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It all looks easy in the rearview mirror

A six-hour qualifier is on the books!!!!!!

As usual, I have a few thoughts I’ve accumulated over the week, then I’ll get to the swim report…

Solitude Revisited

Solitude is a dangerous indulgence. It is far to easy to forget how to be human.

Laura Goodwin

I’ve been thinking a lot about it since my post covering my new-found love of solitude (new-found acceptance of my love of solitude?), and I do think that it is a double-edged sword. Luckily, at least for now, I am free to lead a double-edged life.

I think that one of the huge advantages to NOT removing yourself from human society (hard not to use the word “entirely” here – grin), is that when you are around people you like and respect on a regular basis, you see that they do and think things that you disagree with. And that makes it easy to remember that that’s fine – we can do and think different things and still be good people. It is easy to demonize theoretical humans.

Why We Swim

I finished the book “Why We Swim” by Bonnie Tsui this week (thanks to Lynn for lending it to me!). If you are a Goodreads member (and if you read, you should try it out!), you can find my full review here.

“Now, in modern Japan, Nihon eiho is for older people who know it is not about racing, or winning, the way it is for young people. We practice, practice, practice, and work very, very hard to get to that place of Zen. It is about strength of mind.” – Masaaki Imamura in “Why We Swim”

Yes, that’s it exactly. And I love it so much more than I loved competition. I still like to win, but it is a gauge, not a purpose. And when I don’t, my questions are about my failures in strength of mind. “Why didn’t I go?” “Fear is the mind-killer”

Omicron

I continue to (like everyone else out there) keep taking Covid as it comes, but I just wanna say, I was fully triple-boosted on Thursday, November 25. The news about Omicron came out on Friday, November 26th. I couldn’t even get one full day to enjoy my 95%ish resistance status before going back to “who knows?” ?!?!?

Such is life in the time of Covid. (Haha – I typed “Suck is life in the time of Covid.” Never a truer slip.)

A Six-Hour Tour – The Tale of a Six-Hour Qualifier

Yippee!! Happy to have this box checked off, and even happier to have done a swim that was such good training. It was hard, but it was good. Needs improvement – swimming in chop and against current. Huge bright side – I am acclimated as hell, baby!

Thoughts from the evening of the swim:

All the successes!

I finished my 6-hour qualifier. A million thanks to Mike who was my observer and paddled the whole way – I can’t imagine better support. And to Henry who gave me some company for the first part of the swim – it made a huge difference! And to the people at SUP kayak who lent Mike a kayak. If you ever need a kayak rental in Wrightsville Beach, they are absolutely the place to go. And to everyone who was thinking about me. Before the swim, Mike said, “There are a lot of people pulling for you today.” It was an incredibly kind thing for him to say, and incredible motivation and support. It really makes a tangible difference to know that there are people out there, caring about you and the things you care about.

Never underestimate the mental toll of feeling like you are going nowhere. A little while after we turned the corner into the ocean, I thought to myself, “I know most rocks look alike, but these really look like the same rocks.” They were.

It took a million years to get to Johnny Mercer, and then a thousand years to get to Station 1 (that was the worst  “one step forward, eight steps back” feeling). And then a hundred years to get to Blockade Runner. After that, I kind of gave up on forward progress and just took one stroke and then another and another. I really thought that my swim would end on the beach (after only taking 1.5 hours to get TO the beach). But eventually we made it to the Masonboro inlet and around the rocks. (Now that I know it went well, that part was fun. Although ever-so-much slower than walking across the beach 🙂 ) And finally the current turned in my favor.

By that time my arms were trashed (delts again – see below), and I had been fighting demonically slow progress for 3 hours. It took me a little while to recover, but sailing up Banks Channel did help 🙂

The cold – not an issue. I didn’t have any claw handing at all until somewhere between 4 and 5 hours, and then it was the tips-of-fingers-slightly-bent and can’t-quite-make-them-go-close-enough-together on the pull. Other than that (and some foot coldness in the beginning), I was toasty warm and easily could have carried on forever. I feel pretty good about that, considering our temp reading at the beginning was 57.9. Johnny Mercer NOAA read from 59.0 to 60.3 throughout the day. It felt colder in the ocean to me, but apparently not.

My lips were even OK – it wasn’t even hard to talk.

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The shoulders – However, part of my strategy for toasty warmness was to go fast enough to maintain my body heat. Mission accomplished on that part, but it was pretty tough on my shoulders. Especially compared to last March. I think it was a good thing that I had somewhere to go – I needed to experience that pressure and how it made me pace things as well. And we can’t talk about my shoulders without mentioning that the ocean was kind of a son-of-a-bitch today. Current and wind in my face for a struggling 3 hours. And a weird feeling to it – almost like a choppy lake swim. That kind of unpredictable chop that is way worse than the ocean’s ups and downs. I couldn’t see anything to either side and I frequently struggled to breathe, taking on water (it felt like) more often than not.

This leaves me wondering if a key to the Channel is finding the happy medium between swimming fast enough to stay warm but not so fast you kill your body. Or maybe it’s jut about getting so acclimated that low 60’s is nothing. I feel like I’m on my way.

Of course, an air temperature in the mid-60’s to 70ish definitely did not hurt.

The last 30 minutes were a bit of sheer force of will to lift the arms, but I already feel much better tonight. And on the bright side, even though the last 30 minutes were painful, I was not having to try to fling my arms forward using the force of my body like I did at the end of the Swim Around Charleston. And that was after only 5 hours. So I am optimistic about continuing to improve. (But I’m really, really glad that I did not have another 6 hours to swim on Saturday!)

It was fun to see (from my watery perspective) people around the peninsula throughout the day. Having something to look at makes the swim go by much faster. At one point I thought that Mike was shouting something to me, so I looked up and asked, “what?” It turns out he was shouting to people on a boat about my swim. His answer to me was also heartening – “They’re impressed by you.” After almost 5 hours in cold water, it makes a difference! Hopefully my wave and smile to them looked like a wave and a smile, not a claw and a grimace!

Takeaways

Nesquik feeds every 45 minutes worked well (plus some loading beforehand – Jimmy John’s Beach Club the night before, banana peanut butter toast, 2 sweet potatoes with butter, a PB banana casserole slice and a choc milk over the course of the morning of). I have GOT to see if Nesquik will send me some in England. Sponsor, please?

I’m really happy with how it went, and know that I’ll need to train the crap out of every type of chop I can get my hands on this spring and summer.

Vaseline worked really well – just a little at my neck and under the straps and a little under my armpits. Weirdly, I had some chafing at the crotch (that has never happened before) – what was I doing out there?

Earplugs were great – turns out the first ones I tried last year are the ones to go with. I just ordered two more pairs so that I have backups to take to England.

Good to know – it was, in fact, easier to stay warm and to swim when I could go at my own pace. But of course much less fun. But that’s good news for the Channel – group swims are extra preparation.

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Nerves

When I post these swims as accomplished facts like this, it’s easy to forget how nerve-wracking and intimidating they are beforehand. Well, that may be putting it a bit strongly – one of the things I realized while reading “Why We Swim” was that I tend to be far less intimidated by all things water-related than some other folks.

But just to be clear – in the time leading up to the swim, I absolutely did not know for sure if I would be able to do this.

However, at least so far, every time I hit the water I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be and it feels great. After 15 minutes, there was no doubt in my mind that, barring catastrophic externals, I was going to make this swim. My mentality on land and at sea really could not be more different. There’s a confidence that waits for me in there.

That confidence was hilariously lacking in the nightmares I tossed and turned with the night before. Tossing and turning are normal for me before big swims/events (although usually only races), but I can’t remember ever having nightmares like this before.

A few of the most comical:

1. I put my parka in a giant ziplock bag (for real, although we ended up putting it in Mike’s dry bag) so that if I became hypothermic I could get out anywhere and have something to warm up in while waiting for help. In my nightmare, a dog bit the corner off of the giant ziplock bag and (in nightmare fashion), it was impossible to find another solution before starting the swim.
2. This was a “no touch” swim – I didn’t touch ground, kayak, etc. from when the clock started until it stopped. In my nightmare, Mike kept leading me places where I had to stand up. It’s possible that the CS&PF secretary (and legendary swimmer), Kevin Murphy, wound his way into this, silently chastising me with bottomless disappointment.
3. A very long nightmare where people kept making me jump through hoops. I wore two watches on the swim (IRL – I didn’t think the first one would last the whole way), but in the dream they were somehow also goggles and I had to fit both pairs on my head. In trying to do so, the strap on one watch/goggle broke. For some reason, my son was sitting around in the airport that we were in by that time – I tried to give it to a friend of his to take over to him, but she insisted that I had to give it directly to him and I almost missed my… plane?

In the end, they were funny enough that I didn’t wake up with that nightmarish feeling… and far preferable to the recurring dreams I had during my first pregnancy of a completely easy and painless childbirth that turned out to be egregious mis-estimations by my subconscious!

England Business (Nov 29-Dec 5)

11/29 – Spent a crazy amount of time at my desk today, and can’t even remember what I accomplished. I sent in the acceptance form to A’s school and (hurl) paid the tuition and deposit by wire transfer. I moved a bunch of emails around that I was done with – at least that was satisfying. Oh, of course! We received the offer letter from J’s school – yay!! So I spent a bunch of time reading through all of their information. How can something be so interesting and so boring simultaneously? Probably because the interest derives from all of the differences in the ways things work over there, but the similarities are the legalese that they make you wade through. That’s a universal. Possibly a multi-universal.

Yesterday I looked through all of the apartment rental emails with E and was able to clear all of that out of my inbox after a week of staring at it (or resolutely not staring at it while I was breaking for Thanksgiving). Unfortunately, the reason that it was easy to clear out was that there were few good leads. But we’ve had two offers of help in finding a place, so I’ll pin my hopes to that.

I feel like I did other things as well, but I think those are the big ones. Oh, I looked at flights for a minute yesterday – don’t worry, we’re not missing out on any big deals right now :/p

I am finding that so much of this preparation has the same theme. Whether looking for schools, finding lodging, figuring out how and where to train and all of the innumerable things that go into the swim itself – it’s wading through an indeterminate number of “no’s” until you get to a “yes.” It is not glamorous, but if you keep at it, you get there. I am still eternally inspired by the tale of the man who crossed the English Channel in a bathtub. https://player.themoth.org/#/?actionType=ADD_AND_PLAY&storyId=10316

11/30 – Apparently, the only thing I accomplished today was waking up in the middle of the night and writing. “It’s funny how many shocks we give ourselves without knowing it.” (This after taking my fleece wrap off in the dark.) It seemed really profound at the time.

12/1 – So many miniature highs and lows in this preparation process. I’m happy this week because schedules and the weather finally seem to be coming together for OW swims. (And ever reminded that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.) I’m jokingly frustrated by the number of forms I will need to fill out in the next 8 months, and actually frustrated by starting the “no” process with apartment rentals. It’s a little panicking, because of course, one of the things we absolutely cannot do without is a place to live. And having just submitted A’s school term fee makes hearing from negative realtors worse. And of course Omicron. The world is shifting sand, and I have learned to live on it… but it doesn’t stop me from longing for a foundation of stone from time to time.

Anyway, that’s what I did with my morning – work my way through administrative stuff and cling to the hope that everything will work out in the end.

Useful advice: Discuss the rental market thoroughly with someone (several someones) who know what they are talking about before you decide where to live. (And prepare yourself to still run into trouble because, you know, things change.)

“You won’t have to read many stories of successful people to know that they didn’t accomplish a dream without hardship or difficulty. All you need to do is read about Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, or Abe Lincoln to have a bird’s eye view of what it took to succeed. And, make no mistake. If you run across those who say it can’t be done, this should be your clue to stay away from them. You don’t need naysayers in your corner; you need those who can encourage, motivate and provide enthusiasm for your quest.”

Byron Pulsifer

Let me be clear, I am not trying to say that renting an apartment is as challenging as inventing new technology, creating Disney, or a civil war. Just close 🙂

After finding so many interesting quotes about solitude two weeks ago, I went searching for quotes about adversity. They just didn’t strike the same resonance. They mostly boil down to, “challenges are awesome for you – embrace them.” I don’t disagree, but I also don’t need to read 200 ways of saying that. I did like several of the JK Rowling ones. “Rock bottom became the solid foundation upon which I rebuilt my life.”

I also went looking for interesting things to write about. So far, the sad best that I’ve found are that lemons float but limes sink and that armadillos are bulletproof. Hey, I seem to remember that there’s an animal that poops in cubes – that’s fun, I’ll go looking for that.

Yep, it’s the wombat. And in my opinion even more impressively, they poop 100 cubes a day. Apparently this habit comes from wombats being very territorial. Glad I’ve never been poop-cused by a wombat. Ugh – they also do it “to attract mates.” Gross

12/2 – Does worrying about finding a place to live count as work? If so, I’ve been very productive. 

I’m waiting to hear back from people, and waiting until Monday (on M’s advice) to post to the Bournemouth swim group. I am writing another email to Bournemouth folks I haven’t contacted yet to see if they have any contacts/advice about finding a place.

And I did a bunch of scheduling crap. I swear, it really is less time-consuming to coach practices than to reschedule when other coaches cancel. 

I also scheduled an appointment with the chiropractor. I felt A LOT better this morning, but I still have the one rope in the right shoulder when I go vertically with the tennis ball (plus the vomitous crunchiness near the bone, but that at least sort of gets worked out – the rope has been there for a month solid), and now I have a gigantic block of stuck muscle on the left side of my back (under my armpit). I’m going to bring the tennis ball for show and tell tomorrow.

12/3 – I heard back from A’s school and contacted the realtor she suggested – waiting to hear back

I also emailed the summary of what we are looking for to A’s and J’s schools to see if they could suggest someone else.

I have to go to the chiropractor now, but next on the list are the realtor’s suggestions of posting on Facebook/Gumtree, etc.

12/5 – I may have my first crew member for the Channel swim! Mike’s on board if he can make it! Woot!

The Week at the Pool

Summary – Taper

Pool Yardage ~ 14,300

OW Yardage ~ 18,600

Temp – (1 mile at 54 (lake); over 9 miles around 59 (ocean))

Total Yardage ~ 33,000

I seriously cannot remember much about the week in the pool at this point. It was nice to taper and get some energy back.

The Gory Details

Monday 11/29 – Theme: TAPER!!!!!!! (~4600)

• 1600 Meet w-up
• 5xDirty 30’s
• 225 ez
• 4×100 back on 2:00 (1:19, 1:18, 1:17, 1:15) (Besch, you were off on those times off the blocks 🙂
• 225 ez
• 5×2-turn 50’s
• 3xbroken 100’s (50-25-25 – 5 seconds)
• – missed the first one due to lane confusion
• – #2 backstroke – 1:23 = 1:13 (wow, bad)
• – #3 free – 1:13 – 1:03 (wow, good)

• 250 ez
• 5×200 ascend on 3:00
• 100 super ez

Tuesday 11/30 – Theme: Taper is oh so sweet (~4300) Coach Macon

• 500 loosen
• 12×50 – kick on 1:00; drill on :55; build on :50 – IM order
• 12×25 on :30, 2 fast, 1 smooth – IM order
• 125 ez

3×100 back on 2:00 (1:14, 1:15, 1:15) [could. not. breathe. To the point that I was whimpering during my ever-shortening underwaters. Weird. On the bright side, moving my left arm faster through recovery still works to significantly speed up my backstroke. But it does throw my stroke count off a bit.]

• 225 ez
• 5×100 @mile pace on 1:25
• 200 – 25 scull/25 drill/50 DPS
• 4×100 @1000 pace on 1:30
• 300 same as above
• 3×100 @500 pace on 1:35
• 400 same as above
• Held 1:10’s and 1:11’s throughout, with a 1:08 to finish it off.

200 CD

So, that’s better.

Wednesday 12/1 – Theme: What’s up? (~3300)

So I had a bit of a headache this morning. Weird for me, as I do get headaches sometimes, but almost always at night. I collapsed a little bit and felt OK, not great, as I headed off to practice. I was there early to talk to John, but ended up getting in right away due to a pool closure that meant another site’s group needed the pool as soon as we could be done. Everything felt a bit rushed, but nothing seemed too off – until the 2×100’s back on 2:00. Yesterday I held 1:14, 1:15, 1:15. Today I went 1:18, 1:19. They didn’t feel that bad – I was actually shocked to see the times. So I’m not sure what’s up with me, but it’s less than great. I’m on the couch with some healing blackberries now, still a bit headachy.

• 1600 w-up
• 3xDirty 30’s
• 225 ez
• 2×100 back on 2:00 (1:18, 1:19)
• 225 ez
• 5xTwo-turn 50s
• 3 great finishes
• 500 ez

Thursday 12/2 – Theme: Cold Swim with Sam

It was cold, no doubt. Can anyone tell me why the same temperature water feels colder in the lake than it does in the ocean?

Friday 12/3 – Theme: Loosen w/Macon (~2100)

• 500 ez
• 300 IM kick/dril
• 8×50 kick/drill; drill/build
• 3×100 descend (1:17, 1:16, 1:15)
• 8×25 on :40
• 400 CD

I felt… nervous. Macon actually asked me how I felt during the workout. I joked, “Like 6 hours is a long time and 60 degrees is a cold temperature.”