7 September 2024
First, the good and the great. Look how happy Maia and I were on packet pickup and on the bus to the race start! It's so awesome to be able to do crazy things like this with my crazy daughters. I love that she invited me along and that we got to share this special pain ... err ... memory together ;)
Next this preamble: I do think that, in general, I am a positive swimmer who finds some measure of joy in (almost) all of my swimming experiences. Much of the time, I believe I find an exceptional amount of joy; this is why I keep coming back to the water (and explains this goofy #1001Pools passion project).
But, there's darkness ahead in this post: my experience completing the Aquasphere Windermere Chillswim was not one in which I found any joy. In fact, if I had to sum it up in one word, I would choose either misery or miserable.
Now, to be clear, this is not a comment at all on the event, the event organizers, the weather (which was about as perfect as one could ask for in August in the Lakes District), or the lake itself. The event was exceptionally well-run; I never felt-unsafe on the course and felt supported throughout. The lake and surrounding area is stunningly beautiful.
This was all about me re-learning and learning valuable lessons. This was about searing those lessons into my soul, never to be violated again.
Lesson One: I am not cold-water adapted, nor do I enjoy swimming in cold water. When I used to race annually in the La Jolla Rough Water swim, I knew that I could handle a “skins” event for an hour down to about 65/66F. The one time, back in 2010, when the water was closer to 62/63F, I had written this after the 5KM "Gatorman" swim:
“After exiting the water from the Gatorman, I didn't stop to chat on the beach, but headed straight for my towel. I dried off, got the suit off, put on 3 layers of shirts (t-shirt, heavy long sleeve shirt, heavy hoodie), long wool socks, heavy sweat pants, a stocking cap and my hood. It took my well over 90 minutes sitting in direct sunlight and a grande extra hot caramel macchiato before I approached some semblance of warmth again. I now know my cold tolerance limit.”
From my brief prep swim the day before, I measured the water at 61F. The temperature announced at the start was 15.5C (e.g., 60F) and there were definitely some colder patches. I thought I had planned enough for this, opting for:
Sleeveless wetsuit (because I cannot stand the shoulder restriction on my stroke of a full body suit)
Neoprene boots
Earplugs
Neoprene cap
TYR open water goggles
Latex event cap over the top of the neoprene cap
I thought this was going to be enough, but it never was. I shivered throughout the swim, at times fairly heavily, and debated vigorously with myself about getting out. No matter what I tried – higher stroke rate, kicking harder, or both – I just couldn’t get warm.
Lesson Two: While I am an endurance athlete, there's a distance above which my enjoyment decreases; this was too far. In the end, I made the whole length of the lake – advertised as an 11-mile swim, my watch clocked me at 17.6KM. This is the longest I have ever swum continuously, with a ~9M (~14.5KM) swim of Arizona’s Saguaro Lake back in 2012 my previous distance. I enjoyed that AZ swim, but it was done in water that warmed to about 72 degrees and with air temperatures reaching the high 80sF by the time we finished.
For this swim, I managed my nutrition well (8 Gu energy gels spaced throughout the swim along with whatever hydration they were offering at most of the mile markers) and didn’t bonk, maintaining the same pace throughout the race. The distance was not too far for my body and I had done the right training ...
... but it just seemed interminable. It wasn’t that my body couldn’t keep going, but my mind definitely did not want to keep going.
Lesson three: Practice with the equipment as you’re going to use it. My main focus for my training was to ensure I was doing enough swimming volume to handle the distance. As evidenced by the fact that I have very little muscle soreness the day and week afterwards, that was a mission accomplished. My mistake was bringing a new tow float to the event, one I had only tried out on my two brief swims earlier in the week at the West Reservoir. I figured the float wasn’t going to matter that much. After all, during the pandemic, when the province of Ontario was incredibly locked down with long spells of pool closures, I had done a lot of open water training, always dragging my dry bag / tow float with my valuables (cell phone, keys, glasses, etc.) inside. I had never had a problem, including the solo 10K swim I did back in 2020.
My mistake was this: as I wanted to carry 10 gels, I figured that would be too many to stuff into my wetsuit (my prior method), so I had bought this new tow float with an exterior nutrition pouch. But, I never practiced swimming with the gels in this new float. Nor did I practice to see how the tow float would react in a wavier environment.
In the end, this float had two problems. First, when the nutrition pouch was loaded with gels, it ended up flipping over, causing the nutrition pouch to be underwater, creating more drag. Second, rather than floating pretty straight behind me, the caribiner clip and waist rope seemed to make the float ride at a 45-degree angle to my body, creating more drag. This is just poor preparation on my part and I’m kicking myself for not being smarter in the lead up to the event.
Last Lesson - And then there was this: On Thursday morning, I noticed a tickle in my throat. By Thursday evening that had spread to a runny nose and cough. By Friday night, my cough resembled a septuagenarian, six-pack-a-day smokers’ cough. My Oura readiness scores fell off a cliff and my Suunto watch told me to take the day off …
By the time of the race Saturday, I couldn’t breathe deeply. At a number of times during the race, I had to pause or slow down to work through a coughing fit. I probably should’ve listened to my body and to my health tech and skipped the event, but I had made the investment in training and the trip and wanted to prove to myself I could do it.
At the end of it all, I finished slightly slower than the slowest time I had anticipated – 5:01 to the 5-hour time I had estimated (but I had hoped for something much faster) – so it wasn’t a bad outing. I ended up 32nd overall and fourth in my age group in the wetsuit category (incidentally, the first 4th placed finisher in any age group, so kudos to the more stacked field of 55-59 year olds). But, I did not enjoy it.
My takeaways:
Life's too short to be miserable: I will not swim in water below 65F/18C again
Life’s too short to swim too long: I will not swim events longer than 5KM.
Life's too short to be too dumb: I will prepare for all aspects of future events
I still absolutely love open water swimming, but I've learned my limits.
(My face at the finish says it all)
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