One Hour Postal Swim Recap

Congratulations to everyone who completed the 33rd annual One Hour Postal (OHP) swim, or as we at Tamalpais Aquatic Masters (TAM) like to call it, “Happy Hour”. What an amazing event. We accepted online entries for the first time in the history of the swim and had blistering record levels of participation. A total of 2,961 swimmers ranging from ages 18-90 swam the event including 275 relays.

9 new records were set: 6 women’s, 3 men’s and 5 relays:

Alison Zamanian                     35-39            5,560

Suzanne Heim-Bowen            50-54            5,180

Laura Val                                 55-59            5,090

Barbara Dunbar                       60-64            4,500

Ronnie Kamphausen               75-79            3,525

Betty Lorenzi                            80-84            3,250

Jeff Erwin                                 45-49            5,755

Jim McConica                          55-59            5,445

David Radcliff                           75-79           4,520

W45+: Illinois Masters: Heidi Kafka, Andrea Block & Marcia Cleveland            14,430*

W55+: TAM: Judy Eisenman, Laura Val & Linda Shoenberger                        13,510           

MX35+ Walnut Creek: Roque Santos, Peter Guadagni, Alison Zamanian, Suzanne Heim-Bowen            21,250

MX55+ TAM: Kenneth Frost, Richard Burns, Linda Schoenberger, Laura Val            18,325

MX75+ Oregon: Dick Weick, David Radcliff, Geraldine Kawabata, Pat Hunt            13,365

*Three other teams also broke this record previously held by TAM Masters:  Walnut Creek (14,350), Conejo Valley (14,130) and Davis Masters (14,090).

Coach Susan Ingraham (Masters of South Texas) challenged her entire team to do the OHP fly, and 56 out of 85 swimmers went non-stop for a total of 142,500 yards butterfly. At IndySwimFit, Juliet Port swam the OHP 8 times during the month, once for 10 x 400 IM for 4,050 yards!  Katy Sahm swam 8 months pregnant and John Weiss swam all fly. Liz Engelskirchen (3,265) and Phil Jonckheer (3,705 yards all breaststroke) from TAM Masters, both still nursing bad shoulders, kicked their way through the swim.

We also had international participation, with swimmers from Australia, Canada and Japan.

The undisputed overall winner was yet again, Davis Aquatic Masters with 312 swimmers and total yardage of 1,084,425. Relative newcomer, Asphalt Green from NYC clearly wins the “most improved” category, as they leap-frogged into the Extra Large Team Category (227 swimmers) from the Small Team Category in 2009 (6 swimmers). That’s what we like to see!

Congratulations to all for participating in this very challenging event!