Yesterday I got up at 4:45 and chaperoned the 5th grade beach field trip. No work toward swimming the channel, other than being at the beach and reminded of how much I love to swim in open water. Also, I caught a blue crab. Score. And I learned that crabs breathe through their gills – even land crabs. The gills adapt to breathing in the air. So that’s pretty inspirational.
I spent this morning with PubMed:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734854/
“Other strategies that have been employed to reduce the likelihood of developing hypothermia include cold water adaptation and hypothermic exercise training. Factors that have been previously shown to increase hypothermia risk are older age, wind chill, motion sickness and local muscular fatigue.”
Small sample sizes are going to plague this research in general, I’d imagine. Their oldest participants (2 individuals in their 70’s) did have the most hypothermia… but they don’t really know why. There is some correlation with body fat, but successful completion of the channel swim was achieved by those with lower body fat (especially if you take the old guy out of the equation).
Here’s another relatively uninformative study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6114520/
But I think a takeaway is that it is not a big disadvantage to be a woman, if it is a disadvantage at all.
TO-DO – I am having trouble finding either a site that lists (or is searchable) for successful Channel attempts by age (and gender). Create that site. I am also having trouble finding any scientific articles that address age and channel swimming. Gender yes, wetsuits yes, but age, not so much – keep searching.
Nutrition – further study required:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6315825/
Makes the case for fat consumption for ultra-endurance. Gives specific fluid intake recommendations.