July 4th

Hey everyone,
I can't believe it has been three months since I have posted. I apologize, but to be honest although I have been extremely busy not a ton of interesting stuff has happened. Well a little.
I took 8 weeks for my shoulders to heal completely. Amazingly, I have no pain at all and have been getting in the pool a little. I am slow and out of shape, but it will come. I began riding my bike and running quite a bit after the swim so I didn't lose too much aerobic base that I had built up over the swim months. I have been training for a handful of sprint tri's and will do a half IM in October. I began working with an old friend and coach, Terry Butts, recently. I will see the improvements quickly as he pushes me a ton. I actually like it though. I do not enjoy just doing workouts without goals and if possible i like to use a coach or set program. As I have said before I am coachable and will just about anything that a coach tells me, as long as I belive in the coach.
In May we had a get together with most of the Team at a friend of mine's house. Very nice to see everyone and hang out and talk about the swim a little. My mom made me a really nice scrapbook and framed a news article for me. I enjoyed it a lot. It is funny how on event can draw people so close together and then everyone goes back to there lives the next day. It is kind of a a surreal feeling. I have gotten to train with a few of the "boat people" and one in particular, Jeff Beck, has become a good friend and is getting more involved with Rocketkidz.
FRESH has completely blown up! It has been great. Business is basically double what it was as rocket. Funny how that works. I am planning another store sometime in the next year. The search for the right location has been trying as it truly is all about LOCATION.
Jeff Beck is going to help me get the Rocketkidz Foundation to the next level. I have decided to wait till later this year to do any events on the coast, camps or otherwise, as I do not want to just throw something together. In addition, Jeff and I are looking at many ideas for camps, events, and field days. We are excited and are working towards making this thing pretty big.
Jeanne is training for the second rocketchix tri and my kids are growing like weeds. will keep you posted as things progress and I start racing again. There has been a litttle bit of talk about the English Channel as my next big challenge. YOu have to plan 2-3 years out to get an optimum swimming slot with good tides and water temps. Amazing.

have agreat fourth!
Pat

now what?

the last couple fo weeks have been a whirlwind. reality comes hard and fast. after i rested sunday, i was back to work on monday the 2nd. I spent 2-3 days blogging. i don't feel like i even broke the surface of what this swim was and is to me. i just usually tell people it was awesome. many people who are not athletic just kind of look at me like it is crazy (or i'm crazy). money is still coming in and i am begining to contemplate what is next. i have run a few times and look forward to getting on my bike soon. i will swim for the first time on friday morning. i quit taking celebrex on last monday and have had some pain and creaks since. i wil take it easy for another few days and will contemplate the next move.

Cool Press Coverage

Hey,
For me this is very cool. Inside Triathlon picked up the stroy and put it on their website.

www.insidetriathlon.com

Satelite Swim Route

This is the swim route from g-map pedometer. It is 31.8 miles, but is straigh lines. I didn't swim straigh much as the boat gps had 34.1 miles. I will try and manipulate this to show different points i spoke about in my story. The 16 mile point is Gulfport Harbor. The Penthouse apartment pier is between the 23 and 24 mile points. The Pass harbor is at the 27 mile point. You can click and drag the map to see different points. To zoom in you need to type in gulfport, ms or another town and then change the zoom level on the right.
enjoy

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=834348

Finish Pictures

http://picasaweb.google.com/rocketboys32/RocketboyS32

Cut and paste this link to view pictures of the finish.
rocketboy

POST SWIM

POST SWIM
After the immediate finish there was a sense of elation on the beach that I can’t describe. The best way I can is to imagine the greatest accomplishment of your life, and then imagine that 50 people or so feel the exact same way as you do and are with you to enjoy it. I hugged my team; my family again, shook hands, cried and sat down on the ice chest. Joey and Brother Ronald from St. Stanislaus helped me take off my wetsuit top. Ed and Brady slapped a bag of ice on either shoulder. Besides being a little tired, I felt fine. This was an aerobic effort for me as my heart rate rarely got over 100. I looked at my HRM after and it said my avg for the swim was 74. At one point I stopped and rested on my back and the team asked me where my HR was and it was 34. I am unsure if it tweaked a little bit, but it made sense. I was rolling with the waves trying not to fight it all night. The only thing that makes me think it went a little haywire is that it said I peaked at 232. This is impossible for me as the maximum HR I have ever reached is 178. We took time, reveling in the beautiful day, and the sense of togetherness and relief was awesome. A group from Baton Rouge came over, Ann, Marie, and maybe someone I didn’t see. If so sorry. Friends from my childhood, Martha and Tommy Letard, Missy Alllen and others were there. W, Joie and SJ, I will not list them all, but you get the point. Tom Atkinson, one of the original kayakers was there to shake my hand. I had worried about he and Abe through the night. Brother Ronald and a group of students from St. Stanislaus who had walked down to the beach were there too. Various residents who stopped as they drove by and wondered what was going on this early on a Saturday morning also stopped. We got our stuff together and headed up the street to the home of the Letards, who so graciously offered it for our team to clean up and grab a bite to eat. I ate two bites of a muffin and had a cup of coffee. I wasn’t hungry. Must have been too much salt water. After the rush of adrenaline we all felt after the swim, everyone was starting to decompress and the underlying exhaustion was coming out. I got some first aid on my foot, could have had stitches, but after soaking in the water for 8 hours it was fine…I guess. I got a tetanus shot yesterday to be sure. We rode home and I took a 3-hour nap. Woke up ate some pizza and went to bed early. Shoulders were sore, but nothing permanent. I will be fine sometime this week.

I keep reading and re-reading this to see what I am leaving out. I am leaving out a ton. When I read it the swim sounds surreal. When I add in that I did it in the dark it sounds even more surreal, and when I add in the fact that the only thing that could have made it worse weather-wise was rain, or another hurricane, I laugh. You are making this up. While I was out there, I didn’t think it was any big deal. I know now that it was to others, but to me, it was what I had set out to do. I was completely surprised and unprepared due to the conditions, but I somehow didn’t think that much about it. I was too busy swimming to worry about it. I was more concerned about the Team and how miserable they must be. I was talking to my wife last night and told her that besides the points around Gulfport harbor, I never felt like it was dangerous. I had a great Team and I felt physically I could complete the swim. The reality is that it was probably two parts dangerous, one part stupid and one part what we planned to do. I never discussed the opportunity for bad weather, or what we would do if we thought it was too bad to start. We did not have a second swim date set up. I thought five or six hours in that we might need to stop for the safety of the crew, and then thought to myself, “What are you going to do? Swim to the beach, wait for better weather and start over tomorrow?” Screw it, go until they say they can’t go or you can’t go. The Team never once said they wanted to stop or that the weather was bad enough to stop the swim. They simply flashed lights and said, “Go left. Go right. How you feel?” We never had an exit strategy, which is probably good. The only exit was Bay St. Louis. This was not the safest plan, but a plan that worked. I am leaving out a ton I know, but it feels like I could write forever and never get it all in. Some have said I need to write a book. I might.

I want to add a few more things from the night. They are more like things I thought and things I saw. They are going to be in a kind of free form as they come to mind. They may bore you, but I feel like I need to get them out. My Team may say otherwise but these are some things I remember.

Every time I was to eat Joey would point a light at me and yell, “Dinnertime!” I always thought, “Its too late for dinner.”

Shelly would ask me “How you doing?” I think I said, “Fine,” every single time or “I’m alright.” Even though I probably looked like crap.

Francis always had an ear-to-ear grin and would say “Awesome,” from time to time. This was encouraging.

When I cut my foot, Joey said, “It looks fine.” Francis said, “Oh yeah you did cut your foot.”

In the days before the swim I asked Shelly about how my hands turn out with every stroke, she said, “Do they?” She had told Susan multiple times that she would have changed my stroke earlier in the training but didn’t. Shelly I believed you didn’t notice. Good poker face. I realize now you didn’t want me to change my stroke a week before the swim.

I thought about seeing Styx at the coliseum as we passed it. I also thought about ¾ length concert t-shirts and rednecks.

I had wanted to stop at my old street as I passed by but passed it before I realized where we were. Oh well.

I felt like I was slugging through the water and had no idea about my pace. I went slow as I could as I figured just keep the arms coming over.

In the Biloxi Channel, I actually thought that it might be easy if the waves stayed right behind me. They only remained behind me for 2 hours or so.

I thought we were out much further than the Gulfport harbor. We were not.

I stopped being able to taste the difference between flavors of gels, but egels were the only ones I could keep down. I could tell when they gave me an accel gel instead.

I threw up every single time I ate, but would not tell the team, as I knew they would freak. I just tried to keep as much down as possible.

I started drinking mostly water around the halfway point.

I never lost my mind as some people do when they go that long. I knew what was happening the whole time.

I had confidence the whole time that I would finish. I even started celebrating in my mind multiple times before the finish. This was funny, as I would have 3-4 more periods of “I am done,” after this.

I prayed often and tried to think of prayers etc. I said the serenity prayer and sang the U2 song “40” which is Psalm 40. The funniest thing that kept coming to my mind was a line from the Exorcist, when the priest is splashing the demon girl with holy water and yelling, “The power of Christ compels you.” I thought to myself, is that an okay prayer, and decided, yes, it was.

I tried to think of things that my kids had done or things that reminded me of them, but all I could do was think, “Yeah, you have two kids, Paige and Ian.”

Towards the end I would say the names of my family and every team member with every stroke I took. If I got through all of them it was like 20 strokes.

I tried a couple of times to count strokes. I lost track at 156 or so every time.

It was interesting to me that I had all this time to think, but couldn’t concentrate on anything but swimming and adjusting. I could only concentrate on everything you read above for snippets of time and then back to swimming. I really would have liked to have been able to relax more. Ha!

I wrote the initials of my kids and family on my cap as well as the name of my friend from high school who recently lost both of his parents. I also wrote 32 on each side of the cap.

I remember singing the following songs.
“40” by U2
“Best Thing That You Never Had”
“Don’t Move” both by Butch Walker
“Cold Roses”
“Magnolia Mountain” both by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
That’s about it thankfully no bad songs got in my head.

The taper that Shelly laid out for me worked. I felt relatively good till about the 12-hour mark. About all you can ask for.

Thank you all, I will post the Team members accounts as I receive them.

Hours 7-15:50:00

HOURS 7-15:50:00
In the next few moments, the most stressful moment (from the boat’s standpoint) occurred. Shortly after I ate at the end of Gulfport harbor, I tucked the bottle under my wetsuit and started swimming again. At this same moment, the boat got one of the ropes to the kayaks stuck in the prop. I, of course, could not have known this. They were drifting in towards shore and I put down my head and kept going. I looked up a minute later and saw the Q-beam light scanning the horizon for me. They had completely lost me. Susan has shared with me that the boat was in complete panic. They did not know I could see them and they thought I could have been washed back towards the piers or worse they would run me over. For 90 seconds or so they searched and panicked. Shelly said to call the Coast Guard, Joey said don’t bother because he said they probably would have jumped in to find me, and the Coast Guard would find an empty boat. I could see they were looking and swam their way and stopped to wave. They finally saw me and we got moving again, but not before Joey tied a light stick to the zipper of my wetsuit. The next couple of hours weren’t too bad. I knew the trip around Gulfport harbor had taken its toll, but I was pretty confident that I could make it. I showed the boat that I had cut my foot. Joey said it looked fine. I ate dutifully and kept going. I passed the Long Beach harbor far enough out that it did not kill me. I told myself, that once I got to Pass Christian harbor I was home free. I could kick the last 5 or 6 miles if I had to.

One thing that was killing me was that the Team had told me how far we had gone and how long I had been going. I was wearing a heart rate monitor and had not looked at the running time at all. Somewhere around 10 hours the team told me I had been in for that long and for every stop from then on they told me the time. I of course had not told them not to do this or to stop doing it, but it was tough to hear it. I could tell we had a while to go, and knowing I had swum 20 miles or that I was hitting the 12 hour mark was not making it any easier. I knew that 20 miles might only mean 18 miles in the right direction and 2 zigzagging so it was not helping me. It was also around this time that Francis said, “You see those lights down there? Those are the lights on the railroad bridge on the Bay, you are getting there.” I looked up and could see them a long ways in the distance. I kept looking at them from time to time to keep focused.

There are only two traffic lights in Long Beach and only one in Pass Christian. I saw the two go by in Long Beach and realized we had passed the harbor without event. The next few miles were basically black but for some streetlights. There was a big cluster of lights that we passed and I thought we must be out further than I thought and that I passed the Pass Christian harbor without event. Now I just was closing in on the red and green lights, the railroad bridge across Bay St. Louis and the finish. I begin to relax a little with the feeling like I am going to finish this thing. I cannot believe it. Something in the back of my mind said, “It ain’t over yet boss. Keep your mind about you.” Another hour passes and all of sudden from the boat I hear, “Watch out for that pier!” I look up and expect to see the Pass Christian harbor, which is no biggie, as I know it is only six miles or so after that. I look up and instead see what I know is the remains of the Penthouse Apartments pier. It was approximately one half mile from my old neighborhood on the Pass Christian, Long Beach border. Four or so miles from this pier to the harbor which as I know is five or six miles from the finish. I am deflated. I am now about 10 miles away instead of less than 6. I realize now that the lights that the Team thought was the railroad bridge was in fact the stoplight at the Pass Christian harbor. I put my head down and try to get over it. I do a couple of strokes of breaststroke and SLAM! I look up and I have just hit a floating section of tree maybe 12 inches around and 4 ft long. I yell to the boat to watch out, and take another couple of easy strokes breast and deduce that I am fine. Ten miles to go. Four hours, maybe.

As I said in the beginning, I tweaked both of my shoulders doing my seven-hour training swim. My left one was far worse than the right, and I was concerned all week leading up that I was not going to physically be able to complete the swim. I felt okay about the mental side of this, but if you can no longer bring your shoulder over the top, you are out of luck. I tried to rest doing breaststroke, kicking or backstroke. Breaststroke and kick can take a brother a lifetime to go anywhere. Couple that with the fact that I was wearing a wetsuit, making breaststroke almost impossible to do fast. This was due to the fact that the suit raises your hips. This is great for freestyle but awful for breast. I would try to do it from time to time to take a break, but it was incredibly inefficient. Backstroke was a no go as well. This was for two reasons. First, I did not have anything to look at to keep going straight, and second the waves were coming from behind me and to the left. This meant they washed right into my face every few seconds. I was going to have to complete this doing some sort of freestyle, no matter how badly it hurt. Up until the ten-hour mark I had little pain in my shoulders. After the Gulfport harbor fight, they both felt like they were going to go at any minute, but nothing happened immediately. I did know that the Gulfport harbor crossing had taken its toll and that I would pay for it eventually. At the ten-hour mark I felt a twinge in my right shoulder. I say I was pain free the whole swim up until this point, and that is factually a little bit of an exaggeration. What happens is that pain comes and goes, but you kind get in tune with your body throughout your training. From doing some long swims, I knew that I would get a certain feeling, call it a pain, in a part of my shoulder and it would go away in 5-15 minutes or so. I am not a doctor, but I assume these are just muscle related. I had had those off and on all night, but I wasn’t concerned about them. The ones I was concerned with were join related. When those come on they don’t go away, they just intensify until it feels like you cannot even move your arm. Your arm stops responding. I began to feel my shoulder joint going. I was somewhat surprised that it was this arm and not the other. I was a little concerned with this because I now thought the left arm would go any minute and the right arm was going. Oh well. I knew I it was going to happen. Suck it up and keep going.

The light at the Pass Christian harbor was now trying to slowly drive me insane. Every time I looked at it, all I could do was run through the course in my mind. Was it four miles to Stanislaus or six? It could have been three. I don’t know. Forget it. Keep pulling. During this time I am also knowing that the Pass harbor could be bad due to the cross chop. I am stopping and slowing. It is taking me forever to get to this light that is not the Bay railroad bridge. Joey and Shelly are asking me if I am okay. My shoulders are throbbing. I am sometimes taking 5 strokes and stopping. I stand up once and my feet hit ground. This is kind of reassuring, kind of not. I take 10 more strokes. I want to stop, but not really, I just want to be able to swim freestyle strong and finish it. I want to get to Henderson Point because then all I have to do is cross the Bay. I can do that Bay in 40 minutes or 30. I can’t remember if the Bay is one or two miles. I get to the harbor and it is not too bad, thought it seems to take forever to get across it. Right passed the harbor Mandy suits up and jumps in. She is swimming beside me or in front and I get a little boost. I am not going too fast as I look up and she watches me with her arm half way through a stroke to make sure I am there. I am struggling but moving. I am swimming towards the end, but it is not getting here very quickly. Mandy gets out and gets in the kayak. I stand and walk 20 yards or so. This does my brain well, and I get back at it. I can hardly bring my arms over and I realize that stopping is not helping. I am passing the beach at Henderson Point.

I look up and Francis is walking over towards me. He tells me, “Pat, you have gone at least thirty miles, the point is a mile or so and then you have a couple of miles over the Bay. Why don’t you get in the boat and ride to the point and swim the last two miles.” I tell him no way. I appreciate it, but I am swimming beach to beach. He smiles and knows it was a futile attempt, but everyone in the boat was concerned about the last Bay crossing. I thought I would have a boost of adrenaline or something and that it would be okay. This was wrong.

As we entered the Bay it was like the crossing of Biloxi Bay I had done some fourteen hours earlier. Unfortunately I wasn’t strong at this point, in fact, quite the opposite. I see Joey get in and start swimming with me. Mandy is in a kayak to my right. I am constantly drifting to my right. I see Our Lady of the Gulf church sticking out as my beacon, a castle-like structure. It is a beautiful church. Right now I just want to be closer to it. I can barely get my arms over the top and the waves now seem to be coming out of the bay a bit as well. Someone on the boat is yelling, “Get him out of the way of the ferry.” There is a ferry that runs from the Pass to the Bay and we are in its path. I hold on to the back as Mandy takes me due north out of the way. I don’t want to but figure she is not taking me towards the finish so I forget about it. I keep on plugging away. I am getting close to the halfway point of the bay. I am going to finish. I knew that I would but it has been a long night. Now the boat is yelling at me to get on the left of some crab traps because of dangerous debris. I have to swim directly into the wind. I am going nowhere but still fighting. Francis is swimming too. I do breaststroke and am still barely moving. I am a mile away and not getting closer. I tell myself, thirty minutes. I can handle anything for thirty minutes. I keep at it. Still not moving much, but at least approaching the crab trap things. I don’t care about debris. I am still three quarters of a mile, and it doesn’t look like it is getting any closer. Head down keep going. I think of everyone on the shore, I think of my Team, I think of God, whom I had asked to make this easier on me. HA! I think about my family and how they must be feeling. I look up two thirds of a mile. I am going SLOW. I don’t feel like I am ever going to finish. At some point, maybe a half a mile, maybe less than half, Shelly tells me to take ten strokes breaststroke, then ten freestyle. I push it and do 12-20 freestyle. The Team counts off my breaststroke when my head is up. Still feel like I am not moving. ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, FREESTYLE. I keep going. I am pushing hard enough now that my shoulder is not killing me. There is a tipping point in my brain where cardio exertion blocks out physical pain. It is happening now and it is welcome. I couldn’t do this all night because I would have bonked two hours in. Now it is all or nothing. I look up and see people. The boat says they want you on the other side where they are waiting. I am thinking, tell their asses to walk 50 feet, I am coming up where I am coming up. I see someone walking out towards me. I put my feet down and I am hip deep. I dive back in for thirty or forty more strokes and stand again. I am done swimming I will walk the last 100 yards. My friend SJ has walked out to greet me. He is ecstatic. I am too; I am wondering why he walked out to get me. I can walk fine. I guess everyone on the beach was concerned I would not be able to walk. I keep trudging in. Everyone is running towards where I am coming in. Forty or fifty friends and strangers, I see my mom and dad are walking out into the water crying, my wife Jeanne is waiting at the shore. I hug my mom and dad, I hug my wife, and I am on dry land. I drop to my knees and let it all out. I did it. I stop my watch and it is 15:50:00. Again, Unbeleivable.

I will post the rest tomrorrow.