wasn’t competing for the race, my
personality isn’t built in a way that lets me sit back and relax. When
there is a starting gun I want to race out in front and dominate. Once, in
high school, I managed to make all county for track on the 1600m (~1 mile).
I had made it around the track for one lap at the near front of the pack
only to realize that I had just reached a personal best time – not for the
mile, but for the quarter mile. My time then dropped sharply as my body ran
out of adrenaline to propel me over the remaining 3/4s of a mile. I wasn’t
going to let that happen this time. If I did sprint swim the first half
mile, there would be no chance of me completing mile 5. Easy strokes with
regular breathing was my plan for the entire race. If you have never tried
to swim long distance before allow me to assure you that calm, regular
breathing is the key. Let everyone else be a rabbit that sprinted to the
kayaks. I was going to be the tortoise that finished this race.

Opening Strategy – Part Two

The second part of our two-part opening race strategy concerned meeting up
together at the sandbar. Finding a kayak (or them finding me) was not going
to be easy with over one hundred competitors. We mitigated this by planning
for the kayak to be on the western most part of the sandbar. This would
help my aim as they would be considered a fixed point. Even if I couldn’t
see them per se I would know where they were. Also helping was the expected
current coming in from the Atlantic through the Fire Island Inlet would
be pressing all swimmers eastward. I was going to have to bear West for the
eastern tip of Sexton Island in order to stay on course even past this
first sandbar. If I fell out of range, I would end up having to swim
against the current to the first mile marker. Swimming against the current
is a losing battle. By leaving the sandbar as far west as possible, the
incoming tide would have less of a chance to push me out of range and I
would have a greater chance of actually finishing this thing.

The Reality of the Start

So much is made about starting a new venture. Everyone from your mom
admonishing you to have a healthy breakfast to Kawasaki’s Art of the
Start will tell you that a good, quality start to anything is important. I
wanted my start to be perfect. It wasn’t to be.

Once the gun went off, I dove into the water. Cold, salt water whipped into a frenzy from the storms that had ended just a few hours ago pushed me around. Fighting both current and my own adrenaline, I leveled off and started my stroke. The water was pitch black and the morning sun sat low in the east. Each time I tried to breath on my right side I was blinded by those rays. Breathing on either side ended up being a losing proposition due to the chop. I must have swallowed gallons of water that first half mile.

The First Half Mile – Solo

Slowly, I gained ground. Swimmers from all directions crashed into each other. This is where my opening strategy failed. On the starting line I was positioned on the East (right hand side) of the swimmers. My targeting point was the West most boat (left hand side) on the kayak line. Most of the other swimmers were headed straight for the center of the kayak line. That meant that while I was swimming straight north, 70% of the other swimmers were  headed North East cutting into me at acute angles.

Swimmers, current, and waves from all angles pounded me until I eventually reached the starting line. Other kayaks seaching for their swimmers crossed over me. I reached my kayakers almost by accident. There was so much chop that I never accurately saw them until I heard Devil Dog yell out at me. I was very relieved at finding them.

There was no time to stand on the sandbar and rest. It felt like I was the last to arrive at this begining checkpointIt took me significantly longer than the 15 minute 1/2 mile time I had been running. Topping it all off, my tinted goggles also failed in the mix. The right eye was seeping through. Now that the adrenaline of starting a race was wearing off, my body was exhausted from the effort of the first 11th of the race.

The Second Half Mile – Paired

Now that I had found my kayakers, it was time to start the race. I was already more tired now that I was when I completed a solo 2 mile race at Mountain Island Lake in North Carolina several weeks earlier. It was disheartening to realize that I still had 4.75 miles left to go on an angry ocean!

DevilDog and my Dad aimed the kayak toward the first mile marker check in. We were to pass through gates set up by manned powerboats and yell out our numbers as we passed through. Since I was fighting for breath with each stroke, I hoped that my kayakers planned on doing the talking for me.

If anything, the chop got rougher after the sandbar. I could feel the full force of the angry Atlantic ocean pushing through Fire Island Inlet. Waves from all directions hammered me. I could not swim straight on plane and drive with my torso for an efficient stroke. When I would breath on my glide, I would get a face and mouth full of water. Sometimes the force of the waves would toss me over on to my back or stand me straight upright like I was trying to swim to the sky.

You are trained to not try and force a breath when you are swimming. If a wave hits you and you get a mouthful of water when you try to breathe, you just continue your stroke, spit the water out, and try to breathe next stroke. That’s the good thing about swimming long distance; you get many, many opportunities to make the next stroke better than your last and to keep making progress. Unfortunately, in really rough seas, you are forced to stop your momentum and lift your head straight out of the water to catch your breath. Not really the most efficient way of doing things.

When we finally did reach the first mile marker, Devil Dog yelled out my number and told me my time. It had been an hour since I had left shore. It felt like a millennium. That was twice my expected time. At this pace I would never possibly finish. one mile per hour would put me in at five and a half hours and I didn’t think that I could last that long. I was beaten and sore from the waves. I was nauseous from being spun around, bobbing up and down, and swallowing so much salt water. I was not sure that I was going to be able to keep going.

Luckily, I didn’t have to decide whether to keep going. All I had to do was keep going for as long as I could. I remember thinking that I had already trained 18 months for this day and that while my training must not have been good, hard, or strict enough, I was going to have to finish anyway. 1 mile was not enough to make me quit. Maybe 2 miles would be. I didn’t know. I set my sites on the 2 mile marker and kept swimming.

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Ok, just watch this one if you’re really, really bored.

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Bleary-eyed, I crept down the stairs to the first floor of my parent’s Long
Island home and busied myself making coffee. It was strangely quiet
outside. Such a dramatic counter to the stormy day before.

Just yesterday I watched wind stirring up 4′ seas on the Great South Bay
over an egg bagel breakfast. The rough seas were enough to give the Tuna
Club’s annual tournament pause setting up. After all, who could set up
fairway tents with 20+ mph wind whipping in their faces? Heck, I had enough
fun getting soaked picking up the rental kayak my support team was going to
lead me with. My kayaker was delayed, stuck in a Charlotte airport for
hours waiting for the East Coast storms to die down enough for a plane to
take off.

I checked my email messages on my phone. No cancellations had come through.
I checked the website. No warnings were listed. A year earlier a storm had
kept me from even reaching New York. I had learned from the Cross Bay swim
website the at the 2008 event had been cancelled as I waited for 8 hours on
a Charlotte plane that would never depart. It looked like I would really
have to do this thing.

Everyone was quiet we ate breakfast. A knock on the door signalled my
kayaker had made it. It was time to go.

Time to Go

We drove over the Great South Bay, tracing the route I would take. Crossing
the Robert Moses bridges I tried to visualize myself swimming the entire
distance. I couldn’t. Heck, it takes nearly a half hour to drive over the
distance. The swim didn’t seem real. Somehow I remembered a friend of mine
telling me that he had spent the first 30 some-odd years of his life not
taking a real airplane flight. He had taken off in 5 planes as an adult and
sky-dived out of all of them. When he finally flew down to see me, he had
thought the idea of touchdown novel.

We had a caravan of 2 cars. We dropped the kayak off at the end of the road
and deposited my 2 kayakers in it, along with such provisions we would need
for the crossing – water, sun block, extra goggles, etc. The rest of us
drove to Robert Moses Field 5, parked and walked to the Fire Island
lighthouse. After about 15 minutes of searching along boardwalks and the
bay coast, we found sign up. This was exactly opposite of what most
competitors did; brought their kayaks and selves over on the early AM
ferry.

There were over 100 people carrying kayaks, stepping over each other,
trying to get sorted after getting off the ferry. It was chaos. Our 2 man
kayak was one of the larger ones and since we got there earlier than most,
we secured a spot directly in the way of everyone debarking. We busied
ourselves removing excess items from the kayak. Did we really need a CASE
of water bottles? No. Did I really need 2 boxes of granola bars? I had no
idea. I hadn’t eaten much that morning so they stayed. Bailout buckets were
made ready, life jackets adjusted, and sun block applied. I donned my
wetsuit – it’s called a farmer John because it looks exactly like what
you’d think a pair of neoprene overalls would look like. I applied a ton of
anti-chafing lube to the places the wetsuit would likely wear one me,
fitted my cap, selected my trusty pair of goggles, queued up my MP3 player
music and was set.

With nothing to do but enjoy the sunrise, I looked around at the other
competitors. The field was some 70% male. Ages widely varied. It looked
like some families of 18 years to 50 years old, some couples, but mostly
individuals.

I noticed one guy who looked older than God and got worried. Seriously, he
had a Dumbledore/Gandalf-esque beard. Most 30 year olds in a race would be
happy to try their endurance vs father time. Not me. I figure if you
learned to swim alongside Jonah, and are still doing it today on a 5.25
mile open water course you’re either there to meet your maker or your very
confident in your ability. Either way, I was steering away from that guy.

Another couple of people had decided to do the swim without a wetsuit. They
looked serious. And in shape. Nearly everyone here was in tremendous shape.
Including Dumbledore. I had a sinking feeling I was about to get my butt
kicked. A lot of people had swim club shirts and college team shirts.
Personally, I was wearing my favorite old Hokie sweatshirt. The big
difference was that the only time I had spent in a pool in college was
evenly divided between a 1 credit life guarding class freshman year and
playing the world’s greatest game – Coed Inner Tube Water Polo. These
people looked strikingly similar to real collegiate swimmers.

Kayaks in the Water

With 15 minutes left it was time for the kayakers to head off to Farmer
Shoals – a shallow point just over a half a mile away. We, the swimmers,
were to meet our kayakers at the shoal. It seemed like an easy enough task.
The event organizers had stationed a boat on either side of the shoal and
asked that the kayakers take up position in between. As my kayakers paddled
off I was surprised at how much they had bounced. The water LOOKED calm
from my vantage point. I was wrong.

I watched my kayakers paddle until I couldn’t see them anymore. I wasn’t
worried. I had swum half mile courses for almost 2 years now. Heck, the
first leg of my practice was a half mile stretch from my community park to
a multimillion dollar house on the other side. I had run that course so
many times that I could do it with ease. This should be no different,
right?

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