TBFS2019 - Tampa Bay Frogman Swim, 2019

~130 swimmers ready at the start line. All the swimmers (~130) line up for the traditional group photo. Next we'll be broken into groups of 20, each with a color coded cap. Then we'll be started 5 minutes apart for each group. In the photo below, our red hatted group gets ready to swim out to the start line. (I'm in the silver sleeved wetsuit.) The swimmer on the left edge of the photo is going to have a tough swim (& lose a few pounds.) Great guy that he is, he finished, toweled off then headed off to an out of country flight later on in the afternoon. The Red Wave gets ready to move out to the start line. Lynn and I get ready to round the turn to the finish line. (My arm is the splash to her left and below the light blue kayaker.) The route we swam and that Lynn flawlessly navigated. Meanwhile, my oldest grandson is looking thru his camera's viewfinder trying to spot my arm and Lynn's kayak, while Dad, on the right, is using ...

I've had the privilege to honor the following fallen Navy SEALS over the past three Tampa Bay Frogman Swims: - 2016 HMCS (SEAL) Theodore Fitzhenry - 2017 CDR (SEAL) Job Price - 2018 SOC (SEAL) Chris Kyle And this year is even more special. Why? First off, there's a bit of pertinent family history. I joined the Army in 1972 to become a cryptographic technician. (The Army Signal School produced about 200 Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine cryptographic techs per year during that time frame. And the technology has evolved very rapidly since then.)  After I got out of the service, my sister Kathleen joined the Army and became a "ditty bopper", slang for a Morse Code intercept operator (think Military Intelligence for radio communications). After a long-ish while in school Kathleen wound up in Berlin, when it was still East/West. One of her buddies was Diana Pike. Diana had a son, Christian Michael, born the day before Kathleen's birthday in 1981. Christian would, like ...

Yesterday, Lynn & I swam Lake Maitland from Ft. Maitland to just beyond the point of Isle of Sicily. It was a 2.2 mile round trip. My goal was to make sure that the recipe and sequence of fuel (Ensure) and fluids (NUUN - an electrolyte water additive) worked. In previous distance training swims I've always stopped to re-hydrate and sometimes have a snack. The time penalty is just fine for a training swim. Alas, I'm interested in getting faster. (Last year I dropped ~ 10 minutes off of the previous year's time, down to 1:32 from 1:43.)  (See the end of the email to donate.) So yesterday was the four Fs: fuel, fluid, form, & focus. And, quite frankly, we did well on those measurement criteria. However there are many things beyond our control that we have to adjust to. Yesterday's obstacle was winds out of the north northwest at about 25 mph. Did you know you can estimate wind speeds by observing a standard size flag (3 ft X 5 ft)? Use the bottom seam as an angle i...

5 weeks to go! Lynn West Hupp & I are ramping up the training. More about Lynn's training in a minute. I learned to swim post-cancer. The radiation, surgery, and so forth demolished my fitness levels. (I'd run 13 marathons and two ultra marathons before cancer.) One of my gym rat buddies suggested using swimming as a physical recovery tool. Learning to swim in your 50s is interesting - to say the least - especially when you've got the buoyancy of a rock. I took about three years to get any good at it. And then our swim group started swimming at Lucky's Lake - very occasionally, like once a year. Eventually my distance training and fitness level returned so I started looking for longer swim challenges. Voila! The Tampa Bay Frogman Swim (TBFS). TBFS is fundraiser for the Navy Seal Foundation (NSF) - a cause I love to support. Why? The simple fact is that for the past 120 years and four generations my family has been supporting the military either in active service or ...

Why? 'Tis a popular question. But the simple fact is that for the past 120 years and four generations my family has been supporting the military either in active service or in disability (the full details are on my donation page @ https://tinyurl.com/TBFS2019). And I've been publicly supporting the Navy Seal Foundation (NSF) for the past 5+ years. Let me give you a quick example on why I support the NSF - from one of the NSF's beneficiaries: “I would truly like to thank you for all of the help you gave me in my time of need. I’m sorry I did not do so earlier, but I have been getting situated at my home. My family and I truly appreciate everything you did to get us off the street and into this home. When I am back in the black, I will definitely start contributing to this foundation. You are a lifesaver--there truly was no one helping me. I was trying to get help through the VA, and I was told it would be 3 to 4 months before I even got my case heard by them. You did this wi...

People often ask me why I raise money for the Navy Seal Foundation. There are several. I grew up in a family with a long history of military service running from the 1890s thru today... My maternal grandfather was a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish-American War. He was disabled in that war. A paternal uncle, who served in the Navy in the Phillipines, was a Japanese POW during WW II. Two other paternal uncles also served in the Navy crossing little islands across the Pacific during WW II. My Dad was in the Army and served in Korea during the Korean War. He was disabled in Korea. Likewise, my Mom was in the Navy as a morse code intercept operator during the Korean war stationed stateside. She was also disabled as a result of a Navy Corsair that crashed into the intercept operations building engulfing the building in a rather spectacular fireball. And to continue the trend, my sister was career Army and died a 100% disabled veteran. Her son, my nephew, was injured by an...