Swimming to Catalina, via Coronado

This blog is about 2 things, my 2 passions – finance and fitness.

To date, most posts have been about finance because there wasn’t much to discuss in regards to fitness. I am almost always training for something crazy but after the worst 8 mile per hour crash known to man in April at Ironman Oceanside, there hasn’t been anything to talk about, I have just not gotten back to 100%.

And I do not do well in most areas of my life if I don’t have a clear purpose, especially when it comes to training and racing. It’s not discipline or grit I am lacking, but without a Why?, I just end up feeling ruddlerless. I thought I’d found that why a few months ago when I decided I wanted to qualify for USA Triathlon Nationals and locked on to an October Olympic triathlon in Palm Desert that seemed like a promising qualifier. I even reconnected with Coach Jim and we fired the machine back up. I began hitting the bike and the run again, 2x/ somedays. I felt the rust flaking off.

Only for that race to be cancelled for some reason. This is why I can’t have nice things.

I need a goal.

Back to the drawing board. I was left with the next obvious goal, exorcising my demons at Oceanside in April 2026. It’s an obvious goal, it’s a known quantity, but it didn’t exactly give me those butterflies. First, this would be like the 5^th Oceanside. Second, there’s no real exhilaration in just finishing. Third, there’s a 0.0% chance that I won’t make it about a time. And most importantly – my first point. I once heard a guy say he wanted to do this or that race because it – and I am quoting here – made his balls tingle. I don’t usually play blue like that, but I actually resonate. Oceanside – or any Half Ironman in 2026 – doesn’t make my balls tingle.

Winning my age group at 70? That does. Taking 32^nd next year at a race I’ve done 4 times? Nope.

Enter the Marathon Swimmers.

I will state right here and right now that I did not know there was a massive open water swim community, but there is. Go to the La Jolla Cove any given day of the week – weekday or weekend – and there will be 50 fools swimming with sea lions and fish.

And 90% of them? No wetsuit. That’s a thing.

For the last 3 weeks, Tuesday and Thursday I find myself jumping headfirst into the freezing (by which I mean 72 degrees) water with no wetsuit at 6am. As in 6am before first light. And I am not alone.

Swimmers. Sea Lions. Baby Sharks. Garibaldi, it’s a damn menagerie.

In a shocking turn of events, I am already hooked, already inquiring about the ball-tingling goals. And when I heard the big ones? Well, yeah, there was tingling.

It goes something like this, in order of difficulty. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, just the tingly ones.

Why marathon swimming?

First, what is it? Marathon swimming is defined as any swim over 10k (6.2 miles).

I am a mediocre swimmer and self-described chicken about cold water – so why marathon swimming?

Because if you keep doing what you have always been doing, you will keep getting what you have always been getting.

So it’s precisely because I am a mediocre swimmer and terrified of cold water. I am not terrified of the open water – it’s not the sharks or jellyfish or other monsters, I am terrified of cold water. It’s just the cold. So, because of these things, this is something that speaks to me.

I know I want to be racing (not finishing, racing) triathlon when I am 70, so I ask myself what gets me there in the straightest line? I could race half Ironman’s year after year, sure, and there’s a place for that. But there are 3 areas of glaring weakness that I have ignored for a few years and 2026 seems like a great time to address them:

1. I have dealt with a back injury that has hampered my running for the last 10 years.
2. I am a mediocre swimmer – 32 minute miler – and have been for 20 years. Somehow I just keep expecting to magically wake up one day and be a great open water swimmer without actually training in the open water.
3. My muscle mass has gradually decreased over the last 5 years while my weight has gradually increased.

Boil these down to 2 things and you get – Swim and Strength. 2026 is about Swim and Strength.

First, find experts.

First, the swim expert.

To that end, I connected with Jeff Rake, a local guy who has done these swims himself, kayak guides swimmers in these crazy endeavors and is at the Cove most days of the week. This is a totally unknown adventure and it pays to connect with an experienced expert. Jeff is going to lay out a plan for my Around Coronado swim next summer, which means a few 5k’s and 10k’s leading up to it.

It also means I need to get in the water with no wetsuit, probably the hardest part of the whole thing. I know because last Thursday I swam with a wetsuit after 3 weeks without – my 100m time? Dropped from 2:10 to 1:45. And I didn’t shiver the entire day the way I have been.

I suspect my swim schedule will look something like 3x open water swims per week leading up to a 3 mile Cove to Pier to Cove in the next few months, a 6 mile double Cove to Pier to Cove to Pier to Cove a month or two after that, a 9 mile Del Mar to La Jolla Cove in the Spring and finally the 12 mile around Coronado next summer.

Next, find my 30 year old strength.

In high school and college I was a regular weight lifter and looked it. To be honest, I sort of still do but in the way that you probably look at me and say, you were athletic once.

My natural weight is around 168 and for 20 years I fought to race at 155-160. I tried it all – Paleo, cayenne cleanses, intermittent fasting, 1 meal per day, Atkins, drinking only alcohol, drinking no alcohol, all of them. Fighting your natural weight is exhausting and counterproductive.

If you want to read the definitive book on this topic, I recommend Matt Fitzgerald’s Racing Weight.

What I have noticed since Oceanside in April is my weight creeping up but the ‘feel’ of my muscle tone decreasing. If I am honest, it probably began long before Oceanside, maybe when I turned 50 and dropped the weight training in favor of more bike rides and runs.

I recently watched Breaking 10, an absolutely terrible “documentary” about a self-centered douchebag (so, a triathlete) obsessed with breaking 10 hours in an Ironman. It was terrible; I watched it on a flight from Atlanta and unfortunately the cabin door was pressurized so I couldn’t jump out. It was so bad that I don’t even want to create a link to it in fears you may click on it.

If there was one redeeming quality about it, the dude spends way too much time in the gym for a triathlete, you know the type – the garage type of gym with sleds and ropes – and I did realize that there’s never going to be a better time for me to get back into that environment than a year when I really am adrift in terms of my goals.

I used to be really strong; now I am pretty strong for my age.

I want to be really strong again, just in a bizarre, old man way.

So if my goal is to win my Age Group at 70, what steps am I taking to make that a reality? Getting really strong at 50 is an amazing step. It beats the alternative of not getting really strong at 50.

Gym Research

I knew from the jump that my preference was FitnessQuest10, the brainchild of Todd Durkin. Besides being Drew Brees’ strength coach he is also renowned in the NFL & MLB community as a strength whisperer. Todd’s facility is a good 30 minutes from my house and it isn’t the cheapest place in the world if I am going to hire someone to put me through my paces twice a week so I wanted to do my research. San Diego certainly has no shortage of human performance facilities.

I laid out a few criteria:

1. No franchises or big box gyms. I’m not a frat guy.
2. A good trainer is in the ~$100/hour range and I budgeted for 2x/week for 3 months, to start.
3. No more than 30 minutes from my house.
4. Not interested in a trainer who just yells at me, looking for a bona fide expert not only in the space, but in dealing with a 50 year old guy with a bad back. Someone I connect with and respect. I put myself through college as a trainer and I can tell you I was wildly unqualified, I just looked good with my shirt off, which seemed to be their main criteria at the time.
5. Someone I connect with and respect. Things work with my therapist in no small part because he gets me (and got me from day one), because I respect him and his background and because he isn’t afraid to push me further and call me out. I need that from a trainer as well.

I looked at several places:

1. BodyFit Training. Close to my house, but a franchise.
2. Self Made Training Facility. 15′ from my house, weird gym that looks very Cross-fity. May check it out.
3. JetSet Pilates: This one made the list surprisingly, but not surprisingly since it’s 2 minutes from my house and next to my dog’s Starbucks. I am not going to find what I am looking for in pilates. I am probably going to find a divorce. Pass.
4. Do It Myself. Like I said, I was a trainer. Why not just do it myself? The conclusion I came to is that I am the fool who got myself lost in the woods, I don’t think I am the one to get myself out.
5. FitnessQuest10. This remains the leader going into the clubhouse. Had a great 30 minute Zoom with the new owner Jeff Bristol, super cool guy and he clicked on my goals – the swim goal but the long-term win my age group at 70 goal. Going to check this place out in the next week or so.

Where does this leave sweet, sweet triathlon?

The 2 goals for 2026 goals are 2 goals that work for 2045.

First, open, cold water triathlon swims have always been an issue. I have never been totally comfortable in a triathlon swim and spending 6-9 focused months will serve me well.

My shrinking muscle mass isn’t great for longevity. I figured out sometime this year that I have been making withdrawals from the strength/muscle mass bank account and it went overdrawn long ago.

There is the Great Reset. We tend to look at triathlon training at most in one year increments; We break our weeks into workouts, our months into intensity levels (3 up, 1 down) and our years into periods (structuring different phases of concentration and intensity to peak at the right time). What I don’t do – and I don’t know many who do – is look at things on a longer timeline – say 5, 10, 20 years. I have running, swimming and riding for 25 years now, aside from a brief pause to ride gravel in 2020 & 2021. Taking a year to focus on swim & strength is but a blip on that timeline but also a healthy diversion.

Finally, the psychological, dare I say spiritual. Triathlon is naturally a game of diminishing returns as we age. I’d argue that a triathlete peaks around 35-40 years old, beginning the downhill slide. Running and riding in particular take a physical toll, not to mention the sheer amount of time one needs to devote. In 2020 I detoured to gravel riding and took on the Belgian Waffle Ride, a 120 mile/13,000′ climbing ride covering most of East San Diego County. I rode thousands of miles and crashed dozens of times and went through 2 bikes and the race took me a shockingly long 10 hours and I loved every minute of it. That diversion made me a better cyclist, but it also refreshed my spirit with a crazy goal.

Swimming 3 days a week with no wetsuit? Crazy. In the dark? Crazier.

Swimming 9 miles from Del Mar to La Jolla Cove? Crazy.

Swimming 12 miles Around Coronado? Crazy.

Crazy is what gets me up in the morning and rounds out the rest of my fairly routine life. Crazy is the way.