SOMA happenings — Mid-August 2019

Hello SOMA Nation!

I hope you all are having a great summer.  I know some of you are, as I’ve seen you often in the pool and at open water venues having lots of fun!  

Below are a few tidbits and updates that may be of interest to you, including the last few upcoming events of the summer.  

PHOTOS AND RESULTS FROM APPLEGATE LAKE

I’ve attached quite a few photos from Applegate Lake open water weekend that took place July 13-14.  Unfortunately, I had a conflict with the event (USMS Board of Directors meeting in Denver), so I was unable to attend for the first time in many years.  But it was great to see so many others out there from SOMA, RVM, and GPY (Grants Pass YMCA).  Kudos to Michael Grant for building the GPY program from scratch these last couple of years and bring a great group of swimmers out to Applegate Lake to swim together as a team and represent GPY for the first time at an OMS Association Championship (Applegate Lake was the open water champs for Oregon).  It’s great to see Masters swimming spreading through the Rogue Valley!!

Congratulations to Mike Dix on winning the 1500 on Sunday after swimming the 10K on Saturday.  Links to results are below.

Saturday results: https://www.webscorer.com/race?raceid=188137
Sunday results: https://www.webscorer.com/race?raceid=188138

PHOTOS AND RESULTS FROM ELK LAKE

Last weekend was the Cascade Lakes Swim Series & Festival at Elk Lake.  Matt Osborn and I drove up to participate and Jayette Pettit of “SOMA del Norte” drove down from Vancouver, WA to swim in the 5 events.  All three of us swam all 5 events and did quite well!  Jayette and I won our age group in all 5 events and Matt ‘Bird Man’ Osborn (see attached photo for clarification) won his age group in the 1500 on Saturday, which was the Northwest Zone Open Water Championship.  So SOMA was well-represented with 3 Northwest Zone Open Water Champions!  

Results from the 1500 NW Zone Championships are here: https://www.webscorer.com/race?raceid=189407

Full results from the entire weekend are here: https://swimoregon.org/results_pdfs/2018-2019/2019_Cascade_Lakes_Results_Final.pdf

Also, this year at Elk Lake on Saturday afternoon was the inaugural ‘Cider Kilometer Relay World Championship‘ where teams composed of 4 people drank a can of hard cider and then swam 250 meters as fast as possible.  It was a hoot!  For those of you who want more information, the flyer for the Cider Relay is attached.  I hope to see more of you come up for a weekend of fun next year!

ENGLISH CHANNEL CROSSING ATTEMPT

As many of you probably already know, I am heading to England on Tuesday to attempt to swim across the English Channel as a 2-person relay with my buddy Christian Tujo from Sisters, Oregon, outside of Bend.  Yeonjoo Lee of SOMA (Medford) will be coming along to crew for us (THANK YOU, Yeonjoo!!).  Many of you have asked how you can follow our swim so I will provide some details below.

We will be on the boat “Pathfinder” with captain Eric Hartley.  When/if we get the opportunity to do our swim, live tracking will be available here:
https://www.channelswimmingassociation.com/pilots/pathfinder

According to Captain Eric, our most probable day to swim is the 11th of August.  I will try to post updates on Facebook as things progress.  I am friends with many of you there, so follow the action there if you can:
https://www.facebook.com/flytrapcare

ARTICLE IN MEDFORD TRIBUNE FEATURING MARK HAGEMAN AND AARON GHIGLIERI

There was a great feature article on the front page of the Sports section on the Sunday, July 28th Medford Mail Tribune newspaper.  It featured Mark and Aaron and had a good photo of the two of them at Superior Athletic Club.  I have attached the two-page article here for your reading pleasure.

Thanks, Mark and Aaron, for getting great press for SOMA in the local newspaper!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Summer isn’t quite over yet, as there are a few great events left to attend.  I hope you all can make it out to enjoy them!

Eel Lake Swims (we host so be there!), August 17: https://www.clubassistant.com/club/meet_information.cfm?c=2441&smid=11818

OMS LCM Champs (another one to definitely attend!), August 23-25:https://www.clubassistant.com/club/meet_information.cfm?c=1352&smid=12397

Lake of the Woods swim (we host so be there!), September 7:   https://www.clubassistant.com/club/meet_information.cfm?c=2441&smid=11819

OK, that’s all for now.  See you waterside sometime soon!!