Saturday, September 18th, I awoke to a still, foggy morning, I walk outside to get the paper from the mailbox, the air temperature is in the high 30’s, hope it warms up fast I think, I am scheduled to leave home at 9am, drive 20 minutes to pick up Cara and then off the the Reservoir. It is damp and cold, I shiver loading my supplies into the suburban. The scheduled swim today was 6 hours, things have cooled down faster than I anticipated this fall, when I set this goal, it was a late add in, added into the goal list a mere few weeks ago, an “ignorance add ” I now call it on reflection.
I talk to Cara Friday the day before the swim,” I don’t know that this swim fits in with our current priority of cold water training I say”, she agrees, unsure what is appropriate we both agree we will shorten the swim to 4 hours. I am not relaxed, the morning of the swim I am anxious and unsettled, a strange new feeling comes over me that morning, it is a lack of confidence, new and unusual for me.
We arrive at the lake, I forget a key component of our supplies, the feed bucket that we store all my feeding supplies in on the kayak, ” that’s it ” Cara says, ” this is the last time you are in charge of packing up the supplies”, she is right, I am scattered, like a rookie who has never prepared for an Open Water swim before. We make do,we drop off the boat at the canoe launch, the reservoir is busy today, for the first time this summer we have to drive up to the upper parking lot to park the suburban, this is going to be a long walk back to the car after the swim I note.
I have a new post swim plan today to solve the problem of having difficulty getting my clothes back on post swim when I am shaking as my body tries to warm up, the plan involves a large, poofy over sized dressing gown that I am going to cover up with to walk down to the shore and wrap up in after my swim, I look like I am mentally ill and may have just escaped from the psychiatric ward of a mental health hospital.
I am wearing a ridiculously expensive but incredibly warm possum fur hat which was a gift from my brother, I always like to buy something ” New Zealand” to bring back to the US each time I visit down under, in 2003 it was a possum fur hat, how could I forget NZ wearing this furry lid during the cold Vermont winter? As I walk to the canoe launch I am sporting the pink poofy dressing gown, winter shoes, my ” proud to be Kiwi” black swim cap, ear plugs and goggles. The ear plugs mean I can’t hear myself speak and talk louder than usual, as we walk down to the shore I am talking to Cara super loud, no question about it I look and sound odd! Usually I find people friendly, they often want to strike up a conversation with me, ask a question or just share a story, today no one dares to make eye contact with me let alone start a conversation, I giggle this is funny today I am officially a ” freak”!
Cara doesn’t mind a bit, she is loyal, right there by my side, there is method to our madness, a reason for what we are doing and why we look the way we do, she is dressed in her Ithaca rugby jacket, pants, winter hat and rubber boots, I make a mental note to myself, I must not judge others by the way they look or act, I may not have the information and knowledge to know why someone is behaving in a way that seems unusual to me, respect others and what they are setting out to achieve , I make a mental note, done.
Cara sets off in the boat, today the turtle thermometer says 62 degrees, I gingerly edge into the water, my heart is thumping in my chest, it seems to take me hours to get in today, I dive under and am off, agghhhh this is uncool, I swim fast, my strokes are short and choppy, a few hundred meters goes by and I am still tight and tense, I try to relax but am frightened that if I slow down I will feel the cold more, I read this week of a channel swimmer who got very cold a few hours into his English Channel crossing, he saw a dark object moving under him in the water freaked out that it was a shark and started swimming fast, running on adrenaline, it warmed him up, snapped him out of his depression doldrums. Today this is my approach, I swim fast, it does not work well, I burn through so much energy on this fast inefficient stroke and from my anxiety. I am freaking out about 4 hours in the water today, I have done 4 hours before but not in this cold, I do not know what to expect, it is cold and I feel like I am going to throw up. 30 minutes goes by and I stop for a feed, Cara notices my stroke, ” your strokes are short, you are high in the water, 72- 74 strokes per minute, take it easy and relax” , it is good advice, I try to relax and slow down, as soon as I stretch it out my head is consumed again by the threat of cold, the unknown, what will it feel like if my body shuts down, if my core gets too cold? How will I make it back to the boat launch? Am I too far from the freaky pink bath robe?, I keep asking myself the question over and over.
The one hour feed arrives Maxim and hot tea, I take too long to feed wasting valuable time, the longer I am not moving the colder my body gets. I shout to Cara ” I think I have 30 minutes left in me” , I swim on, the reservoir has cold water springs in it, the water temperature dives in spots, it is painful to swim through, I long to get by the cold patches. When we started the swim the air temperature was 48 degrees and the sun was out, I kept thinking when it warms up Cara will take off her woollen hat, it will get better, it didn’t Cara’s hat stayed firmly pulled over her ears, the wind picked up, it was cold. The choppy water was good, it warmed me up when I swam into the waves and it felt good, today we were swimming a 40 minute loop so we could access the boat launch if we needed to exit at any time, it would only take us 20 minutes to get the the shore. We went around Blueberry island, it was shallow and the water a little warmer, I scrapped the bottom and laughed, I smiled at Cara, it always make me laugh when I nearly beach myself. Then we were at the 1 hour 30 minute feed, Cara asked “one more lap or back to the boat launch? “that was all I needed, back to the launch I spat out and I was off, I felt like I was swimming fast, Cara tells me my strokes were slow and erratic, 62-64 strokes per minute. Was I losing it, losing function, absolutely not I had checked out mentally, I was consumed with getting back to the canoe launch and out, it will feel so good pulling on the pink robe and the possum fur hat I thought as I swam to the shore, it did not feel good, I was disappointed with the swim and cross that I got out prematurely, I knew I could have swum a few more strokes, another 5 minutes, another lap even. We packed up the kayak our supplies and were off home. I felt deflated and down the rest of the day, “how can I even consider taking on the English Channel if I couldn’t make today’s swim?”, I ask myself.
When I got home my 10 year old daughter asked me what was wrong, I was not pleased with my swim today I told her, “why” she asked, I planned to swim 4 hours today and only swam 1 hour 45 minutes I said, ” was anyone else swimming today” she asked, “no I said it was 62 degrees when we started too cold for people today”,” but you swam today, how long have you swum in that temperature before” she asked, ” one hour 15 minutes ” I replied, ” that’s great that’ makes today your best yet!” she said, she was right!
I regrouped, licked my wounds and went back to the drawing board, what went wrong? I went over all my training swims and a past email from one of my mentors about setting goals every 3 months, reviewing training plans and making changes when necessary, how did I forget this one?, I shake my head as I ask myself the question.
I decide to turn adversity into advantage and go over the lessons learned from the less than pleasing training swim. The lesson…..smaller steps and realistic goals, I went over all my Open Water swims this year and saw that I had only swum under 65 degrees 4 times before Saturday’s swim! I was not prepared or ready for a 6 hour swim in 62-64 degree water, I would have been better reviewing the plan and making a change to a more suitable and achievable 2 hr swim, I mentally checked out of the 4 hour goal before I got in the water, I wasn’t prepared and knew it.
