Who knows what would have happened if Jim Mellon, Tom Halford and Mina Poppas had the chance to swim together. Maybe Halford wouldn’t have taken a slight yet rocky and costly detour at the finish, or perhaps the competition would have spurred Mellon to swim even faster.
As it was, Halford and Poppas battled it out in the first heat at Sunday’s Richardson Roughwater Swim, while Mellon took off minutes later in the second and – supposedly – slower heat.
While Halford endured the bumpy ride at the end in his first attempt at the out-and-back 1-mile course off Richardson Ocean Park, Mellon simply went out and swam here just as he has so many times before.