Front Page News!

Guess who's on the front page of today's newspaper?? Well, you don't have to guess. Here's a picture of it (a low-quality image we picked up from the Daily News' website):


Look very carefully... Right by the side head-line, where it says "Swim" is where you'll find Dave's fingertips - he's the one leaping out of the water for his start. If you still can't find him, I've circled him in the copy of the photo below the article. Here's a link to the article, or you can read it here (and you should read it, it made us famous for the day):

55 Swimmers Make a Splash for Breast Cancer Fight

By MICHAEL POTTER Monday, February 13th 2006

ST. THOMAS - Unusually choppy and murky conditions at Magens Bay last year did not stop a record 97 swimmers and waders from taking part in the Against the Tide in the Virgin Islands Swim for Breast Cancer.
This year, the water was smooth and clean for the fourth annual event on Saturday, but only about half the number of supporters got wet for the cause.

Despite the drop in participation, the first time in four years that turnout has not increased, a lively 55 competitors made it more than worthwhile. They walked, stroked and boogie-boarded their way from one end of the bay to the other, all the while raising money for breast cancer patients on St. Thomas and St. John.
The total raised by this year's event was not immediately known, but fees collected from participants who pre-registered totalled $300. Race day registration fees will be tallied and added to the pre-registration total to determine the final amount.

In its first three years, the Against the Tide swim raised a combined $2,707 - including an even $1,000 in 2005. All proceeds from the event go directly to Schneider Regional Medical Center's Partners for Health program to assist victims of breast cancer. Cancer patients can apply to the program for assistance purchasing medications and covering the high cost of treatments such as surgery and chemotherapy.

David Nielsam, who competed alongside his wife, Kendra, was the top swimmer, covering the two-thirds of a mile distance in 17 minutes, 6 seconds. The Nielsams moved to the island only six months ago and have taken part in many of the territory's community athletic events in the last several months.

With swimming their strong suit, and a history of breast cancer in both their families, the couple enthusiastically made Against the Tide their latest workout. Both of Kendra's grandmothers suffered from breast cancer, and one of David's grandmothers also battled the disease.

"It's good fun," David said of the swim, "and it's a good cause."

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women, behind skin cancer, and it is the second most lethal cancer among women. More than 2 million women living in the United States have been treated for breast cancer, and an estimated 212,920 more will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2006, according to the American Cancer Society.

A busy weekend of activities on St. Thomas likely blunted the local turnout for the swim, but tourists and newly relocated residents like the Nielsams came out in unexpected numbers.

Friends Tina Kannheiser and Ellen Stefanacci, visiting from New Jersey aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Adventure of the Seas, stumbled upon the event when they arrived at Magens Bay for a day on the beach and immediately signed up. Kannheiser, 16, is on the swim team at Lacey Township High School and jumped at the chance to get in a workout, despite leaving her goggles and cap on the ship.

"I promised my coach I would keep up my training," she said.

New Jersey was well-represented this year with Anne Barbetti and her husband, Wayne, also taking part in their first Against the Tide swim. The Barbettis moved to St. Thomas from the Garden State just a few months ago, but Anne has lent her support to the cancer society in New Jersey for years.

"Cancer is a cause very close to me," she said. "I have some friends who are breast cancer survivors. When I heard about this, my husband and I decided we had to do it."

- Contact Michael Potter at 774-8772 ext. 310 or e-mail mpotter@dailynews.vi.

Dave is circled in red. The blue area circled just to the far side of Dave is me. Well, more specifically, my right thigh and butt. I'm wearing my red bathing suit which is the only way I could identify myself at work, when everyone asked me where I was on the front page, before I'd even seen it. People were sure I had to be in the photo, and they thought I was the one with the snorkel, or the one wearing blue, etc, etc. The story ran on page 4, and there was another photo there and it's a little easier to see both of us in that one. Too bad they didn't use the photo of Dave running out of the water at the finish line! Everyone I work with was quite excited to see Dave and me mentioned in the paper. The story isn't quite accurate as, while both of my grandmothers had battles with cancer, just one had breast cancer. So, that's the excitement for the day.

Redemption! Magen's Bay Against the Tide Swim

Yesterday morning Dave and I did the Against the Tide Swim at Magen's Bay. You may recall, on Sunday in the 10k run we did, Dave got second-to-last and I got last. We turned the tables on everyone today. Dave came in FIRST!! and I came in second among the women!

Magen's Bay is advertised as a one mile beach, but it's a little bit less. The race organizer said it was 2/3 of a mile, but I believe it is a bit longer than that, because the road that generally follows the beach is 0.6 miles (it's where i run), and the beach curves and goes on farther than the road. So, maybe 3/4 of a mile? Dave finished in 17 minutes and I came in around 23 minutes. It's not the type of event where they keep track of everyone's time, but Dave checked the clock for me when I finished.

Against the Tide is apparently the name used nationwide for swims that raise money to fight breast cancer (the Massachusetts one is popular). So our entry fee went to the local foundation that helps with that. I think they said about 60 people did the event today. Last year they had around 100 but the water was very choppy, so perhaps it deterred people this year. They let people either wade the distance, swim, or swim with fins. It was a little sad actually - the organizer couldn't find any sponsors this year either. So, no free t-shirts - they just asked for donations for them, and it didn't look like they got rid of very many. I got two.

The swim was pretty tiring for me. I swam faster than I had intended because I thought I had a chance of coming in first among the women. It was an in-water start. We talked to a few other people before the race started, one woman mentioned that she'd been training for this. Yikes, I thought. I hadn't gone swimming since Christmas, and before then it'd been quite a while too. We also met one woman about our age before the race who had done it before - Jessie. She said to us "don't worry, it's easier than it looks." I wasn't going to mention that we'd done a 5-mile race in October, but when she asked if we were swimmers, Dave volunteered that information. I think maybe it motivated her because she ended up winning the women's division overall.

After the race started, Dave sped off pretty quickly, and I kicked a few people trying to get out of the scramble and follow in his wake. After a few minutes, it was really obvious he was way out ahead, but I could see one person off to the side somewhat near him too - that ended up being Jessie. Based on our conversations afterwards, it seems they pushed each other to go faster.

For about the first third, I was even with a few other swimmers. But just looking at them I could tell at least a few wouldn't be able to hold that pace. One young guy wasn't even putting his face in the water. Around the half-way mark I saw two people in red suits just ahead of me, and not very many people close in front of them. I could tell one was a woman, so I sped up. Somehow I ended up coming up right along side both of them. The guy was in between us and I felt his arm touch my leg and I thought "maybe this is the woman's husband and he's going to try to keep me from passing her" so I started kicking really hard and fast to get past them. Turns out, the guy's name was Bob, he'd never met that woman, but he's really nice and he didn't seem too upset that I kicked him. oops. hehe. Open water swimming is definitely a contact sport!

The red suit woman and I were shoulder-to-shoulder the rest of the race. We kept bumping into each other too, but it was too much effort to try to get further apart. I was getting so tired and worn out, and the finish line didn't seem to be getting any closer. But i kept thinking, maybe I can get first among the women. At some point early on, I'd thought that maybe Jessie was the one who sped off with Dave, but I promptly forgot that. So, not wanting to lose to this woman I was so close to kept me going. My arms were getting super tired so I kept trying to kick faster to pass her. I passed her once, she passed me, then at the very end I got ahead of her when I realized I could cut straight to shore and the finish line earlier than I'd expected. The finish chute was a diagonal, which helped me since I was on the shore side of my competitor. Remembering my mistake in the 5 mile swim when I tried to stand up when it was still too deep, I swam until my fingers touched the sand. I heard Dave cheering me on to run fast to the finish to beat her, and so i did! Woohoo! [I like this photo because it looks totally fake, but it's not. This is me on the balcony at home after the race, you can see where we swam in the background.]

Same people organized the race last Sunday, so they remembered us from earlier in the week. At some point at the end of last weekend's race, a support guy on a bike was cheering us on, and Dave tells him "our excuse is, we're swimmers. not runners." That guy came up to us after the race today and said "hey, you two weren't kidding when you said swimming is your sport." A guy from the newspaper got a photo of Dave coming out at the finish line, and he interviewed Dave too. So maybe Monday's paper will have a picture of him! (There is no Sunday edition of the paper here, it's the Weekend edition instead, published Saturday.) If the story is online, I'll post a link to it here.

Dave got a neat little trophy and we both got medals (well, all the finishers got medals...). And we both felt like we redeemed ourselves after the road race last weekend. Switched from last and second-to-last to first and second. :) And, we helped support a good cause in the process.

World Cup, Here I Come!

Last week I mentioned that the newspaper indicated the VI Women's National Soccer team had begun practices. Well, turns out that wasn't entirely accurate. I made a phone call to see if I could volunteer with the team, and when the woman asked if I had any experience playing, I told her I'd played 12 years as a kid. She laughed at me and told me I shouldn't volunteer and that instead I should try out for the team! I was told that they are trying to start a women's mini-league here and then after that is over they'll pick the national team for the World Cup in 2007. She told me some of the girls hadn't played until they began these practices recently.

So, yesterday I went to my first soccer practice in over nine years. It was really fun. I was definitely one of, if not *the*, oldest players there. Most of them are in 9th or 10th grade. When I mentioned I hadn't played in the last 9 years, one girl said "wow, that's over half my life." (and then she immediately apologized for making me feel old.) It was pretty funny. It was fairly obvious that a lot of them are lacking experience, but the coach had us do some good drills, and we scrimmaged a bit too. I've got another practice on Thursday and then we'll be split up into mini-teams and we start weekend games this Sunday. My understanding is we'll only have 5 or 6 people on a team, so we'll be playing on short fields and they'll only be 15 minute games, then we'll switch which teams are playing each other. It should be fun! and maybe if I'm lucky I'll end up on the national team.

Weekend of Exercise and Food!

*Shameless plug* I just signed up as part of a team for the MS Walk in San Diego to help raise money to fight multiple sclerosis. I'm going to be a Virtual Walker. My dear friend Jen is the captain of the TierraNet Trailblazer's team, formed of a bunch of people I used to work with at TierraNet (incidentally, the friendly hosts of our blog) pre-legal career. I'm trying to raise at least $100, so even just a couple of dollars will help a lot. A five (or ten or twenty) dollar donation would be much appreciated! Click Here to get to my donation page, or click here for our Team page, if you're interested in joining!

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog.....





Dave's parents are visiting us, so Saturday Dave took us all out on a private tour of Cas Cay. It was more interesting than the last two times I went, for a few reasons. First, Dave recently figured out a way to climb up the cliff at Red Point. He led us up there so we could see all of Cas Cay. It was quite pretty, as you can see from the photo above. Second, I enjoyed the snorkel a lot more because I remembered to bring my prescription goggles. However, it was a bit chilly in the water. We got spoiled arriving here in the summer when the water was probably around 84. Now it's maybe 79.... After the kayak, hike, snorkel tour, we came home and Dave got a coconut down from the coconut tree in our yard and hacked it up.










Dave even drained the coconut water out too. Yes, coconut water, not milk. Coconut milk comes from the fleshy meat of a coconut. They actually sell coconut water here in cans. Or you can buy a coconut with a straw in many touristy areas. Some people find the drink quite refreshing.







Also, sometime on Saturday, Dave and I decided to give it a go for the 10k on Sunday. So Sunday morning we got up early and headed down to Magen's Bay. Not surprisingly I saw a few of the people I see at Magen's running along the same flat route I do there - the ones I consider pretty darn fast. About 30 people showed up for the race - a good turnout here. The 10k route ran most of the length of the road at Magen's (about 1/2 a mile), then basically up a nice, steady incline out to Peterborg point. The views along the way were amazing. The hills weren't as steep as they will be for 8 Tuff Miles on St John, but, wow, they were a work-out. We weren't in last place the entire race... but when I stopped to use my inhaler we got passed. Dave was sweet and stayed with me the whole race to cheer me on and convince me that I could do it. I'd only planned on running about half of it, since the longest run I've *ever* done was two or three weeks ago and that was a very flat 5k I measured out myself. We ran most of the race. I think we were not running for about 25 minutes or so, but that included some stops to catch my breath, take in the view, or to get some water. We'll have to drive out there sometime and take some photos. It was very pretty there. I think I may try to run parts of that road every so often now, to help me get used to hills for future races. Here we are, after the race, back at home on the balcony -- I'm still worn out and red hot, whereas Dave ... is not.
After the race, we went to the Ritz to enjoy they yummy brunch. So much tasty food. We probably could have gotten by without having dinner, but we had some more food before Dave and I went to bed at 8:30, totally exhausted.