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Swimming for Childhood Obesity & Katrina Kids Benefit.

This report filed - April 6, 2007
Contributed by Patrick Fellows
BILOXI, Miss., April 1, 2007 ­ At 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 31, on the beach outside of St. Stanislaus College in Bay St. Louis, Pat Fellows emerged from the Mississippi Sound exhausted and elated. The Long Beach native had just completed a swim started nearly sixteen hours before in Ocean Springs covering more than 34 miles in exactly fifteen hours and fifty minutes.

Just after completing a live interview on the local 6:00 p.m. news Friday evening, Pat plunged into the already turbulent water with the confidence, self-assurance and humor it would take to complete the ambitious endeavor.

"At first I was pretty stoked because the winds were coming out of the right direction to help me," Pat said. "Unfortunately, they were about 15 knots too strong and the water got incredibly rough and I had to fight it with every stroke."

Volunteers, five in a fishing boat, four in kayaks and four in a car following the swim on shore; set off to provide Fellows the assistance and support needed through the night. Shortly into the swim, conditions began to worsen; two of the support kayaks were forced to head to shore while the remaining paddlers had to join those in the boat with their overturned kayaks being dragged behind.

The support crew battled "small-craft advisory seas", wind, sea-sickness and poor visibility to provide Pat with nutrition and hydration to sustain him through his grueling 16-hour ordeal. Their assignment had been to force him to eat every half-hour and as Pat wrote in a note to them, "do not let me out of the water unless I've been bitten by a shark or suffered a heart attack."

"The conditions made it much more of a challenge," Pat said as if it were no big deal. "I hadn't done anything to prepare myself for rough water, all my open-water training had been in a nice, calm ski lake. This was much harder mentally and physically, I had to fight and found it hard to get in any kind of rhythm."

As the evening passed, Pat saw familiar landmarks from his youth pass by along the beach, the Biloxi Lighthouse, the Coliseum, Edgewater Mall and Hancock Bank and the Gulfport skyline. "Then when we got around Long Beach and Pass Christian and it got tougher because everything I remember from my youth is gone," he said with marked emotion.

The low-point of the night came approximately halfway through the swim in probably the worst water conditions he would experience. "My quitting point actually occurred somewhere around the Port in Gulfport. I couldn't get a rhythm, I couldn't relax and I was completely nauseous. I kept telling myself there would be no decision to stop until I got to the other side. Then I cut my foot and slammed into the pier. The waves and chop were beating me to death and I threw up. Amazingly I immediately felt better." He said with surprise. "I knew at that point I would make it, I knew I wasn't going to let anyone down."

But the swim was only part of the equation ­ Pat's effort was designed to create awareness and raise money for the Rocketkidz Foundation, an organization Pat formed aimed at educating children of the Mississippi Coast about childhood obesity and healthy lifestyles. Plans are to hold day camps for kids across the Coast, free of charge, to teach them in a fun way about healthy lifestyles and the dangers of obesity.

"Kids don't get out and ride their bikes all day like we did when I was young," he said. "Now they sit in front of the TV playing games in a virtual world, games that my friends and I actually played in the real world! Mississippi is one of the fattest states in the country and after Katrina kids here are at even bigger risk. If we can engage them, they'll see that it¹s actually fun to get off the couch and go outside."

Throughout his training, which started in November, Pat has conducted fundraising activities that coincide with the swim, something he plans to continue now that the swim is complete. "This isn't the end, it's only part of what we want to do," he said. "We're going to keep working, keep raising money, I'm going to go talk to schools and keep the ball rolling, building on the momentum created by the swim."

For more information, to read Pat's blog or donate to the Rocketkidz Foundation, visit www.rocketkidzfoundation.com

Childhood Obesity

[Merle]

What a great cause, I think I will donate!