YES!!!!!!!

KRISTA TEN BRINKE IS OFFICIALLY THE 21ST PERSON TO SWIM ACROSS LAKE ERIE!!!!!

Praise God!!! And I mean that!!!

We didn't even have a boat right up until the evening before my swim. Of course Christine and my parents didn't let me know that! Thank goodness for Anita and her husband swooping in to save the day. Their boat wasn't as big as what was initially planned, but without it I couldn't have crossed.

On the morning of July 12th my alarm went off at 3:30am. I put on my bathing suit, and warm clothes and I grabbed the two jugs of my feed I had mixed up the night before. I had a smoothie and an egg, my typical pre-big swim meal. And my last meal until I got across. I wasn't going to try anything weird at this stage in the game. Mom was waiting to drive me to Fort Erie. Dad was up an hour earlier to head to the marina with the boat. My parents love me. I'm very luck to have had them through all this.

I arrived at the Crystal Beach Marina just before 5am and my whole crew was waiting for me, Dad, Paul, Christine, Trin, Dave, Miguel, Anita, and her husband. I can't even begin to express my gratitude for these people. We had to start so earlier because the forecast predicted the currents on Lake Erie will switch direction around noon and would be completely against. The goal was to be almost across before that happened. After my last on-land pee break and a last minute coating of anti-chaffing cream, we were almost ready to go. Something really important I wanted to do before we left was pray with everyone. So we got in a circle and did that, and then I prayed one more time with just mom and dad, cried exactly 3 tears, and then we piled into two boats and started across to Sturgeon Point on the american side of the lake.

Couple sketchy things to note. 1st: we did not have a navigator. Christine has sometimes done this job but because she'll be in the kayak she can't. So the navigator role fell to Dad, who is also in charge of driving the lead boat. The first task was actually finding Sturgeon Point. Since we have to cross into american waters we're not very keen to use the data on our phones in order to load maps etc. (Also since we're in american waters, we're all praying to not get stopped by US coast guard, especially when I jump out and climb onto their shoreline to mark the start of my swim.) We are driving in what we think is the right direction. We are exactly against the waves. This is good because that means they should be exactly behind me as I swim back in this direction. The problem was that we couldn't drive quickly, it was very bumpy. The funny part I found out afterwards is that everyone in the boats was worried about me, whether this was making me feel sick, whether seeing the waves and the immensity of the distance was making me nervous. Meanwhile, I wasn't in the slightest bit concerned about that! I was in the front of the boat, standing, absorbing the waves with my body the way I always do when boating on Lake O. I was worried about Mom and Paul and about whether THEY were feeling sick. But everyone was fine, even after pounding those waves for 45 minutes. At some point I decided that one of the blinking red lights in the distance was Sturgeon Point. I had no proof to back up that claim, Dad wasn't convinced that it coincided with the map, but we kept driving towards it because we didn't have a better plan. Turns out the blinking red light was just to the right of Sturgeon Point and once we could see land Christine could direct us in. That's all God.

The rest still feels pretty surreal to me. I jumped out of the boat once we were like 25m from shore and climbed onto the land. Christine and Dave got the kayak ready, Miguel held the stopwatch, and at exactly 6am said "Go!" From there I can only tell you my half of the story. I have no idea what conversations happened in the boats, I don't know what problems they encountered trying to keep me on track and keep me safe. All I know is that lake Erie was warm, a very comfortable 70 degrees and that the first 3 hours of my swim passed without incident.

Every 30 minutes a water-bottle attached to a rope was tossed in front of my path filled with my Carbo-Pro mixture and I could stop for a minute to drink that, and talk to the crew, or pee, or eat a couple cucumber slices thrown to me from Mom. The waves were big and the wind was strong up until this point, but it was all pushing me where I wanted to go, and I'm wasn't really bothered by them. Christine tells me that I just completed the first 10km of my swim in 3hour and 9 minutes, my fastest 10km yet! On the downside my shoulders felt tight, and I was pretty sick of my feed already. By the 4hr mark I asked for a tylenol and barely had any of my feed. There was never a point in my swim where I felt like giving up, or felt too exhausted to continue. Some people say that's good training, some people say that's God's grace, I say its both. But if I had to pick the moment that was the toughest, that was it, just over halfway, another marathon left to go and really uncomfortable pain. About a week ago I had asked my chiropractor and massage therapist whether they could foresee any problems occurring during my swim. Whether I should be aware of certain pains and know when to stop. They both assured me that I was going to be fine, and that anything that happened wasn't irreparable, we could rehab any injury, and that I shouldn't allow fear of a minor injury stop me from completing the crossing. That moment in the middle of the lake, I was really glad I had that conversation. So I continued and eventually the tylenol kicked in and the pain subsided. Christine wasn't happy about me neglecting to feed though, so just before the 5hr mark she had me take one of the caffeine gels that marathon runners use. "Gel" is a nice word, "thick gasoline" might be closer to the truth.

At exactly 5 hours, Dave hopped in and helped me pick up my stroke count. He swam next to me for almost an hour and when he hopped out just before noon I could see Crystal Beach. I was close. I was told I was only 1km offshore, 1.5km tops. Well great! That's 20-30 minutes! Unfortunately the pier we were aiming for was playing trick on my crew's eyes and we went a little bit off course, enough that 40 minutes came and went without me touching land. But I knew I was close, and that energy gel had kicked in, and I knew that I could swim another hour at least if I HAD to.

But I didn't have to, very soon after that I could see the bottom, the kayak I had been making eye contact with every 15 seconds was now in front of me taking over from the lead boat. I was allowed to sight forward, and I only had a few hundred metres left. I could hear the people before I could see them and I swam until I was in less than 3ft of water, I which point I stood up and stumbled/ran onto the beach. Miguel stopped the clock at 12:52, 6 hours and 52 minutes. Way faster than the 8 hour mark I had dared to hope for.

I would have loved to hug my parents first, but Christine was there in lieu and after that I was just hugging everybody. Mom swam in from where the boats were anchored and this time she cried. My friends had balloons and signs, and some beach strangers congratulated me, and it was everything I could have hoped for and more. We even picnicked on the beach afterwards and thanks to the disgusting caffeine gel, I had SO much energy for the rest of the afternoon.

Today I had another AM Radio follow up interview and the rest of today was spent doing things that didn't involve me lifting my arms above waist height.

I am exhausted, but not as exhausted as I would have predicated, and very very content. Not everyone gets one of these moments in their life, and its not like I didn't work hard for it. But I never could have had that "running up onto the beach moment" without the group of people who helped me all along the way, and I hope that one day I'll get to be part of someone else living out one of their dreams.

I'm excited to get back to a more relaxed-paced life. I'm excited to spend more time with family and friends and less time with my significant other(s): the pool/the canal. I have no intentions of tackling another Great Lake, just in case anyone is asking, Christine would like me to, but I think I'll chase after some other dreams now.

And so I think the moral of the story probably is: Be careful what you put on your Bucketlist.