My favorite parts of the book Wind, Waves, and Sunburn are the chapters describing some of the old style marathon races they held in the 50's and 60's. La Tuque 24-hour Marathon, Atlantic City Around-the-Island, the Traversée internationale du Lac Memphrémagog. Those races, simply saying those names, I get a feeling of nostalgia. Everything turns black and white (no, it's not a tumor).
Even in my early adult years, I preferred running for a long time versus fast. While I never ran a marathon, I would run "hours" on the weekends. I'd go to the track and just run circles for an hour or more. I wouldn't count. I'd just run, listening to my walkman (old style yellow and water-proof!). As a youth I had read about famous ultra-runners who would do crazy 24-hour or even 6-day runs. They'd just do loops (albeit, 6-miles loops) for hours and days. They'd maybe take a break, grab a nap and get a massage, then wake up and start running again. I always wanted to do one of those.
Reading WW&S, I was chomping at the bit to not only watch but to take part in a 24-hour pair swim like La Tuque. I'd love to have been around in the day to watch the likes of Abu Heif or Claudio Plit swim.
So, I'm always on the look-out for a new future iconic swim here in the DC area. The folks at WaveOne swimming here are planning a swim this summer around Roosevelt Island. The swim will be about 4K, starting at Washington Harbor in Georgetown to the Island, then around it and, presumably, back to Georgetown.
So, I thought, might this make a good location for a 24-hour paired marathon, a la La Tuque? We can set up a rest area somewhere near the NW corner of the island, on the western bank of the river on the DC-VA border. I doubt we would be allowed to set up anywhere on the island, as it is a National Memorial, but along that trail in VA, perhaps. I'll have to check it out.
My idea would be for each pair to have one spot tracker. (Can you even put those things in the water? Does it have to stay with a kayaker?) Volunteers at the rest area (passing point? check-in point?) could track the swimmers via the spot tracker. Perhaps each team must provide volunteer(s) to man a computer. Or there could be one location which would have the official spot tracking. If you're the resting swimmer, you can only check where your partner is at that location. Each swimmer would have to swim at least one loop before coming in and tagging their partner. Tagging would comprise handing off the spot tracker.
How to attract swimmers and sponsors? In the good old days, companies and towns would sponsor prize money to get the swimmers there. They'd make money by making it an event and bringing in people, customers, fans, hoping to make more money than they were spending on prizes. Perhaps there's a Teddy Roosevelt holiday during the OW season that this race could coincide with? His birthday is October 27th. I wonder how cold the water is then? In September the Potomac was in the mid-70's. According to this site, at the Little Falls pumping station, about 8km up river from Roosevelt Island, the water was in the mid 60's the week of TR's birthday last year. That's doable. July 1st 1898 ws the Battle of San Juan Heights, but that's a bit too close to Independence Day. May 22nd 1902 is when he established the National Park at Crater Lake. (I think that was the first one he established.) That might be a good day to do the race. He was a great conservationalist, so this race might be a fitting tribute on that particular day.
(During his tenure as president, he created 18 national monuments, 5 national parks, 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reservations and 4 national game reservations. Oh, and the U.S. Forest Service is his baby. Can you tell he's one of my favorite Americans?)
Perhaps aligning myself with the Theordore Roosevelt Assocation and the TR Memorial Association might help get this race off the ground.
To get this thing popularity and bring people there, perhaps we could also hold one-off races there, like the already-established (?) Swim Around Roosevelt Island? They've got that planned for sometime in July. Maybe hold that on Sunday morning and when that's over, the 24-hour race can be within about two hours of finishing. Have it finish at 2pm or so. Start the round the island swim at 8am, have the course close at 10 or 10:30. Then keep people there with food and the excitement of the 24-hour swimmers probably starting to put the pedal to the metal.
Somewhere viewable to everyone could be a huge board with the current standings of the swimming pairs...admission to the island is free, so maybe somewhere on the island?
Hmm...
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