Hammerfest 007 rundown

Well, I know this one is a little later as Hammerfest 007 was about a week and a half ago but hey, better late than never right?

Hammerfest 007 was the first edition of the Hammerfest Swims to be held outdoors at Kershaw Park in Canandaigua, NY. Several swimmers met at the park at 6pm and had to wade thru the traffic on the main drag to get to be able to swim. Darren and Alexis both graced us with their presence after a brief hiatus overseas in France (more on that later) and Heather Lakatos and Travis Money also joined in on the fun. Mr. John Hunter showed as well, but was a little bit later than anticipated. Seems some lines of communication got crossed...

We entered the water at about 6:30pm and I thanked everyone for showing up and swimming and we were off. The sun was in our eyes on the way out and we seemed to miss all of the masters swimmers who begin at 7pm. We swam the large "L" course and there was a nice water trampoline obstacle at the very end nearing the turnaround which caught some people by suprise. On the way back, I passed by John as he was a little late and just decided to go. He looked at me all bewildered as we both passed by breathing on the same side. I hit the line in 24:03 and Heather was close behind in 28:43 (after dealing with the trampoline and creepy random people at the end just staring at us while standing in the lake in their wetsuits...) There was a "sprint" finish for 3rd place on the podium and according to Travis Money, Darren beat him out by a half second after running over an old man who was coming the opposite direction wearing noseplugs. (I witnessed the WHOLE thing and it was too funny to even try to stop from happening..) Coming in shortly after was Alexis who had a 35:28 and we stood around waiting for John to come back and he popped out of the water saying he did a 19:56 but really had no watch on to time himself, so we just stopped the clock for him at 46:01.

We all toweled off, peeled out of the wetsuits only to be harassed by a large lifeguard who instead of walking over to tell us something, decided it would be easier (?) to drive over in a GOLF CART to tell us we had to use the main entrance instead of sneaking in on the side next time. Odd...

Anyway, we walked over to the awards at Scoops ice cream and began the ceremony. Everyone but poor Mr. $ were able to partake in the dessert (sorry buddy, I didn't know) and he was even shut out of getting WATER from the high school girls who were manning the ice cream stand. Ridiculous.

The awards began by me giving away a bunch of crap that I had amassed over the past few months including a new pair of TYR goggles to either Heather or Alexis (I dont know who went home with them), a ton of Heed and Recoverite to John and an AMAZING maze to Travis and other stuff that I can't really remember. But there was MORE! Darren apparently brushed up on his wrestling skills while overseas and beat up a BUNCH of 8 year olds to get us all some really cool SWAG from Le Tour de France. There were hats, keychains, pens, floppy hats, some really "cool" cycling hats with the short brims, and other alloted goodies that we all were able to get. Thank you guys so much for grabbing some really cool stuff at the Tour.

The only beef I have was with the blow up Hammer that you brought back and gave to me deflated. I thought to myself, "Self, why not blow it up and see what it looks like?" so I do and it is leaking, no big deal, I blow it up again and Darren continues to laugh and laugh. I finally get it blown up and sealed off and I say, "guys look at this!" and Darren and Alexis procced to side splittingly laugh their asses of at me and Darren tells me shortly after I had been making out with the Hammer, trying to blow it up, that they found that one on the ground and just wanted to bring it home to the US to show me (because it was a hammer for hammerfest) and not for me to use... I proceeded to cough and hack and spit out whatever was in my mouth after that and if I get sick, I'm already blaming it on you guys....thanks...

Well yeah, Hammerfest 007 was a great time and despite the grossness from slobbering on the sidewalk hammer, the awards were great too. Thank you to Darren and Alexis for helping out and bringing tons of cool stuff and thank you all for showing up and keeping Hammerfest such a big deal...

The next edition of the Hammerfest Swims is going to be Hammerfest 8, or H8 (hate) for short. (I really couldn't think of a catchier name...) it is scheduled to also be an outdoors swim at Kershaw which will take place on Friday August 11th, 2006 at 6:30pm (to beat the rush) the waters are warm enough that you will not need a wetsuit, so come join even if you don't own one...there will be plenty of awards and the usual shenanigans during and afterwards. I am going to try to open this up to a MUCH larger group by posting it on the RATS website and telling people of all ages about it, so if you know ANYONE who would like to join, let me know and direct them to this site. Hope the week is treating you all well and the training is going great. Take care everyone and I will see you on Friday August 11th at 6:30pm. Be there, and still have a chance to get on the leaderboard (as you can see only 6 spots were taken at Hammerfest 007.) Still lots of chances to get your name up there, so show up, swim fast, get on the board and enjoy some post workout dessert! See you viernes hombre.