Hey all,
I know they hold a couple of tri's in the area that include a Schuylkill swim. After one of them, I was talking to a guy who participated, and he said he often did practice swims in the Schuylkill on his own.
I can't see myself doing that--not ready to assume the risks of swimming alone in that river--but are there ever organized swims outside of the triathlons?
I'm not interested in doing the tri's (the bike part never interested me, and I have a gimpy foot so can't run), but I think it would be cool to just do the swim portion of a tri (although I'm not fast enough for a team to see me as an asset if they want to be competitive)--even better if they'd ever have stand-alone o.w. swims, since the location is so convenient for me.
Has anyone gotten word of stand-alone swims in the works?
I knew someone on the Temple rowing team who accidentally fell into the Schuykill and got a nasty rash after only being in there for 30 seconds. The river is extremely polluted, or at least it was 10 years ago when I lived in Philly. It was bad enough to kill most of the shad that attempted to swim upstream and spawn.
It is possible that they've cleaned it up since then. I would recommend checking the water quality levels before you go. Here in WA we have websites that list real-time levels for fecal coliform, etc. Maybe Philly has something similar?
I knew someone on the Temple rowing team who accidentally fell into the Schuykill and got a nasty rash after only being in there for 30 seconds. The river is extremely polluted, or at least it was 10 years ago when I lived in Philly. It was bad enough to kill most of the shad that attempted to swim upstream and spawn.
It is possible that they've cleaned it up since then. I would recommend checking the water quality levels before you go. Here in WA we have websites that list real-time levels for fecal coliform, etc. Maybe Philly has something similar?
