On Sunday, March 18, 2007, I received the following email from Melbourne, Australia. It is by Mark Warkentin, a Santa Barbara native, who married my older brother’s youngest daughter Diana. That makes him my nephew by marriage, an open water swimmer by choice, and an insider about what it’s like to sport among sharks and jellyfish.

It's hard to tell how violent a 5K race is when you watch it from the sidelines. You just see distant splashing and bobbing heads. As with water polo, you don’t catch the roller derby underneath the water.

I was told, just like every other swimmer in Saturday’s race, to get to the second spot and pull the draft off of the first swimmer. This is a great idea if there are only four or five legitimate contenders in the race as there were at the U.S. Nationals last year. But there are 40 top contestants at St. Kilda Beach for the World Open Water Championships this week to determine who gets to go the Olympics next year. If every single one of them is trying to get to the second position at the same time, someone will succeed. That leaves 39 others to engage in a killing spree.

I was one of those 39.

The race started on a floating dock. I was positioned next to Germany’s defending World Champion, Thomas Lurz. Seeing the fortune of this position, I decided to follow Lurz around for most of the race and try to make a move at the end. Hence when the gun went off, I held my position next to Lurz and then gradually let him move slightly ahead so that I was in his slipstream. As we approached the first turn, I realized that this was a very, very, very stupid idea.

Lurz was not in first place. A Greek had taken the race out quickly, and Lurz was in the coveted second spot. That put me in about 5th to 8th position.

I say 5th to 8th because I was right on Lurz’s heels. But then, so was everyone else. As we neared the turn buoy, the pack crowded more tightly, everyone trying to get as close to the buoy as possible. To swing out wide around the buoy and avoid the melee would mean a longer distance to swim. Longer in swimming is like a group of 40 people trying to crowd into an elevator. Whoever doesn’t make it has to run up 80 flights of stairs.

I made the elevator. So did a whole lot more than its official carrying capacity. Your first inclination might be to retaliate against someone who accidentally hits you or elbows you or kicks you to the floor. But you figure, Well, we are all part of the human family; we’re all headed in the same direction; we all have to breathe. Then you realize there are at least six people who are hitting you.

Simultaneously. Malevolently. And everyone else in that elevator would love to be doing the same.

There were so many targets of opportunity, it was hard to pick just one for some concentrated pain. I got punched in the mouth with an elbow, and for a moment thought that I might lose my front teeth again. A forearm smacked into my back while at the same time my arms were tangled and my legs were being pulled back to the floating dock. I’m not sure yanking on other people’s arms is technically swimming, but that how others and I made it around the buoy.

And that’s when it struck me that we had been kids playing in a backyard wadding pool compared to what was coming up. The second turn buoy floated 50 meters ahead, and bodies boxed me in on all sides. There was no draft to take advantage of. We were in a drag of conflicting forces, and there was nothing to do but to endure another slugfest as we closed on the buoy ahead.

And another and another.

The race unfolded with the first three guys swimming in a line, a mass
of humanity trying to catch them. The Greek struggled to stay first; Lurz was pulling in his draft; and a Russian was in third.

Lurz eventually won while I stayed with the pack and closed with a whimper. From the second to the third lap of the four-lap race, I sustained enough bodily harm to drop from 5th or 8th position to a definite 17th place at the finish.

As I turned the last buoy, a Canadian landed a forearm to my lower back. Knowing that I had no hope of medaling, I lost all sense of Christian charity, and let my anger and frustration have their way with him. Unfortunately I’m not very skilled or assertive with my punches and ended up just bumping into him quite a few times, never landing a direct hit.

After we finished, the Canadian took off his goggles, looked at me, smiled and said, “Well, it was it a bit rough out there, eh?” as if he were Dudley Doright of the Mounties just back from a brisk walk.

I woke Sunday morning with an eye socket that felt like Cyclops after a run in with Ulysses. You have to wear your goggles tight to keep the salt water out. Also, the tighter they are, the less likely they’ll come off when you decide to damage someone’s fist with your face.

My plan for the 10K on Tuesday is to take it out faster. The first turn
isn’t as close to the start as before (probably about 800 meters), and the second turn is 400 meters after the first, so it shouldn’t be quite as rough as the first lap of the 5K. The problem with taking it out fast is that people will draft off of you and thus conserve energy, energy that is needed to either win the race or survive all the fights.

As of Tuesday morning, Pacific Daylight Savings Time in the U.S., the 10K race is over, but I haven't heard from Mark or gotten any news results of the outcome, except that swimmers came out of the water covered in welts from stinging jellyfish. Mark's strongest race is the upcoming 25K. If they ever make torture an Olympic event, he is a sure bet for the Gold.