It is finished!

At 1145 a.m. Kuwait time today, I completed the last 30 laps of the 21-mile "English Channel" swim contest -- and won the event in my age category and overall, by a good few miles.

The entire swim took just five minutes shy of 12 hours. I surpassed my goal of six days, once agin surprising myself. My strategy was to swim the 756 total laps by doing 120 laps every morning, then as much as I could at night -- in the first three days, I swam 200 laps per day. This morning I swam 126, then went back at lunch to plow through the last 30. I should get some sort of medal and a t-shirt in a day or so; a pic or two will be posted later.

I certainly wasn't the fastest swimmer out there, maybe just the most determined. A twentysomething soldier in my unit was always out there too, having swam in college a lot more recently than I. Another older gentlemen started swimming in our lane the other day, and introduced himself only as Mark. When I protested that I didn't want him to get in the way, he told me to keep up. He doesn't swim much more than 60 laps a day, but boy is he fast! I can't keep up for more than a couple minutes. Turns out he's 50, and he's a one-star admiral who used to swim at Annapolis.

I guess sheer determination, lots of Red Bull and Power Bars, and my waterproof iPod case were what fueled my quest. Sometimes I didn't know where the energy came from, but I slugged it out. Oh, and I decided not to go for the 100 miles. Time to get back to a normal routine.