Seven swimmers, including 4 APG'ers (including Ron "the Shark" B, Ken Wood, Sue "the mermaid" H, and Darren Fortney) made a successful swim across Lake Mendota last Friday.   In all, it was suppose to be a 5.5-mile swim.   When it ended, it was more in the range of a 10K swim due 4-foot waves and steady wind from the west that pushed us way into the eastern banks.

Lots of things go through your head when swimming for that long. For me, the time flew by, for others leg cramping, shoulder aches, and chills came into play later in the swim. Conditions were very very tough for the first 2/3 of the swim. It was kind of a combination of swimming in the ocean and Spirit of Racine. Several times I got a bit dizzy from all the rolling of the waves and white caps.   If you want to feel humbled sometime, go into a middle of a lake and see how far out in the middle of nowhere you actually are. Makes you respect open water quickly.

I remeasured our actual swim path once we got done and looks like we swam well over 6 miles in all. The wind blew us off course pretty bad..........wicked "s" curve caused by the conditions. Should have brought an engineer to draw us a straight line........lol.

Attached is a map of our course.

We made the 6 o'clock news and cap times:
 
http://www.c3ktogo.com/news-video/?mgid=17071

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/293614

Darren