#29: 467 Wellesley Road, Weston, Ma

#29 brings me to my first private home pool and to the Tocci's residence. The Toccis are a swimming family and have been good friends since Ryan joined the Gators  over nine years ago. Francesca and Bianca are fast swimmers and were very helpful in the morning practice carpool from Bentley  to school. Noah has been a great friend to Ryan and they enjoy going to country music concerts with each other. And Fran....she is great, very involved and simply gets the job done. 

When you have a pool like this in your backyard there is no wonder they are such good swimmers!

Thank you Toccis for being part of this project and letting me swim in your lovely pool. Such a great setting.

Magical #28-YMCA Aquatic Center of Central Florida

This years John Hancock Funds Summer Sales Meeting was at the Grand Floridan at Walt Disney World. The half day work session on July 22 gave me the chance to create that Disney Magic and find pool #28 at the YMCA of Central Florida in Orlando.

The Y sat along the highway in a strip mall area with fast food chains and budget hotels. It was a decent enough facility. The aquatic complex looked liked it was an addition to the main building. It was a fairly nice 50 meter pool with a large diving well with a 5 and 10 meter board. I went in the early afternoon and was surprised at the number of kids both swimming and diving.

With the round trip taxi fare of $80 and the $10 entrance fee it was about the same cost as a pass to the Magic Kingdom!

Magical #28.

Nubble Light Challenge 2013

This years NLC was a MIT Masters Swim Fest. To my surprise Ryan decided to get up at 6:00am to ride with me to York, ME to check out the Light. It was also an opportunity to get out and do some long boarding.

The 2.4 mile swim ended up being 2.8 miles via the GPS reading on Joe/Elaine's watch. That came as a relief as my 1:03.52 swim was three minutes off of last year. My wetsuit also had its inaugural swim of the season. I forgot how constricting it can be and combined with the cold water had a hard time getting enough air at the start. It was nice to have the insulation for most of the swim as there were definitely some cold patches. Seeing Ryan waving his longboard at the gut was a highlight. 

We had a great group of people either watching or swimming in this event that seems to becoming a tradition with MIT crowd.  

Fun day, good swim and nice to spend some time with Ryan before he leaves for Los Angeles.

The Country Club Scene-#26 & #27

This weeks two new pools took me to the rarefied surroundings of the country club scene in suburban Boston. As I don't frequent this circuit often I was careful about my swim suit choices so as not to shock the members or embarrass family and friends.

The first pool was at Woodland Country Club in Wellesley. It is a beautiful colonial looking manse set back from route 16 with lush fairways and greens. Ryan has been a lifeguard and coach there for the last two years so he facilitated for me a short post work dip. It is a very nice 25 yard pool below the clubhouse in the back with carefully manicured landscaping. I enjoyed seeing Ryan at pool #26 for a whopping 500 yards. I had swam 4000 in the morning.

Pool #27 was right here in good old Weston at the Weston Golf Club. The club is in a very lovely open setting with the spacious homes of the well-heeled along the fairways and greens. My friends Pat and Anne were kind enough to let me swim with them in one of their morning workouts. That is after, I invited myself ! We met at 8:30am (very civilized hours at country clubs) and much to my surprise and delight Coach Bianca ran the workout. I really enjoyed visiting with Anne and Pat during between sets. I even got some tips from Coach along the way.  I swam about 2300 of the 2500 yard work out.  I would have enjoyed going to Off Center for lunch afterwards but the salt mines called.

PS-the shower heads in the men's locker room are very nice!

Hoping to find a few more private clubs along the way. Good living!

25th Bosphorus Cross Continental Swim

The marquee event of this grand adventure turned out to be be even better than expected!!!

After a big night at Galatasaray Island we checked into our Ottoman Sultan like hotel at the Ciragan Kempinski Palace Hotel. After a brief respite in our luxurious new surroundings we went to athlete accreditation at the park nearby the hotel. 

Like many big events it had all the signage and excitement of athletes milling about. What began to distinguish this from others was the swag bag. In addition to the Evil Eye designed 25th anniversary race shirt we got a very cool gym bag, a new Arena swim suit, foodstuffs and post race a beach towel.

We hung around for a bit and then we took the boat cruise to do a race course inspection with some type of communication identifying key sighting landmarks. With the chatter of Turkish, Russian, Greek, Bulgarian, Italian, German and Spanish it was quite clear there weren't many Americans signed up for the race. After the cruise we got pizza from none other than Upper Crust Pizza of Boston origin. Oddly enough the owner of Upper Crust Istanbul had lived in Boston and was friends of the owner and started his own outpost.

 The entry into the Athletes Village

Swag bag contents 

The Istanbul out post of our Boston pizza chain.

After and early dinner in Ortokoy I tried to get an early nights sleep. Didn't workout so well with nerves and a huge wedding bash at the hotel keeping me up.

Got up around 6:15am and then went to the hotel breakfast buffet. Nibbled a little bit and then caught a taxi to the start. On the taxi drive we say somebody running and it ended up being my friend Bruce Mendelsohn from MIT. He joined at the start before leaving to fly home.

The park was teaming with people. Many more people than the day before and again it was a variety of languages from around the world. Spencer and I just hung out rested and watched the activity. I don't think he had seen so many people in speedos in his entire life.

Eventually we got on the two boats that were to take us up the Strait to the small village of Kanilica on the Asian side. On the two boats people began to chant something in Turkish. I thought it was something about rival football teams but it was a chant used in the Taksim protests-something to the effect of Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance. It seemed that very slowly that the boat made its way up river. I didn't speak with many people as nobody around me spoke English. The ferry finally docked and we disembarked with the disabled athletes first and then the able bodied athletes. In the short 10-15 minutes before the start there was a lot to absorb; people cheering from the shore, camera booms, camera drones flying overhead taking pics, zodiacs in the water and at least two helicopters flying overhead.

The gun finally went off and I jumped in the water with the throngs. I was expecting the water to be cool but it felt great. The first target was the middle of the Sultanmehmet Bridge followed by the Fortress of Rumeli. While was focused on swimming I did try to enjoy the surrounding with a couple of strokes of backstroke under the bridge and breaststroke by the Fort.

There weren't to many people nearby me, I could definitely see them but they weren't close. I felt good in the water and I clearly the current was fast. The next sighting mark was some electrical cables crossing above the river and then the middle Bosphorus Bridge. See below-I was in the middle.

The organizers said (from what I could piece together) the best course was to really stay in the middle and and begin to cut in around Galatasaray Island and I did just that. From the island it was probably under a 1000m dash to the finishing barge.

In keeping with tradition towards the end I did a few strokes fly. It was crazy getting out of the water with people cheering everywhere. I got a hearty handshake and slap on the back from a guy that finished close to me. They gave me a towel and some water and I went to find Spencer. In the spectator area there we jumbotrons that showed times and coverage of the race with people coming in. When I caught up with Spencer he said he saw me finish on the jumbotron and that I was one of the earlier finishers. 

Little did I know that as we waited around that the results would be so good...

Out of 1532 swimmers that wasn't so bad and it wasn't what I was expecting for a 6500m open water swim.

The awards ceremony was a big deal with the announcer speaking in multiple languages and people coming to the podium. I am not so sure I can remember being in that elaborate of a ceremony. 

The two on the podium were from Greece (#2-he was the guy that finished next to me) and third was a guy from Turkey

It was a great and memorable day for this 50 year old (I like being at the bottom of the age group)!!!

Mission accomplished!

Pool #25 Cirigan Kempinski Palace Hotel-Istanbul

As I had blogged before we classed it up for the last two nights and stayed at the Cirigan Kempinski Palace Hotel. I had stayed there 18 years ago on a NASL trip on the Sea Cloud and it was great as I remembered.

The property is beautifully set on a wide expanse of the Bosphorus with shipping and boat traffic all day and night with distant views of the Bosphorus Bridge twinkling at night and the lights of the Blue Mosque, Ayasofa and Maidens Tower in the other direction.

The centerpiece of the hotel property is the Ottoman Ciragan Palace with its gothic style architecture adjacent to Pool #25. It is an infinity pool that I would guess is nearly 25m as it took me a lazily 24-25 strokes to get across it.

After 3 new Turkish pools in 9 days it was a fitting pool to mark the halfway point of Bob's 50 Pools Project and the end of a FANTASTIC trip!!!!

Galatasaray Island Pool #24

Pool #24 was quite the European scene. It was on Galatasaray island in the Bosphorus that was a gift for a Sultan or something like that. We got to the pool around 4:00 and I got in a quick 1000m. After that it was backgammon and lounging poolside. Techno music, tattoos and gold chains were deriguer.

We had dinner on the boat at Mezzaluna and then stayed at the club for a bit. 

Not the typical post swim routine.

Pool #23 and early race recon

Yesterday, I hit pool #23 and it was an awesome one. It was the Heybeliada Sports Club in the Princes' Islands in Turkey.  I found it on line but little did I know it is a "members only" club. After being denied entrance with a feeble attempt to talk our way into the club, due to the language barrier I thought we were foiled. However my pouty face and the pity of a kind stranger saved the day-she let us in as her guest.

To date it was the best pool of the year and surely in the top 10 pools ever. It was an outdoor 50 meter saltwater pool in a sports club set on the Sea of Marmara. I swam 2000m in the pool and then Spencer and I lounged seaside with dips and short swims in the sea. It was truly a great day and a real treat to find this club. A highlight of the trip for sure.

Today July 4th we celebrated with a couple hour boat tour up the Bosphorus. A few observations; the scenery (towns/houses) along the river are beautiful and quaint, there is lots of shipping traffic, and the river is very wide and flowing fast!

The finish line in the distance.

A big ship

The Fortress of Rumeli with a strong current

Lastly we capped off the 4th at our favorite nagrile. Happy 4th of July!!!

Bosphorus Training...by touring

While there hasn't been any pool time we have been training with lots of walking around Istanbul.

We had a full day tour with Taksim protester Derya Artan. She took us to the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Basilica Cistern and the Grand Bazzar (oh-and her favorite nagrile). Great sights and souvenir shopping. Capped off by dinner at the Galata Bridge.

In front of Blue Mosque

Basilica Cistern

Nagrile with Derya

Galata Bridge Dinner

Yesterday kicked off with a tour of Ayasofa, a visit to Taksim to check out what the protest was about and then a long walk back to the hotel via Galata Tower, Spice Market and Cagagelou Hamman. The hamaman was an experience to be rubbed down Turkish style. 

Ayasofa

Galata Tower view 

Turkish Massage

When we got back to the hotel we found out that the commute to the consulate party was going to be really long so we bagged it.  Instead we took a ferry up to Cengelkoy on the Asian side and a great time at dinner. The views of the river and the bridge were awesome!!! It's a big river-getting excited.

Training for swim

Dinner 

The beautiful view and fraction of the race course.

Off to Heybeliada today to find pool #23...