Debbie Dawson has swum with dolphins and in the dark and in water so cold that her body once went numb for the last half-mile of a race. In one open-water race, she encountered a marlin she thought was a shark. Sometimes her blood rushes to her core to the point in which she can't breathe. Or she'll reach her arm into the water and come up with her hand covered in seaweed.
Those are the memories she has forged in years of swimming in the open water, and they're the ones she recalls most from her three-decade-plus career.
"It's kind of like this thing that I do that keeps me sane," she said.
So last Sunday, when she competed in the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim for the third time, the water wasn't going to give her any surprises.
Still, Dawson, a Baltimore resident who turned 48 on Wednesday, never expected to win. That honor, she figured, would go to one of the young stars in the field. The oldest woman who had ever won, she would later learn, was 34. The oldest man was 39. She expected to finish among the top 10 women.
One hour, 36 minutes and 52 seconds after starting, Dawson was the first woman to finish the 4.4-mile race across the Chesapeake Bay, beating two 20-year-olds who finished second and third. Race director Chuck Nabit awaited her at the finish and told her of her accomplishment.
Nabit has known Dawson and her husband for years. They used to live in the same neighborhood in Guilford, and their kids still go to the same school. The day before the race, two of Dawson's four children and Nabit's two kids played in the same piano recital. After Nabit told Dawson she finished first, she launched into compliments of Nabit's children.
"You won the race!" Nabit repeated to Dawson, who couldn't believe it.
"I was shocked and elated," Nabit said Friday. "She's just a wonderful person."
Dawson first swam the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim in 2002 at age 34. Back then, her list of encounters in the open water was much shorter. She wasn't prepared for the dead fish and jellyfish she found under the Bay Bridge. Still, her goal was to finish among the top 10 women, and she did, at 1:41:21.
"If you're a swimmer, it's one of those accomplishments — you have to at least say, 'I've swum across the Bay,'" Dawson said. "It's one of those milestones."
Since then, a host of events have diverted her swimming career. That year, she didn't feel well leading up to the race and then swallowed a lot of water during the swim, making her hesitant about returning. Raising four children limited her training, so she opted for the one-mile swim rather than the 4.4-miler in the following years.