Off the Couch and into the Lake

Today is my birthday :)))

Yep, today I am 16071 days old...which is 44 years, and to celebrate, I decided to swim across the lake!
Well, actually Ive been planning to attempt it for a little while but what with being sick there for a week and then the winds were making the lake rough there for a while, and then I had to find someone who would escort me on a kayak... It took a while to get organized.
But it turned out that all the pieces fell into place today.

I swam from San Pedro over to San Marcos and was escorted on kayak by my friend Mike. You really do need the Kayak with you since there are lots of launches going too and fro amongst the little towns on the lake shore. Without an escort, there is a reasonable probability of being run down by an outboard boat...Which would really ruin your birthday!
The kayak does however pretty much eliminate the "mind game" aspect of the swim though. If you get into trouble, you just have to wait a few seconds till help arrives. You dont have to "keep the fear in a box" so to speak, that you would have to do if you did it alone.
Now, I still think I did really well to swim that far with virtually no training. It was very much "off the couch" and I'd only spent about a half an hour at the longest of paddling about near the shore before today.
It took me about 90 minutes to swim 2.5Km (according to google earth).
My swiming "style" was far from pretty but it was effective enough.

Before, I started (when I conceived the plan) I figured there was quite a good chance that I would not make it but that I should give it a go anyway... Since there was also some chance that I could do it! I didnt even know how far it was till I looked it up after the swim.
Some people seem to think that to do these things you need to only think about the success aspect and that if you allow the possibility of failure into your mind then thats what you will get.
Well, for my part at least, I can safely say that in almost all situations that is absolutely not the case for me. In fact, I NEED to acknowledge the possibility of failure mentally before I can get on with focussing on the possibility of success.
I have never swam that far in a single session without rest before (probably the most was about 1.5Km way back when I was a teenager in Australia).... I can now safely say that I can probably swim 3-4km in calm fresh water at will. Id guess that means I could likely double that if the chips were down and I had no options...

But who really cares...I think I did really well for today, and thats enough :))))