Goal: Escape From Alcatraz

OK, it hit me like a flash as I rode the Hyde Street cable­car in to work this morn­ing. My new fit­ness goal should be to do the Escape from Alca­traz Triathlon.

It looks like even get­ting IN to the Escape from Alca­traz Tri is beyond my cur­rent capa­bil­i­ty, and they’re deter­min­ing slots now. The event is in June and I’d have a lot of train­ing to do in the mean­time. So maybe my goal should be to do a begin­ner’s tri this year and Escape from Alca­traz in 2005. Hard to say, and I think I need advice from peo­ple that are smarter than me.

The hard­est part would be the swim: I’m not a swim­mer and I have trou­ble get­ting into a breath­ing rhythm even swim­ming in a pool. 1.5 miles is a sub­stan­tial length for a new­com­er, so build­ing up to that will be a chal­lenge. Add on to that that this is Bay swim­ming in chilly water and that’s a much big­ger deal. The 18 miles on a bike I can pret­ty much do in my sleep, even 40 lbs over­weight like I am and even through the hills of San Fran­cis­co. The 8 mile run will be some­thing to work up to as well, but I’m more con­fi­dent that I could get up to that in 6 months than I am that I could get up to a 1.5 mile swim in six months.

(With one excep­tion) every time I’ve gone to Alca­traz, the Park Rangers have always talked about how it is impos­si­ble that any­one that made it out could have sur­vived the Bay waters and escaped. They use as evi­dence that none of the escapees had ever been reac­quired by author­i­ties. They also tell an anec­dote (prob­a­bly true) of one of the war­dens tak­ing pris­on­ers to the water’s edge and say­ing, “OK, now’s your chance for free­dom. All you have to do is swim.” and none of the pris­on­ers tak­ing him up on it. Any­way, I always raise my hand and ask if it’s impos­si­ble that some­one could sur­vive the swim through the icy waters and strong cur­rents, that how is it pos­si­ble for over 1000 ama­teur ath­letes to make the swim each year, and then fol­low that up with a bike ride and an eight-mile run?

The Rangers say that the con­victs don’t have the ben­e­fits of a wet­suit, day­light, the (rel­a­tive) warmth of day­time waters, and a mapped-out route designed to cir­cum­vent the worst of the Bay cur­rents. All this is true, of course. A few of the ath­letes do Escape from Alca­traz with­out a wet­suit, but not many. Still, if it’s pos­si­ble for this many peo­ple to do it as an event deemed safe enough to be sanc­tioned by the USAT, a con­vict des­per­ate for free­dom…? I’m not say­ing it’s cer­tain that any of the escapees did make it, but it’s far from cer­tain that they did not.

As far as none of the escapees ever being reac­quired by law enforce­ment, that does­n’t sur­prise me at all. If I hat­ed Alca­traz enough to swim through icy waters in the mid­dle of the night, risk­ing being shot if dis­cov­ered and risk­ing being swept out to the open sea to get chomped by sharks if not dis­cov­ered, when I reached shore, I’d go straight. I’d find a hum­ble job in the mid­dle of nowhere and lay as low as pos­si­ble, if not make tracks for Mexico.

In any case, I don’t know when I’ll be going to Alca­traz next, but would­n’t it be great instead of talk­ing about some oth­er 1000+ ath­letes that do it each June, to men­tion that I, myself, had made the swim? Yes, I think that would rock.

Er. No pun intended.