Marilyn's story

What a gorgeous lake! What a great team and captain! Tom is the best, being a swimmer himself who has done this lake 3 times. He understands what a swimmer needs from a captain and is very safety conscious.
Even though the conditions were almost ideal, it was my toughest and longest lake swim since Lake Ontario.
The swim started late at 8:30 pm because we had to wait for a thunder shower to pass. I waded into the 20 deg. C waters of beautiful Lake Tahoe at Camp Richardson, California.The first couple of hours, the light slowly faded behind the ring of mountains around the lake. Then the stars came out, I've never seen the Milky Way in such detail before. After about 3 hours, the washing machine-like swells started. I seemed to be going up and down randomly. These appeared on and off throughout the night, lasting up to an hour at a time. I can understand why swimmers unaccustomed to night swimming would find this disorienting and nauseating. Tom thinks they are caused by a desert crosswind and water sloshing from a strong wind the previous day. Jodi says the winds blew from all directions.
 After about 4 hours, the cold air (down to 15 deg. C.) and breeze started cooling me off. A brief sprint was sufficient to warm me up. However, I couldn't keep up sprinting because the altitude made breathing hard. I noticed around 3 am that whenever I sprinted, I also threw up a bit. This culminated in full out retching. After miserable hour full of quitting thoughts, it dawned on me that the bonamine (Bonine) I had taken at 6 pm had run out after 8 hours. Within minutes of taking a second one, all the nausea went away. That's the thing about marathon swimming, symptoms like pain, nausea and headache come and go and environmental changes happen from hour to hour. It usually goes away if you keep going.
When I took the second pill, I had trouble swallowing it. By the time the break ended, I was shivering. I stayed chilled and having to sprint frequently until after the eclipse ended and the sun finally got warm.
The eclipse: The sky looked like someone had sprinkled black dust in the sky. The water lost it's beautiful cobalt blue colour. The sun was still shining, but it lost it's warmth and a breeze picked up. The eclipse lasted about an hour.
When I warmed up, then my shoulders, back and wrists started to hurt. I slowed down for a couple of hours, but the the pain passed and I was able to pick it up to finish the swim in 17 hours and 2 minutes and 46 seconds at Hyatt Beach, in Incline Village, Nevada.
Oldest woman and first Canadian to swim Lake Tahoe!!!
Thank you to all my crew: Thie, Paula and my husband and especially observer Jodi DiLascio who face-timed her mother, Marilyn Bell DiLascio, to me live.  Thank you to everyone who sent prayers and good wishes.
Ir's not too late to donate to Sashbear!