… the hour swim, that is! Not that it wasn’t painful, particularly when the Z center folks reset the clocks in the middle of our swim. When I thought I was done, I had five minutes left. Longest 5 minutes of my life .. 
So, yes, it was long and not the most exciting thing I can imagine doing on a Sunday morning, but we all survived, did well and a big thanks goes out to our good friends, who are such good friends that they sat on the side of the pool and recorded our splits for an hour - quite possibly the one thing that’s more boring than actually swimming for an hour straight. As predicted in a previous post, I did indeed swim just under 2.5miles (4285 yards), which isn’t bad for somebody whose favorite race lasts about 28 seconds. And as expected I didn’t really find any solutions to mind-boggling puzzles. Instead I must have looked at the clock about 150 times, got very inspired every time one fellow swimmer passed me and tried to keep up for about 15 yards, then dropped back to normal pace until coming close to passing the other fellow swimmer. In the end it seemed like a hare and hedgehog game. I also pondered the fact that the distance I covered was roughly equivalent to the first leg of an Ironman triathlon. How anybody can bike 112 miles and run a marathon after swimming 2.4 miles is truly amazing to me.
Later that day I had my piece of cake - or two. I had baked a Kaesekuchen (a German cheesecake) after discovering that Greek yogurt has a similar taste and consistency as the hard to find Quark (no, not the elementary particle). A great discovery, it turns out, the cake was moist, refreshing and delicious and the perfect post hour swim dessert (we had had brunch at the big table at Toscanini’s earlier, where we polished off a delicious fried egg sandwich in no time and enjoyed the fabulous coffee).