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I have ever since my childhood awoke at 5 .am. I have a built-in alarm clock. I am 100% when my eyes open in the morning. To the woe of my wife, Mary, I still arise at 5 .am even though I am retired. While I worked, I didn’t use an alarm clock. I have never been late to work.  

I was 16 years of age when I went to Lake Tahoe to attend a summer runner’s camp. The last track season, I had beaten the world’s greatest athlete’s time in the 1,500-meter run. I had beat Bruce Jenner’s time by more than 10 seconds. What’s ironic is when my coach told me my time, I declare Bruce Jenner a girly man. To say I was filled with hubris is an understatement. I got the phrase, girly man, from Arnold Schwarzenegger in his mocking of men who he judged as inferior.

Like always, I woke up at 5 .am, I put on my running shorts to get my morning run out of the way. I finished my run at the lake’s edge. I saw a buoy about 200 yards from the lake’s edge. I took off my shirt and entered the water. I had swum across Granit Bay many times at Folsom Lake. I entered the lake and its cold temperature was shocking but I wasn’t deterred in my mission to swim to the buoy and back. While I was a strong swimmer, it was a matter of swim or sink for me as my body’s fat content was at 2%.

As I approached the buoy, I recognized that I was in trouble. The extreme cold was shutting down my body. Instead of rounding the buoy, I stopped at the buoy and tried my best to pull myself out of the water. I looked to the shore to call for help. It was too early, no one was on the beach as far as I could see. There were no boats either. I was shivering so violently that I recognized if I didn’t start for shore, I would lose my grasp on the buoy and I would perish. I started for the shore. I swam as fast as I could. I only raised my head to take a breath as I swam.

Then it happened, I lost the use of my hands. As I stroked, my hands flopped backward and I went under the surface. I kept kicking as I sunk. I began to blackout. I estimate I was 20 or more feet below the surface from the pressure on my ears’ drums; when I hit the ledge of the lake’s bottom. It was a 45-degree angle ledge. I clawed my way up until the lake’s bottom was flat.

I pulled my legs beneath me and I jumped with all my might. My nose just cleared the surface. I didn’t get a breath. Now that I knew I could breach the surface, I expelled my air on the next jump. I kept jumping forward toward the lake’s edge as I grabbed air at the peak of my jump. Eventually, I made enough progress forward that I could stand on my tippy toes with my head backward with my lips pursed to breathe. When I made it to the shore, I collapsed as seen in the movies. I lay there unable to move for a time that is unknown to me. When I was able to get up, there wasn’t a person to be seen on the shore.

That trait of mine of getting up at 5 .am almost killed me. My feelings of invincibility almost killed me. My self-competitive nature almost killed me.
My nature of never giving up saved my life. My fitness both almost killed me and saved my life.

Lastly, my height saved my life. If I had been an inch shorter, I would have died.