Lake Champlain

i think it was 1 or 1.5 miles longer than 8. i finished in about 4:12. john met a couple of lampreys. i puked once (the game warden's boat exhaust got me with about 2 miles to go) all in a days work!

This sounds sort of frightful. I'd like to hear any further details, as it's been in my future plans. Thanks.

I love the idea that the course was longer than it should have been. Gives me hope that maybe I was a bit faster than I thought. I was feeling a bit discouraged...I had really hoped to go closer to 4 hours for the 8 miles, and instead, I was 4:37. All in all, I had a great time, even if I didn't feel that way between miles 2 and 4. I much preferred this course to last year, even just in terms of boat traffic. It doesn't quite have the drama of the last course in terms of bragging rights, but it was certainly better for my family hanging out on the shore! Patty, congratulations! Glad you made it safely and I hope you had a great time!

Thanks for the congrats, but given your excellent time, I feel unworthy! I think that navigation was a real factor in how long my swim felt. We overshot the narrows south by a substantial distance, swept by currents and waves. Then I wasted about ten minutes crying in frustration and almost quit, before I just basically sucked it up and decided to finish. I think I'll be back next year, tho. I need to do some indoor stuff to develop speed. This is still relatively new to me ( excuses, excuses.) Plus, I'm old:)

i did this swim 9 years ago without training for it. it was more than double the distance of any open water swim i had done, and the weather preceding the swim "turned" the lake over so the water was in the low 60's. i was cold from the start so didn't hydrate enough. by mile 5 i was starting to doze, and was swimming half the time with my eyes closed. i swam into my kayaker several times and the last mile took me over an hour. it was a hot day and when i crawled out of the water, i laid face down in the warm sand and immediately fell asleep.