I got this message from Dave yesterday, and we spoke about it again this morning. PLEASE read this and spread the word about the need to keep the ladders intact during the year!
*** RED ALERT ***
As we all know all too well … The summer of 2009 never arrived as promised and very very soon the Chicago Park District will pull all of the swim ladders at Oak Street Beach…. With a lot of phone calls I was able to find the new and improved person who is in charge of them, Mr. Larry Moser. His phone# (312) 746 5561
Seeing that he has yet to return my calls, I have left a message trying to convince him to leave them in.
1) If someone one slips and falls in this winter, it’s a long cold swim to try to get out
2) Many people continue to swim in the fall, winter, and spring
3) The fire and police scuba squads use the area for training and rescues, and they use the ladders
4) The city can save money by not removing the ladders and re-installing them the next year
5) The winter ice has not damaged Ladder #1 over the last 10 years, and it has stayed in year round
6) The new ladders at Montrose are welded in and cannot be removed
*** Hopefully if all of us call to plead our case they might leave in the ladders…
Call now and do not wait or you might show up for a swim next Tuesday and find all of the ladders gone….
Amanda, Carol, and I showed up at L1 around 6:15am. I took the lake temperature with a brand new thermometer and was a bit taken aback when it came in at 67F. Given the overcast skies and air temperatures of 60F, I felt the thermometer must have been defective. But Amanda’s infamous duck thermometer gave the same reading, so I could have left the wetsuit at home!
This was easily one of the best swims of the year. The lake was crystal clear, and the sunrise view at water level was simply breathtaking. There was an insidious current heading into Oak Street Beach that made it somewhat more of a workout on the return. But it was just the right level of challenge after the half mile warm up.
The Ochoas showed up along with Dave, his sister, and his niece Jelly. Tomorrow is supposed to be even better, and we’re all planning on being out there again. So come on out and join the pool party!
As the baby boomers who fueled marathon and triathlon crazes enter their 50s and 60s, their unquenched competitiveness can become a threat to their stiffening joints, rigid muscles, hardening arteries and high-mileage hearts. And it doesn’t help that nearly every exercise message they hear emphasizes more (emphasis mine). It’s as if nobody wants to acknowledge that exercise isn’t the fountain of youth.
I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who’ve transitioned (pun intended) from healthy, enjoyable exercise to hyper competitive “quantity is quality” endurance training. Instead of viewing physical activity as something fun and challenging, they’ve converted it into a zero-sum game where they’re constantly competing with others – or with themselves. And the results are quite predictable:
A growing number of exercise scientists are questioning the more-and-harder philosophy of fitness, and not only for aging athletes. A study published last year in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine reinforced other recent research showing that intensity tends to diminish the view of physical activity as pleasant(again – emphasis mine). “Evidence shows that feeling worse during exercise translates to doing less exercise in the future,” says Panteleimon Ekkekakis, an author of that study and a professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University.
The key is, high intensity training coupled with a hyper competitive mindset is neither healthy nor enjoyable.
And if you need proof of this, be sure to check out some of the runners and cyclists out on the lakefront path any Saturday or Sunday morning. With their wide-eyed looks, perpetual grimaces, and dual patella bands you would think that they’re in a constant state of trauma.
