"There's no sun up in the sky....Stormy weather..."

This past week's swims were notable for a couple of reasons: The large number of swimmers showing up for even our weekday early-morning swims (as many as 20 last Tuesday); and Rob Martell's introduction of "Cross-Training On the Beach," with a handful (so far) of game West Neck Pod members grunting and gasping through sets of situps, burpee pushups, jump-over burpees,  sprints, weighted squats, step-ups, and conditioning rope exercises before we stumbled into the water for our morning group swims.  As I write this post I am so sore it hurts to smile (ow...) but the soreness is a good indicator of  how not-in-shape I am, despite almost daily swims of 1 to 2 miles. So I'll keep showing up for the cross-training sessions, which will likely be scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings at 7:30, before the 8:00 group swims.  Now there's even talk of pre-swim yoga on the beach on weekday mornings....Stay tuned for more news about that!




Saturday morning's post-cross-training swim (ow...) drew a big crowd of 20-plus swimmers, including not only the long-absent Paul Coster, who usually eschews swimming in favor of his first -- I mean, second  -- love, soccer (sorry, Elisa!); and the-never-before-seen-in-the-open-water-when-the-YMCA-is-not-closed-for-a-national-holiday Paul Nugent, a devout "Poolie" whose schedule allowed only a quick West Neck swim as he was enroute to a family function.  (See you on Labor Day, Paul!)  Also joining us -- or re-joining us -- were a number of alumni of our recent West Neck Swim, as well as a number of newbies.  We swam to "New Beach" and back, but this once-novel swim, which by now has become almost de rigueur, gleaned an asterisk as Joye Brown, Annmarie Kearney-Woods, Paul Coster and I left the main pack on the beach while we swam out and around the jetty to survey the route for the Pod's next "Expotition" (thanks, Christopher Robin).  Just 'round the corner is another little beach with a shack-like structure on it ("Shack Beach"?), and beyond that, a long stretch of open water with no apparent places to make landfall -- but not many boats, either! Late arrivals Carole and Kathy Wickham, who came slicing across the waves "like twin goddesses" (as Paul said) on their stand-up paddleboards (now re-christened "Pod-dle boards"), met us as we approached the south buoy on the return trip, and continued the exploration south almost to Cold Spring Harbor Village. We'll plan to retrace that route sometime in the near future -- even as we continue to make plans for the big 5-Mile Swim north around Lloyd's Point towards Caumsett on August 25th! 

Cloudy skies and the threat of thunderstorms did nothing to deter the even bigger throng of 30-odd swimmers who headed into the water Sunday morning, even as a gentle rain began falling. Some of our returning West Neck Swim veterans were joined in Sunday's swim by our Meet Directors, Rob Ripp and Colleen Driscoll (who will both be part of a relay team swimming around Manhattan on Saturday, August 4th!).  "Pod-dle" boarders Cammy DeRosa and Kathy Wickham, armed with whistles to warn us of the onset of thunder or lightning, accompanied the main pack as it raced from the north to the south buoy then on to New Beach, trying to stay ahead of the seemingly imminent cloudburst. The skies darkened, lightened, then darkened again as the sun ducked in and out of the clouds, and a thin fog drifted in from the south and settled over the harbor.  As the swimmers began making their way back to West Neck Beach, the rain again began falling, but by the time everyone was showered and dressed, the sun was out again...But by late afternoon, the threatened thunderstorms arrived with a vengeance. Tommy Capobianco and his wife Laurie were there at West Neck Beach to capture these amazing photos of the gathering thunderclouds and a dramatic lightning strike directly on the water....a sizzling reminder of why we GET OUT OF THE WATER AT THE FIRST SOUND OF THUNDER!!

The thunderstorms over, and any runoff issues remediated by the several intervening tides, we'll be swimming again this week at 6:30 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and at 8:00 on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings....See you in the Salt!

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