Welcome to the Big Swim!!!

Welcome to the Big Swim Blog!!!!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Big Swim or may have simply stumbled upon this site for one reason or another, the Big Swim is an 8 mile, non-competitive swim beginning at Anderson County park in Tennessee, continuing down the Clinch River to Norris Dam all for the purposes of raising money and awareness for Big Brothers Big Sisters of East Tennessee.

This year the Big Swim is excited to have 7 participants who are currently hard at work training for this endeavor: Robin Burris, Rosie Burris, Katina Angola, Bill Jolly, Martin Ellis, Jeff Thode and Dave Kennedy. This group has meet and will continue to meet periodically throughout the summer to check on each other's progress, learn and practice safety procedures, develop a plan and practice for group swimming in open water, and generally get to know one another as friends and teammates.

So far we have all built up to a solid 2 mile swim and are coming along quite nicely in the development of a group swimming technique and plan. Somehow this wonderful group of expert swimmers has even found a way to deal with and supplement the lack of experience and all around incompetence of its weakest link, me (Dave). We have plans for a 2-1/2 mile swim (our last pool swim) on May 17, 2008, and then we will be embarking on our very first lake swim, a 3 mile endeavor on June 7, 2008.

The Big Swim itself will be held (weather permitting) on Saturday August 2, 2008.

Thank you for visiting this site, and please check back for updates regarding our progress and training, and to get to know a few of our swimmers!!