Lucky’s Lake Swim / Lake Cane “Enter the Food Chain”

Lucky’s Lake Swim / Lake Cane  “Enter the Food Chain”

http://www.luckyslakeswim.com/

If you live in the central Florida area (Orlando) you probably know about Lucky’s Lake Swim.  It’s a great place to go and practice your open water swimming.   If you do not know about the swim the video below is a GREAT summary of what Lucky’s Lake Swim is all about.  It’s about swimming, training, learning, friendship and fun.



Lucky is a great and generous man.  He opens up his house everyday (but Sunday) for swimmers (usually 50 to 150) to swim the lake behind his house in Orlando, FL.  He provides swag to those swimmers who reach milestones.  He provides you with bathrooms and showers to use.  He even lets you sign the wall of his huge and extremely pretty house.  And he does this all for FREE.  He also helps out the Lake Cane Restoration Society and the local YMCA.  AND he also trains special needs kids to swim!



The swim is help on Lake Cane and is about 1000m long.  Swimmers swim at their own risk.  This is an open water swim with wild creatures, no lifeguards and the lake is very deep.  It’s “entering the food” chain. You can swim as many times as you like but the average is 1 to 4 laps. 

Several records have been set on this lake. The longest open water lake swim (82 Kilometers swimming non-stop for nearly 30 hours) and 50 swimmers did a 100K relay that lasted nearly two days of swimming, setting an RHR world record.(http://www.luckyslakeswim.com/world_record_attempt_at_aquatica.htm)

Brud, the oldest swimmer to ever swim the lake was a 92 year old man. I was there the day he completed this.  He looked great and he looked like he could do even more laps when he was done.  He was one of about six swimmers over the age of 70 who swam the lake that day.

Even a dog named Digger swims the WHOLE distance.  Digger is my arch enemy.  He and I are both neck to neck on the total number of crossings.  I want to be on the 100K club before Digger.  Digger currently has around 28 crossings (28000m).  BTW Diggers swims faster than most of the swimmers.


Lucky also has a great and unusual sense of humor.  Review the FAQ section to see a sampling of his humor (http://www.luckyslakeswim.com/#FAQs_Lake_Cane_Swim_)  He walks around in a Speedo, an Australian hat and a large cane with snakes on it.  He has placed statues of alligators at the beach entrance.  He also created a video about the Lake Cane piranhas (see video above).

Lucky also holds the Guinness World Record for the Largest Yo-Yo Collection (http://www.yo-yos.net/).  His photo was in the Gold 50th anniversary Guinness book.  He even has a Wikipedia page about him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Meisenheimer)


If you are ever in the Orlando area I would highly suggest coming out to the lake to swim it at least once.  It is a great place to train and a great experience. 


Lucky is a great guy and I try to thank him every time I am out on the lake.  Thank you Lucky!

BTW If you are interested I swim at Lucky's lake every Saturday and usually do 2-3 laps.  Currently, I have completed around 29 crossing and am still neck and neck with Digger the dog.