And then there’s 88-year-old Charlottesville resident Richard Selden, who offers another kind of definition of going the distance. In 2007, Selden set the national age group record in the two-mile Chris Greene Lake Cable Swim. Holding up his award, he declared, “On to 90.” Then he came back in 2008 and set the record again.
I’d like to see myself like Richard Selden in another few decades, if not setting any national records then at least still knocking down my own. When I finished the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim in 2008, 4.4 miles across the Bay between the spans of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I may possibly have been the happiest person ever to nab 304th place. Last year, I took 292nd. Nowadays, whenever I come across a wide expanse of water, I eye the distant shore and think, “I wonder if I could swim that?”
(Originally published in the June 2010 issue.)
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