Extreme Family

My father didn't die and my brother kicked my ass. I swam sans wetsuit and my shoulder didn't give out. Here we are after the race.



This is my amazing family, post-race.

Just looking at this picture makes me proud. I come from some extreme sports stock. There are my Aunt Judy and Uncle John, co-founders of the Iron Man triathlon. They have had crazy adventures that inspired me from afar for as long as I can remember. They were always swimming and biking and coming up with crazy challenges. They rode bikes up into the Sierras with their kids when their kids were still little, eating salami and soda. They rode cross country on motorcycles when I was in high school, and my uncle gave me a ride on the back of his bike that thrilled me, until my father yelled at him to never, ever do that again. That only whet my appetite more. Then they bought a sailboat and sailed off into the sunset on grand adventures. I have lost track. I think they sailed to Scotland. Then they started from Coronado on a quest to sail round the world. They only made it as far as Panama, where they still live half the year, but the adventures they had! They knew people held up by pirates and hung out with indigenous tribes. They were just so cool!

My cousins Kristin and Michael are supersonic athletes who are do not even train, They just do triathlons when they feel the inclination, do marathons at the drop of a hat, drive around the country in vans on 17 hour treks and take it all in stride. My cousin Kristin was one of the first women to go to the Naval Academy, learned to fly a helicopter, and even now, when she learns to scuba dive, does not just learn to go down and look at coral--she gets wreck certified!!!

Then I had other cousins I never saw when I was growing up. They are the Santa Cruz cousins. Older, the children of my father's half-brother Michael, we never knew them when we were growing up. I didn't meet most of them until I was 30. They are another variation on the extreme sports DNA. The cousins all surf. All the time. One of their children did tow-in surfing in Hawaii, until he got bored. He's over it now.

Those cousins swam Alcatraz so fast we never even saw them. They don't even think of themselves as competitive swimmers. They are just fast and strong and used to cold water--like seals.

We all did it. My cousins Ian MacGregor and Mike Wells were across the Bay in no time. My brother flew in, fast and in skin. My cousin finished with me. My father swam with a wetsuit, didn't get hypothermia, and his hands and ankles were only bright red for a few hours after the race. My cousin Kristin swam with her parents and carried a camera around her waist to shoot pictures in the water during the swim. And my aunt and uncle swam together the whole way, walking out of the water together, holding hands as they crossed the finish line. How romantic! In an extreme way!

That night we gathered for dinner in Santa Cruz and ate lasagna. It was all of us who swam, and everyone else, too. Twenty two MacGregors under one roof. I wondered what it was like for my sons to see the genetic strands unfurling in that room. They saw every variation of MacGregor face and nose and chin. They saw red hair and freckles and a lot of tall people. They saw that the Celtic blood lives on, with people singing and playing instruments in every direction.

But most of all they saw crazy extreme sports people, whose idea of a good time is to get together and escape from Alcatraz.

I am jealous. I would have loved to have met so much family.

But I love watching the effect.

Already Theo, 7, has a goal.

"I will swim from Alcatraz when I am 11," he said. "In a wetsuit."

Alcatraz Prep

I swam a mile in sixty degree water on Monday without a wetsuit! (That's two degrees colder than last year's swim.)

Then I pulled my shoulder on Wednesday, and it hurts. Even healing yoga did not relieve the pain.

What do I do now?

Do I pull back and rest my arm til the big day? Or swim lightly in the ocean this weekend and see how it goes. (The ocean is so cold it would be like icing my sore arm for 45 minutes!)

If you are sitting on any swimming wisdom, please share!

It's a Family Affair

Last year I swam the Alcatraz Swim with the South End Rowing Club with my amazing Aunt Judy and my cousin-in-law, Mike. It was one of the highlights of my year, and I think it drove my father nearly mad--just knowing there was a crazy athletic event involving family and danger that he did not take part in.

So this year he begged us all to do it again. He would train, he promised. And we need this promise from him, because he is probably the weakest swimmer of us all, chills easily, and will not give up, even when he should--an endearing, if perhaps life threatening quality.

This year I want a different challenge. But then, I thought, my father turns 70 this August. He really really wants to do this before he dies, and he wants to do it with the whole family. And now, it looks like it might be the whole family. My aunt will do it again. My cousin may do it. Two other cousins may do it. And one cousin's husband may do it.

Two days ago a dude from Seattle contacted me on Facebook about my story, saying his Seattle club wants to swim. I told him my whole family might do it. "Doesn't sound that hard, then, if your whole family is going to do it?"

Do you know my family? I wanted to shout through cyberspace. My aunt is the co-founder of the Ironman. My cousin went to the Olympic tryouts in butterfly. My cousin who swam last year is an astounding year round surfer whose son does big-wave tow in surfing in Asia. My brother swam all through high school and even after years of not swimming can jump in the water and swim a mile no problem. My father? Well--we are going to have to take care of him. But my family? We are astounding!

Today I will sign up. Alcatraz 2010. Will it be with a wetsuit? Or skin, as they say at the South Bay Rowing Club?

Hmmmmm

Alcatraz Journal

My Aunt Judy and me!

We did it! And I was so proud! So elated! Jonathan took pictures of me in the hours afterwards and I look euphoric. The endorphins and adrenaline were still pumping through my system. But the conditions were more treacherous than I had imagined, and not in the way I thought. Here is what happened.

Friday afternoon we arrived in San Fran. The weather was beautiful--downright hot for San Fran--a balmy 80 degrees. Unheard of. I felt good. A few hours later we went down to the Julius Kahn playground in Presidio Heights. As always, the weather was changing--rapidly. The fog horn boomed non stop, the wind was picking up. I wrapped my wool sweater tighter around my body. "What was I thinking?" I asked my husband as the hardy Monterey pines bent and creaked in the wind. Just remember this feeling, he said.

I cooked a pre-swim feast at Jonathan's Aunt's house. It was the classic Hilary happy food: Penne arrabiata, garlic bread on the finest San Fran bread, a wheaty, grainy levain, and a huge salad. I was in bed by 10.

Saturday morning Jonathan and I awoke at 4:55 to the sound of footsteps running up and down the hallway. Huge booms echoed through the dark. Then flashes of light. I struggled to open my eyes. My God! It was a thunderstorm! We are in California for Gods sake. Who ever heard of thunder in California??? Jonathan's aunt threw open our bedroom door cackling like a madwoman. "Look!" she cried. "I can't believe it."

Half of me prayed the race would be cancelled, the other half prayed it would go on. It seemed impossible. Could they throw us in the bay during a giant thunderstorm? With lightening crackling right overhead? Jonathan made me coffee, I gobbled down an instant oatmeal and a banana and we headed down to the harbor.

You feel like you are alone and crazy in the world until you meet other crazy people. At the corner of Hyde Street in the darkness and rain stood hundreds of people lining up with their IDs to get their numbers inked on their bodies, their yellow race caps and their earplugs. The race was on! No one even talked about the thunder.



We wiggled into our wet suits in the darkness, and a friend from the Y lent me bodyglide to rub on my neck so I wouldn't get a wet suit rash (I still did. I look like I got a huge hickey on a VERY exciting weekend in SF). I found my cousin Courtney (who started this whole endeavor, but was unable to swim because she got sick), her husband Mike (an amazing surfer from an extreme sports family in Santa Cruz) and my amazing Aunt Judy, ironman triathlete and all around brave, bold woman. We took endless pictures of ourselves waiting in the rain. A 25-year-old swimming in skin scared the bejesus out of me. "Why are we wearing yellow caps?" he asked a group of us. "It is the ONLY color sharks are attracted to. They have done tests. They don't like red, blue, green or black. Only yellow!" My stomach churned. "Are you serious?" I asked, over and over.



A guy on a bad mike stood up to tell us a few last things. If you are slow, aim for the Navy ship, he said, and the current will carry you back. If you are fast, aim for the masts of the Balthusah, and you will shoot right into the water park. And that was it. No more tips, no more instructions.



With that, a bagpiper in blue and green tartan and tam-o-shanter struck up a mournful tune and we followed behind him, "swim-ready" to the ferry three blocks away. It felt like a funeral. Or like we were being sent into battle. Mournful. Sad. Important! As we filed onto the ferry, wax stuck in our ears to prevent the cold water from seeping into our inner ears and making us disoriented and swimming off in the wrong direction, the bagpiper played on, saying good-bye to each us with his eyes as we filed past. Would we ever return from our journey to the watery deep?

It started to rain and the ferry pulled out into the bay, laden with 500 swimmers--about 400 in wetsuits, and a few crazy ones shivering in the chill wind in skin. There was even a woman in a bikini. We could see the kayakers and rowers--who would keep us safe and on course, straining against the water, the wind and the rain. They didn't seem to be moving. Why were we doing? Will human beings do anything if other people go with them?

At last the ferry pulled up 100 yards off Alcatraz. It is a lonely, barren island. There were white caps now, but there was no turning back. I felt like I was going to die. We were instructed to jump off the ferry three at a time in rapid succession. They had to get all of us off the boat in 3-5 minutes before the ferry got dashed on the rocks of the island. If you didn't move fast enough, they push you -- just like the white-gloved men on the Tokyo subways. And once you hit the water -- no time to catch your breath or readjust your goggles or calm your rioting mind-- no, you just had to swim so the next swimmers wouldn't land on your head.

As we moved toward the front, rubber bodies pushing us from behind, the water looking frigid and cold, we saw the first swimmers struggling against the wind and currents. They were strong, and they were not moving!

My aunt looked in my panicked eyes: "The water is alive," she said. "It will support you."

We came to the door, all three of us grabbed hands, and we were gone, on our own, lost in a cold, wet world.

There were swimmers everywhere going in what seemed like every direction, so you couldnt follow anyone. My goggles fogged up fast, and the sea was rough--on top and underneath. But I told myself to breathe and I settled into this cold, solitary isolation. They told us to stop in the middle and look up at the Bay Bridge, back at Alcatraz, and ahead at the city. I did. And it was magnificent. There is something spectacular about being tossed on the waves of a huge bay, looking up at the most beautiful bridge in the world, carried by water, yourself just a speck. completely insignificant. It was Heidigger's sublime. Then I put my head back down and started swimming.

I swam and swam. It was harder and rougher than I thought. Swimmers seemed to be doing crazy things. At certain points swimmers went across me perpendicular. At another point I thought I was swimming in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge. Was I hallucinating from the cold?

At last I saw the yellow buoy and the gap in the breakwater. From there only 400 wind-sheltered yards to shore. As I swam by the buoy, I heard a tremendous BOOM that rocked my subterranean world. My God! Had the Golden Gate collapsed? I had never heard anything like that in the water. I raised my fogged up goggles to the sky. Lightening crackled across. Omigod! There was no way they could get us all out of the water. I got a second-wind right there, and sprinted for shore. I did not come this far to die!

Five minutes later I stumbled up the sand, under the giant clock and through the chute. The amazing Lynn Cox, who swam the Bering Strait without a wet suit (this is true!) placed a medal around my neck but I was so deliriously happy I never noticed. I pulled the wax out of my ears and shouted for joy!

My cousin had finished what seemed like hours before, my aunt was still in the water. I went down to watch the finishes. People were staggering out of the water and falling over. (Jonathan photographed strangers stumbling. He delights in documenting insane behavior) A little while later my aunt gracefully backstroked in.

A huge fireboat followed in the last swimmers and saluted us with 100 foot high streams of water.

I was alive! I did it! And I never even had time to think of a shark after I leapt into the water!

The challenge was 99% anticipation, 20% actual difficulty. But how long it has been since I challenged myself to do something utterly insane. I need to do it again soon!

No More Meat!

Here is an excerpt that arrived in my inbox today from the Alcatraz race committee:

Speaking of eating, while we are fairly confident there are no Great White Sharks in the San Francisco Bay, they were known to follow whaling vessels looking for food as far as the Sacramento river during the 1800's. For the most part shark's are carnivorous and primarily eat meat. Great Whites have also been known to eat objects that they are unable to digest. One Great White was caught and found to have half of a horse in it's stomach.

However the one thing we feel sharks really hate is the thought of eating vegetables. Shark mom's have for eons been trying to get their young pups to eat more greens and root vegetables to balance out their diet, but without much success- it's generally just meat, meat, meat, with these top apex predators.

But we've recently found a pill that seems to make human's taste like a vegetable. We will be selling this shark repellant pill at our swim for $5. We're not sure if they really work, but we feel it's better to err on the side of caution when dealing with a predator the size of a Great White Shark, whose size can often reach over 20 feet.

All proceeds from the sales of our shark repellant pills will be donated to the City of Hope and used for cancer research.

"...the greatest enjoyment of life is to live dangerously...just don't forget to take your shark pill." Friedrich Nietzsche.

I want to laugh. But what if it is true????

From now until race day no more animal products. I do not want to be shark bait. I will swim in the middle of the pack. I will not die! And I will definitely buy the shark repellant pill!