swimmingslipstream

The Bird Enthusiast

My dog Stella loves to chase birds. She has chased Canada geese through a nearby pond, seagulls on the beach of Lake Superior (a particular favorite) and she aspires to chase my neighbor’s chickens. She also chases swallows. Swallows are the outlier in that group–the others spend at least some observable time on the ground, making them easy to chase for a land-based bird enthusiast like Stella.

Her swallow chasing is limited to mornings at the neighborhood park when the insects are plentiful, hovering above the grass on the playing fields. The swallows swoop and swirl to catch breakfast. On these days, Stella strains at her leash and looks at me, and I usually relent and let her go. She gets into a low crouch like a sprinter and dashes off after the nearest swallow–she can cut and turn as well as an any offensive end–pulling tight ovals or lazy S’s around the field. The swallows may enjoy it–they seem to watch her and let her get almost close enough and then they pull the stick and UP UP they go, leveling off into another oval loop-de-loop around the park.

Slipstream of life

This blog started 3 years ago after I finished a swim across Lake Tahoe (the “true width” swim, for swimming fans out there). The idea was that getting into a “slipstream” was a good metaphor for a good swim, and hence the name of the blog. While the Tahoe swim was the impetus for this exercise in self-revelation, the Tahoe swim also intersected with a time in my life when I finally–after 56 years–felt like I had agency. I’d finally left a job I should have left a long time ago, my family was healthy and prosperous, I was in love with my husband (I still am, btw), and I was feeling like I had the ability to “make” things happen.

What is the saying? “Man plans, God laughs.” Over the last three years that feeling of agency has been transformed, through all kinds of unexpected twists and turns of life, into composure and acceptance, at least on a good day. So while I may still write about swimming from time to time, there are lots of other good things in life to share and ponder. Hoping to write more frequently, and if you want to follow along with that caveat about the title, that would be great.

Tahoe True Width-August 17, 2018

Note: I’m not sure this ever got officially “published”. I’m publishing now, almost 3 years later, because it’s a good story that really happened to me.

We got up at 1:30am on Friday morning, after going to bed at about 9pm. I doubt I slept more than 45 minutes at a stretch during the “night” and it was rough going. Eyal made coffee, and I made 2 pieces of toast with almond butter, goat cheese and honey. We put coffee in our mugs and by 1:55AM we were in the car heading to Camp Richardson.

On windy roads, I get motion sickness unless I’m driving, and the road from Tahoma to Camp Richardson is nothing if not windy, so I drove. The highway is narrow and the trees encroach on the pavement, and in the middle of the night, it was like driving through a tunnel. Eyal was awesome—he made light conversation and basically kept me awake!

We got to Camp Richardson and moved our gear to the boat where we were greeted warmly by Sylvia and Bryan, and Bryan’s 17 year old son Nick. Bryan was coming off of 7 hours of “compensation” sleep from doing a Tahoe length crossing the night before and he was hale and hearty. Our observer from Northern California Swimming Association, Kat Finlay, was also onboard, cocooned in a fuzzy blanket. The night was beautiful and clear and we all watched the sky for shooting stars leftover from the Perseid meteor shower of the prior week while Bryan got the boat ready.

After going over the rules, expectations, and communication signals, we started across the lake from Camp Richardson to the Cherry Street steps in Homewood, the swim’s official starting point (and only 2 miles from where we were staying!—a last minute change in the boat’s assigned mooring from Homewood Marina to Camp Richardson meant we had to go in and out of Camp Richardson). At this point I started to shiver, not from cold but from anticipation and apprehension. When we were about 5 minutes out, Sylvia put Desitin all over my back, legs, arms and face, and attached a beacon to my head (red) and a glow stick to my suit (green). These lights matched the lights on the boat (red in the front, green in the back and purple at the very back of the boat) and were designed to make sure they could tell where I was—and that I hadn’t gotten turned around to swim the wrong direction.

I kind of wanted the preparations to last forever, but in no time Bryan was telling me to jump off the boat. I knew the water temperature was fine for me—I swam for 30 minutes at the beach across from our rental on Thursday—but jumping into the dark water in the middle of the night off of a perfectly good boat seemed like a crazy idea. I sat down on the swim deck on the back of the boat and slid in, like a seal.

The water was like velvet. How often have you read that phrase? It sounds clichéd but it described perfectly how the water felt. Maybe not as warm as velvet, but like velvet that had been left in the shade of a tree—slightly cool, and smooth and really quite comfortable. I swam to shore and got up, shivering (from cold now) onto the steps at Cherry Street and waited for Sylvia to flash the strobe—and then I waded in and started swimming.

It was my first time swimming in the dark. At a panel discussion a year or so ago, I asked Karl Kingery what it was like to swim in the dark, and said it was one of my fears about long distance swimming. Karl replied, quite reasonably, that I should try it and face the fear. Of course I didn’t and in fact in planning the swim, told Sarah Thomas I was just going to try to survive the darkness—I figured it would only be completely dark for about an hour and I wasn’t scheduled to eat until after an hour so I could just put my head down and swim. But swimming in the dark—rather than being terrifying or disorienting—turned out to be one of the highlights of the swim.

In open water swimming I usually feel I have no frame of reference. Unlike swimming in the chlorine box, swimming in a lake or ocean means there are no lane lines, no obnoxious swimmers that you feel the need to swim faster than, and no pool walls. This means that I (at least) can’t tell whether I’m swimming fast or slow and often can’t even tell if the current is pushing or pulling, unless the current or chop is particularly aggressive or lumpy. Swimming in the dark in open water takes “no frame of reference” to a high art form—I could have been in an infinity pool for all I knew, and in a way I felt a kind of freedom I don’t always feel when I’m striving in an open water, daytime swim.

It reminded me of the Outward Bound Relay in 2006, which I ran with some friends from Idaho Springs to Glenwood Springs. I was the runner on deck at 1:30am for a 10k leg of the relay that went through Vail. It was September, but cold and snowy, and we were running primarily on the Gore Creek Trail through Vail. Headlamps were useless because of the snow and parts of the relay leg I actually ran briefly with my eyes shut. It turned out to be my fastest relay leg—either meaning I should always run with my eyes shut or, more likely, relaxing during challenging physical conditions puts you in touch with a different level of consciousness that enhances your performance. I felt the same way about the night swim in Tahoe.

At some point, the sky turned from black to a lighter shade of gray, which gave way to pink. Eyal captured the beauty of swimming into the sunrise in the video:

After that a few things happened. I ate, on what felt like way sooner than 30 minute intervals. And I swam. Eyal was awesome and he would give me a report on my stroke count, and tell me who was checking in on Facebook and sending their positive vibes. Swimming, swimming, swimming, feed, swimming, swimming, swimming, progress? I tried to avoid looking ahead at the far shore and mostly succeeded in doing that, but it felt like forever—although it was probably just a matter of 2-3 hours or so. Then I encountered some chop and riffles, and suddenly it was like I was in a slipstream. I felt like I was flying, and indeed when Sylvia stopped me to eat she told me that I’d caught the current that happens sometimes in Tahoe, exchanging cold water down below for the warm water on top, and it was pushing me along.

The current (sadly) was temporary. Sylvia had said my mind would be like “swiss cheese” by the end, but it was swiss cheese long before that. Before long, I totally lost track of how many feeds or how long since the day had broken. I was relieved when Eyal jumped in the water to swim with me for around an hour. Under open water swim rules he had to swim behind me, but it was still nice to have a little company! When Eyal got out, I thought I could see buildings on the Nevada shoreline, but Sylvia and Bryan told me not to get my hopes up. At that point, I was getting tired and my right arm was getting lazy. Bryan said “focus on your fingers” because I was shortening my stroke in a bad way. That helped and gave me something to think about.

Then on a stop to feed, Sylvia said, “I hope you brought your poker chips, because we just crossed into Nevada!”

I know now that she meant this to be positive and encouraging because at that point we only had 3.3 miles left. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how much of Tahoe is in Nevada and how much is in California. The default (in my mind at the time) was that I must have 6 miles more to go. Oh no! I was so discouraged, and I think my face showed it—Sylvia looked surprised. The problem was that while my head was telling me I had another 3-4 hours, I could look ahead and see the shoreline clearly. From swimming other point-to-point swims—admittedly not as long as this one—I had the feeling what I was seeing was a lot closer than 6 miles, but I wasn’t sure. This was the most difficult part because, as I always knew, the biggest challenge for me on a 12 mile swim was going to be mental not physical.

I decided to just live in the moment—even if I was going to swim 4 more hours, at some point I was going to be done swimming across Lake Tahoe and I’d have to get out and go on with everything else in life, so I decided to just really enjoy swimming in Lake Tahoe, no matter how long it took. I thought of Sarah Thomas’s story about getting discouraged during her Lake Powell swim last year—one thing that kept her going was realizing that really, nothing hurt and there wasn’t any real reason to stop. This thought worked pretty well and I went through a few more feeds and then Sylvia said, “last feed, you will finish after this”, and with that I was 1200 yards from shore. I was suddenly so tired. The video Eyal took at that point shows it—my stroke count dropped a bit as I swam through the moored boats to the front of the pumphouse. I swam and swam and swam, like I do in at the end of the Teal Lake race every summer in Michigan, waiting to touch the sand during a stroke before I stood up. Finally, I did touch the sand and got up and staggered—literally—to shore, went above the high water mark, and then put my arms in the air. I could hear Kat, our observer, shout “clear” (meaning I was high enough on the beach to satisfy open water swimming rules). Done!

Then I swam back to the boat and ate the leftover pizza from two nights previous, and felt marvelous. Really. Nothing hurt, I was tired and a bit goofy and very glad to be done, but I felt great.

Things to know for the next swim. The actual feeds worked great. I used Infinite Open Water Mix and Tailwind orange (with caffeine). I also had Advil twice—two pills maybe half way across (when my shoulders were very tired, thanks Sarah Thomas who was communicating with Sylvia and Eyal and recommended it) and then another 2 pills another 90 minutes later. No stomach upset. I had some Scratch orange chews (my all time fave sweet thing during a swim), applesauce, and a little bit of a Three Musketeers candy bar. If I could have found it, I would have tried warm Tang to start with—the thought of warm orange drink when I am cold is very appealing and would have been great to try during the cold morning hour.

The feed delivery situation has to be different next time. Bryan and Sylvia used a net to supply the feeds which was great in a way (no worries about being hit in the head by the flying bottle), but bad in another way, because I had to swim to the boat to feed. Or maybe I shouldn’t have tried to swim to the boat to feed–and instead just swam with the boat closing the distance. Either way, Eyal and I figured I spent about 75 minutes of the swim (total of 8 hours, 36 minutes) feeding. If I could be more efficient feeding I could finish sooner.

I also had trouble peeing—sorry—but it turns out that no matter how many years I am swimming in open water, this is still a challenge. I think I spent another 15-20 minutes trying to pee.

That still makes it a slow swim, but if you deduct the feeds and bathroom breaks, not that slow.

When I got on the boat, Kat and Sylvia I was amazingly consistent–my stroke rate had been like a metronome all the way across the lake, hardly varying from 56 strokes/minute. Bryan asked what was next and I realized that, unlike when I swam my first 10k a few years ago, this swim had not immediately wakened in my a desire to swim further. After finishing the Wellington Castle 10k in 2016 I thought–I can swim farther than 10k! and that set me on the path to Lake Tahoe. I still don’t know if I can swim farther than 20k and more importantly, I don’t even know if I want to. Bryan suggested it’s like child birth and you forget how hard it is and that makes you want to do the same thing or more again, but I’m not sure yet. Definitely more open water swimming–maybe in SF Bay from the Bay Bridge to Golden Gate, for example. But further than 20k?? Not sure yet.

Swimming as the antidote for the election

Spoiler alert–not much of this is about swimming.

Tomorrow are the midterm elections. Here in Colorado we’ve had early voting for almost 3 weeks. We reportedly have the most secure voting system of the entire 50 states, and we even have voter registration on election day. No three-hour lines around the courthouse, like I’ve heard tell-of in places like Georgia where they discourage you from voting–if you don’t vote in Colorado it’s truly because you don’t want to/can’t be bothered/aren’t paying attention. Yet my friend the election judge, told me yesterday that only 30% of usual voters had voted, an unusually low percentage based on recent election stats. But never fear, all the voters at our address have voted–over a week ago.

Driving today, I heard on the radio that the Russian minions who unleashed the “bots” and “fake news” sites on our country during 2016 spent only one-million dollars to turn the 2016 election upside down. Set that down against the hundreds of millions (billion?) dollars spent by candidates in the 2016 election cycle. Also, that the magnitude of Russian and foreign internet interference has only increased since 2016. Add to this the synagogue murders last week, along with all the other recent racial/political/religious violence in the United States and I have to say I’ve never felt so unsafe.

I go to the pool to try to work off some of my anxiety. About 5000 meters does it, and I always feel better, even though I’ve spent 90 minutes in a chlorine box. Part of that is because the pool is beautiful–an almost brand-new, 8 lane, bright with a lot of natural light, and generally competent (e.g., pro-active) lifeguards. This is Denver, and that means my fellow swimmers are an amazing and beautiful array of shapes, sizes, colors, and (guessing here) persuasions. And the wonder of swimming is you really can’t tell the first thing about a swimmer from outward appearances. Your lane mate may not look like they can swim even a stroke and yet they hammer out 100s at 1:10 or 1:15, and then will smile and chat with you afterwards.

I ponder all of this while I’m in the water, getting my butt handed to me by the friendly, older, larger person in the next lane, and I realize that, for me, this presents the possibility of a metaphor for where we’re at in our neighborhoods, communities, country. Not the “getting my butt handed to me” part–there is plenty of aggression in our political life, a lot of it endorsed from on high, and we don’t need more of that. Rather we need to stop and take the measure of our neighbors. Not based on the place they worship or the gender of their partner, but on their merits as human being. Can they make you laugh? help you with a difficult problem? babysit your dog? be your friend? offer good advice about an aging parent or a troubled child? If they can do any of these things, I’m willing to consider putting in a plug for your neighbor, regardless of how they vote. But by the same token–and here’s where the election comes in–we have to demand the same type of thoughtfulness from our elected officials. For all I know, Mitch McConnell is a stand-up guy who can tell a joke and who would love to dog-sit my 11 year old, slightly high-maintenance pup. But he (and so many others) seems to leave all of that at the door when he enters the Capitol, and that’s part of the reason (or maybe more) that we’re so divided.

Maybe you have heard the comparison of our current political situation to the 1860s. The NYT ran an article in their Sunday magazine this summer by a journalist who has been living and reporting from overseas for 10 years and came home for a couple of months this summer to find a country he didn’t recognize. He also compared the current situation to the 1860s, and in the words of one of the people he interviewed, it was a “cold” fight, not a hot one. I don’t take much comfort from that. Maybe it is only apparent in retrospect, but in the 1860s we were divided over slavery (which is a toggle switch right?—either we have it or we don’t) and states’ rights (which was the purportedly objective, academic reason why Southern states thought they should be able to toggle the switch to keep human beings as private property). I don’t quite know why everyone is so angry today–but I am confident we aren’t divided over the status of a toggle.

I am going to the pool in the morning and I am going to swim a long way, and likely get my butt handed to me by someone that seems an unlikely swimmer but turns out to be extremely accomplished. Then I’m going to spend the day hoping that we elect–nationally and locally–a bunch of people who maybe don’t collectively look like much, but who are committed to doing the political equivalent of swimming 100s on 1:15 and then willing to stand around and visit afterwards.

If you haven’t voted, do that before you swim tomorrow!

On Not Swimming the Suck

In February of this year I got up early and put off my swim workout to sign up for Swim the Suck, a 10 mile swim on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga. For the last few years I had seen swim reports from my swimming friends about this event and it sounded super fun, i.e., current assisted swim with the possibility of dinner and cocktails afterwards with swimmy friends. How fun!! I wanted to be a part of that, especially coming off of 2017 with two unplanned (one scary) surgeries that totally blew my 2017 goals out of the water (so to speak) and, in February, not certain I would accomplish my primary 2018 goal of swimming Tahoe. But I am sitting here in Denver tonight, and STS starts tomorrow morning in Chattanooga and I will not be there.

What happened? First Tahoe happened—I finished a “true width” crossing in August. My first post shared this swim, which was amazing and awesome and in some ways not-to-be-topped. What happened after that hasn’t been shared.

After Tahoe I was tired. Tired of hitting my weekly swimming goals, tired of getting up early, tired of having a “short swim” equal 5000m, tired of not having time to walk on dry land, in the mountains or to see anything during a workout except the sliver of sky, trees, and mountains in eyeshot during each breath. Don’t get me wrong: the view into the water was often beautiful, and looking at the rest of the world through a kind of louvered shade was its own kind of beauty. But it was beauty extracted from duty. From this I learned I am not monk (or convent) material.

After Tahoe I did not stop swimming, exactly (except for the three weeks after I fell off a scooter and, in catching myself, pulled every single intercostal muscle on my left side). I just stopped swimming a workout. My times were slow (when I even remembered my watch to time myself). When swimming I mostly focused on the sky and views, not stroke, not moving through the water. To swimmers, this non-water focus will seem significant.

So I started hiking. A lot. On steep, Rocky Mountain trails with my ever-willing puppy Stella and wonderful husband Eyal. In the sun and sky and golden aspen trees, high up where oxygen is rationed by the laws of physics. For example, last week after work, on a golden, early October evening, Stella and I hiked 4 miles and saw elk and mule deer, and reveled (ok maybe I was the only one reveling) in the pinks, yellows, and oranges of a Front Range autumn. Not a drop of water in sight.

While I am not done hiking, and even hope to back-country ski this year (snow forecast on Sunday!), I can also report that I had a great, long SWIM WORKOUT today. Pool, I am back.

From my experience over the last year I have learned that, while I love to swim—especially and maybe mostly in wild, open water—I am a dry land creature too. This weekend I have a hike planned at Elk Meadows (before the snow starts) and a short swim on Saturday. On Sunday I have a much longer swim, assuming I can get out of bed and to the pool on the first cold, snowy day of the year.

And no matter what, I wish my STS friends well and I hope to join you next year!