Fifty Golden Gate Bridge swims and Kathie Hewko is still counting Petaluma athlete is 20 years ahead of schedule Published: Wednesday, Aug 8, 2007
By JOHN JACKSON ARGUS-COURIER SPORTS EDITOR
Kathie Hewko, in her distinctive flowered cap, has completed 50 Golden Gate Bridge swims and has no intention of slowing down. Hewko completed her milestone swim last year on her 60th birthday.
A tough relay is Hewko's most recent challenge
Almost a year after reaching her goal of 50 Golden Gate swims, Petaluma's Kathie Hewko is still going strong. Earlier this month, she joined a San Francisco team in a relay swim across the Santa Barbara Channel from Santa Cruz Island to Santa Barbara. It proved to be one of the more difficult challenges of her swimming life.
A dark night, rough seas and strong winds delayed an original midnight jump off for almost two hours. When the swimmers finally started, the water temperature was 55 degrees.
Each swimmer was slated for one-hour laps. When Hewko went into the water, she was almost 25 pounds below her normal weight.
To compound d her problems with the cold, choppy water, she was swimming with a slower member of another San Francisco team and continually had to circle back to team with him.
About 10 minutes from the end of her scheduled one hour, Hewko was so cold she couldn't breathe. ``I don't even remember getting into the boat,'' she said. ``I couldn't breathe. Now I have a huge appreciation for what people with asthma go through.''
Disappointed, but undaunted, Hewko came back to complete a 40-minute relay leg and then joined the rest of her team as they swam the final leg of the 26-mile swim together.
``We saw lots and lots of dolphins and when we neared the shore, a pelican took off and flew right over us,'' Hewko noted.
``Next year, we're going to do it again and use the lessons we've learned this year. We'll have only one team per boat and we'll swim 45-minute legs.''
Kathie Hewko is 20 years ahead of schedule.
Hewko, a slender, admittedly one-time obsessed athlete, set a goal of completing 20 Golden Gate swims in 20 years. Twenty came quickly and she upped her target to 50, a goal she expected to reach on her 80th birthday.
On Oct. 2, 2006 she completed her 50th length of the Bridge swim -- on her 60th birthday.
``I want to do a Golden Gate Swim on my 80th birthday, I just didn't want to have to do it,'' she explains.
``It was great,'' she recalls of her birthday accomplishment. ``There were people walking across the Bridge and I could tell they were yelling and waving at me. When I finished, everyone sang happy birthday while I was still in the water.''
The swim is 1 1/8 miles from Fort Point in San Francisco to Lime Rock in Sausalito.
Although she has now completed the swim half-a-hundred times, Hewko says it is never boring. ``I love it because it is always different,'' she explains. ``No swim is the same. I've done it as fast as 25 minutes and as long as an hour-and -a half. There are a lot of variables -- tides, tankers, the fog.''
To swim more than a mile at the mouth of the Golden Gate would have seemed like a real stretch to high school swimmer Kathie Hewko. ``I was a short distance swimmer in high school,'' she recalls. ``At one time, a mile swim seemed like forever to me.''
It wasn't until she moved to San Francisco in 1976 that she even considered distance swimming. She was living across from the Jewish Community Center where she went often to swim. Hewko became acquainted with a couple of other girls who were lifeguards at the center and they invited her to swim in the Bay.
``I jumped in, and it wasn't bad at all,'' she recalls. ``For me it was much nicer than swimming in a pool.''
Her first Golden Gate Swim turned out to be more of a challenge than she had anticipated. ``The night before, I went to the top of the Bank of America building and looked at the Bridge. I thought, `It's not so far. I can do that.'''
She admits to one big mistake prior to that first Bridge Swim. ``Someone told me I should eat a lot of carbohydrates,'' she explained. ``So the day of the swim I ate three chocolate-covered doughnuts. They didn't tell me I was supposed to eat them the night before the swim.''
During her swim, the combination of nerves, the intimidation of the Bridge, the rough water and the doughnuts had her to the point of giving up.
``I held up my hand to come out of the water and an old geezer who was following me rowed up and told me, `Shut up and count your strokes.' ''
Hewko shut up, counted her strokes and completed the swim. Even today, when the going gets rough, she counts her strokes.
When she was living in San Francisco, Hewko was a dedicated athlete. She loved swimming, but she also ran marathons, competed in triathlons, cycled in century events, rowed in regattas and took on all sorts of swimming challenges, including the difficult 1 1/4-mile Alcatraz swim from the island to San Francisco.
But through it all, she continued her favorite -- the Golden Gate swim -- consistently finishing in the top quarter percent with an average time of around 30 minutes.
Then, in 1985, her courage and determination were tested to the limit. She developed cold symptoms that just kept getting progressively worse, resulting in massive headaches, aching bones and an almost complete loss of energy. She was finally diagnosed as having Lyme disease, the result of having been bitten by a tick while she and her husband, Emil, were building a new home.
For 10 long years she battled the disease with varying degrees of success, sometimes feeling better and then relapsing. ``Sometimes it felt like I would take two steps forward and then three back,'' she recalls.
But through it all, she continued her swims from Fort Point to Lime Rock, although her times substantially increased.
``There were times when I would crawl out of bed, make the swim and crawl right back into bed,'' she says.
Hewko persisted with her Bridge swims and her battle against the disease, and today says she feels good, although it is likely symptoms of the disease will always bother her from time to time.
Bother, but not stop.
``I love swimming,'' she says. ``I love feeling suspended in the water. When I'm in the water it's like I'm meditating. I want to keep swimming the rest of my life.''
Although she will always do the Bridge swim, Hewko doesn't confine her swimming to the Bay. She has swum in the English Channel, Helsinki Bay in Finland, the Volga River in Russia and even spent time swimming with Nellie in Loch Ness in Scotland. She swam with a group of friends from the Isle of Capri to the Isle of Ischia off the coast of Italy.
Closer to home, she has swum in Lake Tahoe and loves to swim in Blue Lakes near Ukiah.
She isn't nearly finished. She still wants to swim in a relay across the English Channel, swim across the Volga River and, a more modest target, swim in Tomales Bay, perhaps from Nick's Cove to Hog Island and back or from Heart's Desire Beach to Marshall.
And, of course, ``other places around the world.''
A successful Realtor with Bundesen Realty, Hewko counts herself fortunate to have a job that, while hectic and time consuming, allows her the discretionary time to train and do her swims.
``Now that Emil is working with me in the business, it is even better,'' she says.
Her husband has recently been taking swimming lessons and may one day join his wife on her swims.
Meanwhile, Hewko keeps counting strokes and is looking to complete another Golden Gate Bridge Swim -- on her 80th birthday.
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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That's so amazing! I really needed a story like that today.
Also, who knew there were dolphins under the GG bridge?? Wow.
Posts: 390 | From Oakland, CA | Registered: May 2007
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pmerv
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
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Glad to see Kathy is still going strong. She was a CALDA member before we had CALDA memberships!
-------------------- Phyllis Mervine LymeDisease.org Posts: 1808 | From Ukiah, California, USA | Registered: Aug 2001
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CaliforniaLyme
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Yup, there are lots of dolphins*)*!)!!!!!
-------------------- There is no wealth but life. -John Ruskin
All truth goes through 3 stages: first it is ridiculed: then it is violently opposed: finally it is accepted as self evident. - Schopenhauer Posts: 5639 | From Aptos CA USA | Registered: Apr 2005
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