Many of you know that Sara and I volunteer with a charity called CAF (Challenged Athletes Foundation). Today Sara and I went to Big Corona Beach in Corona Del Mar to support a CAF event giving challenged athletes support with ocean swimming. Many of the athletes are triathletes already and just came for more practice and others were coming down for the first time.
Sara and I swam with a young man named Brandon Erickson. Brenden’s North Dakota Guard unit was sent to Iraq 5 years ago, and while he was out on manuvers his unit was ambushed and a rocket propelled granade blew off his right arm which he was using to hold onto his weapon. When he went to return fire his gun and arm were gone. He received excellent care in the states and decided to move to OC to go to law school. He is a great one arm swimmer and we swam once lap (half mile) with him wearing his wetsuit and then another lap without his wetsuit. He has a great attitude and we are glad to have had the joy of meeting him.
The OCTRI club also put on a predictive ocean swimming event where a racer had to write down the time they predicted they would swim the .5 mile course and then do it. Sara swam faster than her predicted time however was the first place woman finisher so she won an OCTRI jacket for that. Great fun – we love to be at the beach and play in the ocean.
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