Guest article – Ciarán Byrne – Lough Iochtar Ice Mile

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As long-time readers will know, Rob The Bull Bohane, Ciarán Byrne and Finbarr Hedderman are all Sandycove Island Swim Club members, English Channel Soloists and very good friends. Ciarán and Rob are two members of our 2010 Magnificent Seven Channel training squad. All three are very experienced open and cold water swimmers, and are three of the people I most like and trust swimming with (when Finbarr is not trying to drown me).

Recently all three took part in another ice-mile, the week prior to the Lough Dan Ice Mile and I’m delighted to have Ciarán’s account of the swim. (I was to be part of the attempt but for various reasons decided against it). I’ll stress that these three swimmers have a wealth of cold water experience, and the helpers and assistants as you can see below also have great experience. The location was in the Kerry Mountains in the south-west of Ireland. (Lough is the Irish for lake, by the way and is pronounced “lock”).

Ice Mile Lough Iochtar, Kerry, 10th Feb 2013.

Ram Barkai from South Africa set up the International Ice Swimming Association in 2009. To become a member you must swim a mile (1609.3m) in water of 5.0°C or under. At time of writing there have been 51 recorded ice swims by less than 50 swimmers.

Sandycove Island Swim club decided to join the fun. We scouted the sea and lakes in Cork and Kerry. Through Rob’s Kerry connections 3 lakes about half way up Carrauntoohil (Ireland’s highest mountain at just over 1000 metres- Ed.) were identified which were accessible by 4×4 vehicles.

The peak of Carrauntoohill on the bottom right, small Lough Iochtar on the upper left, Coomloughra Lough in the middle and Lough Eagher on the right respectively.

Rob, Finbarr and I agreed to try one of these lakes on Sun 10th Feb.

Leaving Cork on the morning of the 10th the weather was great. Clear blue skies ahead. We went first to Lough Acoose to meet the great support team from the Sandycove Island Swim Club. Lisa (English Channel Two-way swimmer), Eddie (Triple Crown Swimmer), Carol (Lake Zurich silver medallist and Irish Masters Squad member) and Pascal (Finbarr’s dad).

We met the Kerry Mountain Rescue team of John Dowd, John Cronin and Angela O’Connor near the water treatment plant. We headed up in two 4-wheel drive cars including the fully equipped Kerry Mountain Rescue Ambulance.

When we reached the first of three lakes, Lough Iochtar, we stopped for a look. Lough Iochtar is a small lake approx 300m long and approx 75 metres at its widest point. It’s at 440m elevation. There was a small stone beach near the road. It looked ideal.

The next check was the water temp. Below 5C. We were in business. The temperatures taken
during the swim were 4.5, 4.9 and 4.8C. Average 4.7C. The air temp was 3°C. There was a cold wind and the wind chill was -3C.

The altitude didn’t adversely impact our breathing. That was something that had concerned us about the location. We unloaded the jeeps and set to measuring the swim distance. We went for old school. Rob had brought a measured 50m length of line. Rob and John used it to measure out a 100M course. We marked the ends with fluorescent jackets.

The plan was to complete eight loops of the 200M course, which was marked 10 metres from the start, the ends of the course to be marshalled by observers. The wind was picking up so we got a group photo and then got changed.

Ice Mile team. Finbarr, Ciaran & Rob are the centre three

Eddie and Carol put on their wetsuits in case they needed to help any of us out of the water.

Lisa helped set up the GPS tracker on my goggles. We were going for high and low tech on this swim. We each had an observer to count strokes and watch for signs of hypothermia. Eddie for Rob, Carol for Fin and Lisa for me. We had agreed that if there was a sharp drop in stroke rate that we’d be pulled. We pre-arranged a signalling system to warn us when we had to come out. The back-up was that in the event of no response Eddie or Carol would swim in to get us out.

We got changed on the beach. One standard silicon cap, ear plugs, one pair of standard togs and goggles. A little Vaseline under the armpits for chafing. Pascal gave words of encouragement. We shook hands and set off. The large stones were sore on the feet. The water biting at the feet.

The first couple of metres were shallow. There was then a sharp drop off so we slid into the water and into our stroke. The experience in the first 100M was not unlike our experience in Tooting Bec Lido at the UK Cold Water Swimming Championships. The hands soon got icy cold. The arms felt tight at the stretch. The first 200M passed quickly. I had completed the Endurance swim (450M) at the CWSC so I knew I could go that far. However I was concerned that I was so cold so early. The next 200M were tough. My hands were as cold as they were in the endurance swim and I had another 1200M plus to go! Nothing for it but to keep swimming. Concentrate on the stroke.

Eddie manned the nearest mark and Carol the far one. Turning at the end of the 100M was a
challenge. Once you passed the fluorescent vest you had to turn in deep water. I had a near collision with Rob after the 600M turn. He had turned ahead of me and I was breathing to the right looking for the mark. No damage done and quickly back into the swim. After 600M I started to settle into the swim. I was closing in on the half way mark. I wasn’t getting any colder. My stroke was holding up. The sun had come out and was very welcome. After 1400M my feet got very cold and borderline cramping – I knew if I kicked too hard I would cramp. We got the whistle for the final loop. Head down and go for it.

I came into the finish. Fin had finished first, well ahead. The Lough Iochtar Monster. He came into his own in the second half of the swim and left us behind. Rob was in next and I came in not too far behind.

After the turn

I tried to get in as close as possible to avoid wading in over the rocks. They were going to be painful. I was very unsteady on my feet and Pascal helped me up and gave me my crocks. Lisa was waiting with my towel. Carol came over to help Lisa get my jacket on. Then straight into a warm Jeep to get dressed. Lisa was great, organising my clothes, getting tea and making sure I was ok. Once dressed I got into the front into the heated seat – pure luxury.

We were all a bit unsteady on our feet when we go out. Fin didn’t need the car to get changed. He seemed unfazed by the swim and probably could have done a double. Rob got changed outside but soon joined me in the jeep and recovered quickly as well.

After about 20 mins we were all in good shape. The wind had picked up and it was starting to rain. We certainly got the best of the weather for our swim. We decided it was time to get our gear together and head back down to Killarney.

I’d like to thank the great support we got from our Sandycove friends, Lisa, Carol, Eddie and Pascal, Angela from Caherciveen and the two Johns from the Kerry Mountain Rescue. These events are not possible without volunteers who freely give their time to help others reach their goals. We believe this is the highest altitude ice mile in Europe.

A selection of swimming time intervals

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100 milliseconds: Contraction time, aka male shrinkage time in 5 degree Celsius water.

Zero, aka Go, aka Scratch: The fastest group, the elites, the last wave to go in an open water race. It’s ok to hate them.

0 seconds Rest Interval (R.I.): When you are not making your 100 max repeat times. You want to die.

1 second R.I.: It’s inevitable that this rest interval will soon become zero seconds.

1 to 3 seconds: When you come second in a race by this interval range, it’s good enough to convince yourself that you are as fast as the winner.

2 seconds R.I.: Maxed-out but holding it.

3 seconds R.I.: On a 95% set. Nothing can stop you. You are a swimming god.

4 seconds: Trent Grimsey’s average feed time for his record-setting English Channel solo.

5 seconds R.I.: Not quite enough time for water. Better finish the 1k set first.

10 seconds R.I.: You’re being lazy and sandbagging if doing repeat 100′s. Acceptable on fast 200s and slow 400s.

10 seconds: 10 seconds feeding equals 10 minutes extra swimming in the Channel.

20 seconds R.I.: Lasts 60 seconds for Masters Swimmers.

30 seconds: Considered to be a quick water entry when the temperature is under 5° Celsius.

Master’s Minute: Enough time to go to the toilet, have a drink and a quick chat. Not actually a minute.

50 seconds: The time to get to the closest swimmable arch on the Copper Coast from the beach at high tide, at Gararrus.

2 minutes and 55 seconds. The interval by which Trent Grimsey beat the previous English Channel world record.

3 minutes: The amount of time it takes sub-seven degree Celsius water to go from awful to fine. Or to kill you.

5 minutes: The period of time from the onset of despair to being told I’d made it through the tide.

<15 minutes: A fast open water kilometer.

~15 minutes: A good urination interval for marathon swims. That warm patch you swam through? Was mine.

27 minutes: From my house to the Guillamenes car park.

60 minutes public pool evening open session: A lifetime in hell.

1 hour: The longest swim from France back to the pilot boat, after a Channel swim was over. (My claim to fame).

1 hour: the amount of time open water swimmers start swimming as soon as the water temperature rises to 10° Celsius.

1 hour: Remember all those long feeds you took? Another hour to the Cap.

1 hour and 55 minutes-ish: Approximate time of Olympic 10k open water swim for Male swimmers.

2 hours-ish: Until you reach the Cap. Unless …

3 to 5 hours: Sandycove Island Torture Swim.

6 hours: Minimum English Channel qualification swim.

6 to 10 hours: Sandycove Island Swim Club Channel qualification swims.

6 hours and 15 minutes: The approximate duration of single tide.

6 hours 55 minutes: Trent Grimsey’s 2012 English Channel record

10 to 12 hours: Starting-level weekly training times for Channel swimmers

13 to 18 hours: the range of “average” English channel solo crossings.

15 to 25 hours: “Proper” English Channel weekly training hours.

17 hours and 14 minutes: Suzie Maroney’s record Two-way English Channel.

21 hours and 45 minutes: the first successful English Channel swim time.

>24 hours: The small group of open water swimmer who have swum continuously for more than 24 hours.

28 hours and 21 minutes: Phil Rush’s record Three-way English Channel solo.

28 hours and 44 minutes: Jackie Cobell’s record-setting English Channel Solo.

Exactly 36 hours: Lisa Cummins two-way English Channel solo, on her first attempt.

52 hours and 30 minutes: Kevin Murphy’s record for the longest continuous-time open water swim on his three-way English channel attempt.

8 days: The usual length of a neap tide for most Solo Channel swims.

22 days, 2 hours and 13 minutes: The cumulative time Kevin Murphy has spent actually swimming the English Channel, just on his successful Solo swims.

27.3 days: The duration of a sidereal lunar month which determines tides.

4 and a half months: The English Channel swim season.

2 years: Duration an English Channel CS&PF swim counts as a qualification for a Manhattan Island Marathon Island entry.

2 to 3 years: Current wait for a preferred English tide and pilot.

38 years: The interval between Kevin Murphy’s first and most recent successful English Channel Solos.

70 years and 147 days: Age of Roger Allsop at the time he set the record for the oldest successful English Channel solo.

82 years. How long the Newtown and Guillamenes swimming club safely has stewarded the Coves before the recent blight on the location.

83 years. How long the Newtown and Guillamenes swimming club is in operation.

138 years: Duration since Captain Matthew Webb swam the English Channel and started this Channel swimming nonsense.

Eternity: The time since the last feed. The time until the next feed, or the Cap.

One week swim diary experiment: What happens when I increase swimming mileage suddenly

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I’ve been swimming a moderate amount recently, about 20 to 25 k per week, 23 k the week before this experiment. Enough to stay fit, sufficient for a good swim base, and just about in line with my minimum annual target of one million metres.

And then I thought to myself: what would happen if I went from low 20′s to 40k, in one week, without doing it in one big session? I’ve done 20 or 25 k, then done a 15 or 18k long sessions, I wondered how different doing it daily would feel. And last year I went from 35,000 to 50,000 metres on one week, which is a volume jump of about the same amount though a much lesser percentage increase. It really didn’t seem hard, I’ve swum 40 to 45 kilometres per week for months on end, but having ramped into it and I’ve swum irregular long swims, where you only have to get through them. I do enjoying treating myself as an experiment at times, it sometimes gives me subjects to write about.

The normal course for increasing swimming volume, and which I counsel others all the time, is to increase total distance by about 5% per week. If you have plenty of swimming then 10% is probably okay. To do more is to invite injury and burnout. So yeah, that seemed like an idea. I’d be aiming at 8k per day for 5 days. That’s an increase of 3+ kilometres per day, with no ramp. An increase of 66% in one week. That should fine, right? I’ve swam at least a million metres per year for the last five or six years, sometimes significantly more, 1.3 million metres last year in 2012, 1.5 million in 2010. But a million metres breaks down to a mere 21k per week over 48 weeks. An extra 3k per day, that’s not hard, surely? Right?

Monday. Target 8000 metres.

Normal resting heart rate. No real breakfast as usual. First 5k session went well, knocking out ten 400s readily, descending on the second five. Second session 3k, cruised through it. Normal eating and appetite. Maybe I’ll bump up the target later in the week, if I can find a couple of hours extra. Target achieved.

Tuesday. Target 8000 metres.

Forgot to check heart rate. Woke a bit hungrier than usual so had porridge for breakfast. I usually have to have a reason to eat porridge. I ate a lot of it during Channel training. 5.4k in the morning, nothing to report, main set 20 x 200s, holding time. My face felt a bit warm during the afternoon. The 2.6k in the evening session was a little bit of a struggle and I felt sluggish. I started thinking of food while swimming, which is unusual for me in the pool. I’m used to swimming enough normally that at 4/5 k per day I don’t feel the need to eat more. By the end of the second day my appetite has already increased. Still hungry after dinner, eating a lot of junk/carbs also. Only 24 hours ago I was thinking maybe I should raise the target. Now I’m wondering if I’ll hit it. Target achieved though.

Wednesday. Target 8000 metres.

Feeling tired on waking. Resting heart rate is elevated, 18 above normal. Bagel BLT for breakfast, along with other bits n’ bobs. Started fine on alternate kilometres of 100s and 200s but started to feel really sluggish at about 4k. Ground out 6.4k, the last kilometre a trial, and I was noticeably slow. Eating more afterwards again. My face felt warm and flushed all day (though it wasn’t visibly so), a real sign of tiredness for me.

For the evening session I only needed to do 1.6k. My left shoulder was achy and stiff and took a kilometre to loosen but otherwise felt surprisingly spry, so slipped in an extra 800 metres, and the times were fine. Had to make a sandwich almost immediately after dinner though, not to mention all the chocolate & biscuits I also ate. Last week I swam 23k in 5 days. Only 24.6k done so far in three days but feels like more. Went to bed an hour early. Target exceeded, 9140 metres.

Thursday. Target 8000 metres.

Felt better than Wednesday morning after waking. Resting heart rate only 8 bpm above normal. Still hungry. Orange juice, natural yoghurt, an orange, a chocolate bar and decaf coffee and a rasher and pudding sandwich for breakfast. Don’t judge me. 6.2k, 1800 mixed paddles warm up, then 2×100 + 600, 200 + 400, 400 + 400, 400 + 200, 800 + 2×100. The second of each pair should have been faster but I just held normal 100 base time. By 4,000 I’d finished a full water bottle already and needed a refill and started thinking about food. My biceps, triceps and lats are all noticeably achy. However, I’m also starting to feel better and push a bit harder as I realise the hump is behind me. I finish the last pair going hard and the last two 100s on sub 1:30. I round out the session with back stroke as I usually do. I’d fallen off a ladder the previous Sunday and the bruise in the middle of my back is really tight and sore after this session, though it hasn’t noticeably affected me otherwise. Seven sessions done. The extra time in the chlorine is starting to really dry out my face. I eat more, ham and cheese sandwiches, another orange, the last of the grapes.

Later, 2.4 k, a mix of paddles and pull, and 6 x 200s with an extra 10 seconds rest interval over usual. All going fine, feeling pretty decent. Didn’t have time to do any more. Ate a dinner large enough for three hungry people. Target exceeded, 8,600 metres.

Swimmers love looking at other’s training logs and comparing and contrasting. I am currently enjoying Jason Connor’s English Channel training log on his excellent blog (which gives me design envy). Jason calls himself average, but look at his times. That’s what living in Australia does for you, where swimming isn’t a second-class sport.

Friday: Target 6,300 metres

Despite a broken night’s sleep, I had gone to bed early, so woke with heart rate only about 8 bpm above normal, pretty good. Early session, 4,400 metres. Since I haven’t deliberately done a real recovery session earlier in the week, today is the day. Though I fudge a bit, starting with 1.5k pull & finger paddles, followed by 1.5k pull and power paddles, which turns out to be a real slog. Then a 1k swim followed by backstroke to the end. Nothing too strenuous. After this session I’ve developed an itchy patch of flaky skin over my chin. That damn chlorine. Today’s easier swim has meant my appetite has abated again.

Evening session: 1.7k. Easy stretch out and recovery swim. Job done, 40,000 metres in 5 days. You’ll notice I didn’t go over as I’d mentioned as a possibility at the start of the week.

Analysis: It was odd how the worst was earlier in the week than I expected; Tuesday, and Wednesday morning. Once I reverted to big mileage eating and sleeping patterns learned previously, the experiment became slightly easier. I swam backstroke every session, slightly over 5% of the week’s total about on target and from only one week didn’t notice any impact on my shoulder past the stiffness. It was only 40,000 metres which is big enough but nowhere near my highest ever of 112,000 in 9 days, or the week after week after month of 45k plus during Channel training. I have no idea if I learned much from it, other than it is possible someone who is swimming regularly and has swum it previously to return to it.

Lough Dan Ice Mile Swim Attempt

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Late last week the opportunity to make another Official Ice Mile attempt was offered by Dublin and English Channel swimmers Fergal Somerville and John Daly, this time the attempt to be made in Lough Dan, up in the Wicklow Mountains. Since the previous attempt I had already turned down another opportunity the previous week in the Kerry Mountains, (a report of which I’ll have for you soon).

I told Fergal I wouldn’t be able to make it, and that was still pretty much the case only 24 hours beforehand. However, after a night with four and half hours sleep, lying awake at five a.m., I decided I’d at least attend, and maybe consider it. And so it was that Dee and I left at seven a.m. for the estimated two-hour journey up. Passing Hollywood, (not quite like the better known, younger and more brash American version) we rose gradually up to the Wicklow Gap, and minus four degrees air temperatures with two inches of snow, staring down the long miles of the Wicklow Way to the dawn sun briefly breaking the clouds and shining on the distant Irish Sea. It was stunningly beautiful of course, and nerve-wracking to drive. We were driving almost an hour from when we encountered the first snow and ice before we arrived at Lough Dan just before nine-thirty a.m.

The Wicklow Way and the Irish Sea on the horizon

The Wicklow Way from the Wicklow Gap with the Irish Sea on the horizon

Lough Dan is a Scout and hiking centre and site for overnight camping in the snow, so there were many people about and most of the swimmers and crew were already present. One swimmer from the previous attempt would not be with us, having decided to attempt it by himself, and instead Carmel Collins, a Sandycove swimmer, joined us. We moved the cars down as close to the lake edge as we could, about a hundred metres, and proceeded to check the temperatures.

3.7C

The tiny bay from where we had lake access was about only ten metres across, and half-covered in ice. So it was immediately obvious the temperature wasn’t too high this time around. And there was no wind, which is important. My first measurement in the shallow water indicated the horrifically low reading of 1.4 degrees Celsius. I moved out along the rocks delineating the east side of the cove to get to deeper water and took a long measurement which read 3.7 º C.

An Official ice Mile, as you probably know, requires water temperatures of 5 º Celsius or less, measured at three different locations, by temperature probes reading 30 centimetres below the surface.

The swim course would be a 400 metre loop, beginning at a pontoon about 50 metres off the shore, and leading down into the lake and back, with four full loops required for the pre-requisite 1650 metres, with a little extra distance padding built-in for anyone swimming the full course.

RIB going in through ice

We had a RIB (rescue boat) and a kayaker, a doctor and plenty of other helpers. Irish English Channel record holder and paramedic, Mr Awesome, Tom Healy, and his partner Rachel were also on-hand for extra safety along with others including Vanessa Daws, artist, open water swimmer and video documentarian of the Irish open water swimming scene.

(Note: I only met Tom for the first time in Dover when both he and Alan Clack were preparing to swim their respective solos on the same day). I met him and Rachel again the day afterwards, and I rubbed the tattoos on his arms. “No. they don’t come off” he said. “Actually“, I said, “I was checking if the awesome would rub off on me“).

Ice in Lough Dan cove

We had to wait a while longer than expected before we could start, (and why that is, is a story I hope to return to soon in a separate joint-authored post with Finbarr Hedderman). I thought about the swim, thought about how little sleep I’d had in the previous 48 hours, about how my weight is only one kilogram higher than it was for the previous attempt, thought about how the water was colder than I expected or hoped, (4.9 to 5.0 would have been my preferred but difficult to achieve temperature). I thought about the 40,000 metre training week I’d just completed, without expecting this as the end and even the fact that I hadn’t been in the sea for almost two weeks, my longest absence in a year. I thought about my distracted mental state. And I thought most importantly about whether I wanted to actually to attempt the full swim, and decided I didn’t. I realised I was not capable of it that day. So I decided I’d (almost) certainly only do a half-mile. After all, it would still be a decent swim, in water colder than I’d ever had an opportunity in which to swim.

From left,Fergal, Donal, Patrick (behind), John, Colm, Carmel

From left: Vanessa, Fergal, Donal, Patrick (behind), John, Colm, Carmel

We had the safety briefing, and just after eleven a.m. Fergal, John, Patrick Corkery, Colm Breathnach, Carmel Collins and myself finally entered the peat-black water with Vanessa in her wetsuit and her trusty Go-Pro. I dislike slow entries, while I also don’t like to dive into cold water I don’t know. So wading out behind Fergal, I got my hands and face in for a good splash, let my breathing settle for a few seconds and then started swimming, while it was still shallow and everyone else started swimming virtually immediately.

The start, wading out, I’m swimming. The yellow pontoon was the start and turning point

As you’d expect, water somewhere between three and four degrees really hurts. I hope you didn’t expect me to say something more profound. As with all cold water it hurts most in the hands, feet and sinuses. It just hurts more acutely and more quickly. I seem to have control over the sinus pain this year, (I’ve only noticed in retrospect) and each year I’ve noticed some improved aspect of my cold tolerance. This water didn’t cause any stabbing sinus or face pain. But my hands and feet were immediately painful and the pain didn’t abate. And I was almost unable to kick from the start, as kicking when your feet are painful with cold seems to increase the pain. By not kicking, the blood also flows more slowly in your body. It’s not really a conscious decision, just one of those possibly individual quirks of cold water for me, though it’s then more difficult in the reduced buoyancy of fresh water lake to maintain a horizontal streamlined position.

Once past the left side of the tiny cove, I immediately went too far to the left, while most of the rest went too far right and we met at about 100 metres out half way to the buoy. Patrick, Fergal and I were together to the first turn, with the kayaker providing a watchful eye, with me inside on the turn. I came out of the inside turn somewhat at a disadvantage to Patrick, shall we say. I’m normally up for the full contact aspect of open water swimming, but this swim wasn’t one where I was so motivated. Patrick and I stayed together with Fergal in front pulling a few metres ahead. We touched the pontoon at 400 metres and turned back. Approaching the end of the third leg Patrick and I were still together and I was going to get caught between him and the buoy again, so I dropped back and swam over his legs to his right side to go wide around the turn, which allowed him to open up five metres. It wasn’t relevant, I was heading into my final 200 metres.

Donal finishing

Approaching the pontoon again, I somehow got a mouthful of water, in flat water! Which made me splutter, and further confirmed my decision that today wasn’t my day. I swung right, and into the cove. It was very difficult to walk over the stones of the hidden lake floor with my painful soles and Tom Mr Awesome Healy waded out to assist my landing, such as it was. Dee and Carmel’s partner Gordon helped me get dressed, and we moved back the car. I’d swum somewhat over 800 metres, I was in the water for 16 minutes. I wasn’t obviously as hypothermic as I’d been after the previous attempt, in fact I was able to kind-of-jog back to the car.

Twelve minutes or so later Colm finished first, as always, followed by Fergal, Patrick, Carmel and John. Since we were back at the car however, we don’t have photos of the rest finishing.

It was a fantastic achievement for them all, and all deserve Congratulations: Fergal Colm, John, Patrick and Carmel. There were different levels of post-swim hypothermia but that is to be expected of course. The safety cover and assistance and help were excellent, top class in fact, with no worries about anyone. I recovered in about 40 minutes, unlike the much longer recovery of the previous attempt.

I have never been so happy with a decision to NOT complete a swim. I’ll repeat my favourite safety aphorism for you again:

Safety decisions are best made OUTSIDE the water.

I’d left myself the small possibility of attempting the full swim but I knew before I started that it wasn’t likely. My weight hasn’t changed much, I’m still lighter than in three years at least, but most importantly, I knew I was unwilling to dig into the mental reserves I knew I’d have to access in order to complete. I know how to find and access those mental reserves for swims but it would come at a physical price. And I also know that sometimes that pushing myself too far isn’t the wisest thing to do. The full mile would have been too far for me. It was a fantastic achievement for the five swimmers, as it is for all ice mile swimmers. By exiting to plan, I didn’t encounter, or cause, any of the safety issues that we’ve seen or heard about on a couple of recent ice-mile attempts in various location. I also had a fantastic experience by reaffirming to myself that I am capable of entirely making my own safety decisions for myself, regardless of what anyone else is doing and as such the day was an enormous success for me also.

You sometimes hear marathon swimmers say they swim to find their limits, and this was one of those times for me. I am very happy with the exploration.

Check out Fergal’s report on his blog.

(On the way home we stopped in beautiful Glendalough, where it almost seemed someone had helpfully placed a single washed-up log, ideal as a photographic focal point!).

Glendalough upper lake

The despoiling of the Guillamene Cove

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How many photos and posts of the Guillamenes have you seen here on loneswimmer.com? If you are a regular visitor that is. Quite a few. (You should see the hundred of pictures in my photo library that haven’t made it here but which I still keep taking).

How many of you from around the world know about the Guillamene because I write about it regularly? I have spent hours, days, weeks cumulatively, there over the last seven years. I’ve met people there from all the world who accidentally find our little treasure, while others visit specifically and many are repeat visitors to this gateway to the Copper Coast.

I always tell people Tramore Bay from the Guillamenes is a great open water swimming location, (and one I have almost to myself). It can be swum in the prevailing south-westerly winds. It can be swum at all tides, which isn’t possible even for Sandycove. The water is clear, clean and cold and the scenery is gorgeous.

There’s the local and active Newtown & Guillamens Swimming Club, who have spent a lot of time and money stewarding the location for the past 80 years and making the place friendly and welcoming. It is in fact a part of local life, and local tradition, for people of all ages. There’s the hugely popular Christmas Swim, the Diving Contest, the Snámh Fada (long swim) and the late-summer water gala.

And then Tramore Council became involved more. Now they have always been involved of course, they empty the bins, cut grass, installed public toilets, all useful public services. Of course, that’s the job of councils. After all the Guillamenes and Newtown Coves are themselves tourist locations, in a town whose economy is based primarily on tourism.

The club put in a significant amount of money, raised over many years from member’s €20 per annum subscriptions, toward maintaining and improving facilities. The joint venture saw new concrete changing bench/platforms in both coves, the old slipway in Newtown cove repaired, and new wooden picnic tables in the park. All this work was possible because the quite significant money raised by the club, was matched with money from a Euro Leader grant. The building work was a gradual roll-out First came the improvement to Newtown Cove concrete changing platforms, then the slipway, and then the wooden picnic tables (one of which a visitor quickly decided would be a good base for a barbecue . The majority of visitors never knew that the club was funding much of this. That in fact the stewardship of the Cove and amenities was keenly felt by the club members and the regular users of the Guillamenes, as many of the regulars aren’t actually members of the club. I was swimming there myself for some years before I joined the club, which I did because of the great facility there for me as a swimmer. The point is to maintain and even improve the area for everyone, locals and tourists, and not just club members. I put together the Newtown & Guillamene website to promote the area, (though since I don’t have the time to maintain no-one else seems interested).

Barriers, barriers, barriers everywhere

In 2010 the famous diving board snapped because five adult idiots decided they could all bounce on it at the same time. When finally replaced in 2012, (diving boards are expensive and difficult to source) it was in place only 6 weeks before “that summer storm” snapped it off, at a cost to the club of €500. A storm in 2009 ripped the mild steel railings into the water out of the concrete and twisted them like pipe-cleaners. The lower platform and step have to be cleaned of algae every 6 weeks, by club members, a task that takes three people half a day, using a power washer, brushes and scrapers. The extensive cliff-top railings had to be repainted annually to protect them from saline corrosion, again a task carried out by club members. The second main stage of the upgrades involved some new railings and ladders in Newtown Cove. They looked fine and were needed for swimmers. But it didn’t stop there. A couple were added to the Guillamene, including the one that looks like a clothes hanger. Marginal utility, not so marginal ugliness. New concrete steps into the water were laid. The first attempt was in late October along with some railing, and some washed away. Genius move. The second concrete was laid smooth, an ideal bed for lethally slippery marine algae. The main steps down to the Guillamene platform were relaid… badly. A platform and second ladder was added for getting into and out of the water. The jury is still out on those. As it was previously, the steps had a bottle neck of a single ladder at low tide. But the new platform is more difficult to climb. But they are acceptable. But then things went bananas. More railings, more railing, more railings. All stainless steel. The old painted mild steel on the cliff top, which due the repainting blended into the locale with well, all replaced with stainless and galvanised steel, the galvanised mild steel up around the car park.

The cattle crush

Stainless steel of course won’t corrode nor need to be repainted. It is also visually sterile and utterly and completely out-of-place in a location of such natural beauty and of such popularity. The entire effect when you stand there is overwhelmingly ugly, the product of committee thinking, a committee who have no beauty in their collective psyche’s, who don’t understand the concept of personal stewardship and won’t understand the connection with the location all the locals and visitors can tangibly feel.

Closeup

In 2000 I wrote to a national radio station after I’d seen in spring, while surfing, a large mass of sewage floating directly off the beach. The reaction was overwhelming and the lies and diversions by Tramore Council and Waterford County Council at the time were illuminating. They said I couldn’t have been in the water as it was too cold, that the sewage was only dumped further out to sea at half-tide, that there was no possibility of what I’d said actually happening, that new sewage treatment plant was already agreed and under-way None of this was true. Sewage was regularly dumped onto at high tide and easily washed back onto the beach. No-one wanted to address the situation and I was told it was better to lie and cover the situation up. The only option not explored was honesty. In fact it took another eight years before the sewage treatment plant was finally improved.

Since 2010 the public toilets in the Guillamenes car park have been locked all year round, & no longer opened during the summer. The excuse from Tramore Town Council was they could no longer afford to send someone down to open and close it daily. The Guillamenes is about five minutes drive around the bypass from the Council Offices, such a long way. They can apparently however afford this unnecessary weight of ugly and unnecessary stainless steel, because they can take the funds from the European Union. That is the bureaucratic mind in operation.

Soon they’ll try to stop us getting into the sea

I can only fervently hope (with little prospect) that one of our south-easterly storms will wash the monstrosity away.

All of this will mean little of nothing to almost all of you. But I’ve invited many people to come swim with me, and some have arrived. For those of you who do, you’ll see up close the horrible additions.

HOW TO: Open water breathing patterns

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The variety and utility of different breathing patterns for open water swimming is a subject of different concerns to pool swimming, as with so much of our side of the swimming sport. I once read an US coach who said about breathing patterns; “if they gave medals for bilateral breathing, I’d coach bilateral breathing“. I thought it was a great and illustrative quotation of what are often the differing concerns we have. Bilateral breathing is a regular subject for discussion amongst open water swimmers, usually between those who do, those who can, and those who don’t or can’t.

Let’s look at the common breathing patterns and their advantages and disadvantages.

Breathing every arm stroke. This is often called Head-Up freestyle or Tarzan stroke. This is generally a beginner’s stroke where the person is unable to swim without putting their face in the water to exhale. It is actually much more tiring than regular front crawl and can stress the arms, shoulders, necks and lower back. However, it is also a pattern that more experienced swimmers should be able to use as it can be useful in circumstances such as rescues of other swimmers, allowing fairly constant eye-contact, or where a swimmer is swimming into land over or through rocks or obstacles and visibility is most important. More experienced swimmers should ensure they can still do this for short distances. Inexperienced swimmers who only use this pattern should work with a stroke coach to develop proper front crawl

Breathing every second arm stroke (once every full arm cycle): Most experienced swimmers will have this in their repertoire and use it when they are swimming faster. However it can also be used at lower speed and for some swimmers this is their preferred breathing pattern. Its disadvantage can be if the swimmer is unable to maintain this pattern on either side. And with all single-sided breathing patterns the swimmer will have more difficulty keeping a straight line. Professional marathon swimmer Mallory Mead, coached by English Channel two-way Soloist Anne Cleveland recently pointed out on the marathonswimmers.org forum that it is due to swimmers having a longer (delayed) stroke on their breathing side. Other concerns include possible compromise of breathing options in rough water (you may not want or be able to breathe into a sideways wind with spray or chop). Navigation and communication can similarly be difficult. Stroke imbalance can be exaggerated and lead to shoulder injury for the less experienced or those using it for very long swims. And finally single-sided breathing can allow a blind spot in races of which competitors can take advantage.

Breathing every third (or fifth) arm stroke: Usually called bilateral breathing. There are significant advantages to bilateral breathing for open water swimming:

It’s easier to swim in a straight line as stroke and breathing imbalances are evened out.
Navigation is easier if the swimmer can see on both sides.
Communication with kayaks and boat crew can be easier.
The swimmer’s options for positioning in rough water are increased.
Swimmers can more easily see attempted passing moves in races.

If the swimmer can retain this pattern during maximum speed it doesn’t have any real disadvantages. (I can’t myself, and must switch to 2-stroke).

Breathing on fourth stroke: Like breathing every second stroke, this is single-sided breathing with the same advantages and problems, though swimmers who are more comfortable on a fourth-stroke pattern will usually be very smooth and more efficient swimmers. Bilateral breathing offers an open water swimmer more flexibility that in rough water and bad weather this can be significant. However I have seen and know very fast and excellent swimmers, faster and better than me, who can only breathe on a single side and it has not been a huge problem for them. I’ve seen English Channel swimmers who were forced to swim on the rougher windward side of the boat because that was the only side on which they could comfortably breathe for long periods, some were successful, some not.

All of the above are regular breathing patterns. However a swimmer can also use an:

Irregular breathing pattern. Is a bit more difficult to quantify as it in personal and well, irregular. It might be a combination such as 3,3,3,2,2,3. Another could be 2,2,2,3,2,2,2. I know myself that when in a steady bilateral 3-stroke cycle, I will occasionally slip in a breath on a 2-stroke for that little extra oxygen. This can occur subconsciously as the swimmer wants a little extra breath, a better view, adjusting to conditions or is just more comfortable doing this. I seem to have developed the bad habit of sneaking an extra breath before a tumble-turn in the pool, which has filtered back to the sea. An irregular pattern may allow the swimmer the advantages of bilateral breathing combined with at least some of the speed advantage of single-side breathing. It may also allow the swimmer to partly ease built-up tension in the neck and opposing shoulder. As Mallory Mead pointed out, being able to breathe on both sides is important, being able to breathe bilaterally is not, a subtle but important distinction.

How do you train your breathing pattern?

To change an embedded breathing habit is very difficult if at all possible to do so completely. However it will benefit the swimmer to be able to adjust it for periods. The usual way to train breathing patterns is through hypoxic sets, often called lungbusters by swimmers. The simplest is doing underwater lengths (aka dynamic apnea , on a fixed time, increasing the number of repetition and/or distance as the swimmer improves, which allow the swimmer to develop better breath control. Thee other common way is to swim sets with increasing number of strokes between breaths;

Swim consecutive lengths breathing ever, 3, 5, 7, 5, 9, 3 strokes and repeat for 500 metres. Or swim 400 metres breathing every 4 strokes on your bad side, followed by 400 metres breathing on your good side (if you are a 3 strokes per breath person for example).

Swimming and creativity

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I asked artist, college lecturer and marathon swimmer friend Rosin Lewis some months ago to write a guest article for me on a specific subject, that of the link between open water swimming and creativity. it hasn’t arrived yet, I think Roisín will eventually write it, but I’m not sure how long it’ll be, so you are stuck for now with my own roughly formed thoughts on the subject, and I’m indulging myself today, even more than usual, by writing about something odd, but something that I have nonetheless been thinking about. I’ll start with this assertion: I believe, that at least for myself, there is a very definite and specific link between swimming and more specifically open water swimming, and whatever creative aspects I have.

Rather than this being some unwarranted belief, I have my own personal evidence that it is only with the integration of swimming into my life that the creative aspects of my life have started to develop more fully from whatever limited ability I had previously. This creativity is expressed to whatever minor extent it has been in writing about swimming, and more recently and to a lesser extent, also in photography. I’ve even dabbled every so-lightly in swim poetry! (I used to do a lot of model-making previously but though there can be quite a lot of unrecognised original creation in that, there is still also a derivative aspect to it, and it’s in no way symbiotic with swimming).

Also, the assertion is not a value judgement on whether or not either (my writing or photography) are any good. I guess that’s not for me to say, only that; both now occupy a place that prior to swimming didn’t seem to exist to the same extent, and that both give quite some enjoyment, and of course self-expression. Actually a lifelong inveterate reader, and therefore well familiar with various aspects of the craft from a reader’s point of view, I’d long ago come to the conclusion and was fine with the fact, that writing of any kind wasn’t a drive I possessed. And yet I’m not the first Channel swimmer who has felt afterwards the impulse to share and explain to the world the transcendent nature of the pursuit.

Painted waves

Not only do I believe that swimming has enhanced my own creativity, for which at least I have some tangible evidence, as you can see here, I think there’s another face to the subject, and that is, once again applying this only to myself as I have no way to apply it to others, that the very act of swimming could be (but usually isn’t) an artistic act in itself. And I don’t mean in the elegance of the specific swimmer.

Maybe ten or twelve years ago, I recall reading something by once-famous Australian surfer Nat Young, a controversial and divisive figure himself, that he believed the biggest mistake of modern surfing was that it was treated as a sport and not as an art, something which then resonated very strongly with me and which did fade but never left my consciousness. For someone who was one time was considered the world best surfer there could be an argument that the lines he scribed across the faces of waves were themselves temporary sketch lines, using the board as his brush and the water as his canvas.

That also reminds me of the short story by “Uncle” Ray Bradbury, In a Season of Calm Weather, (as I once heard Irish Playwright Hugh Leonard call the famous American short-story writer and have thought of him since. A man sees a sketch of a picture on a sandy beach, being an art critic he realises it can only be a work by Picasso. The sketch is a finished product, which is enhanced maybe by the brevity of its existence and its limited or non-existent audience. In the case of the Bradbury story the audience exists only to make the story possible, instead the art.

The classic slit experiment that illustrated the dual nature of waves

Modern art theory as I ( possibly mis-?) understand it says that something is defined as art if the artist simply makes the assertion. But of course we don’t step into the sea with the aim of claiming the imaginary lines we swim across the surface are art. Not that you couldn’t strap a GPS on and portray the resulting map as art, and indeed, now that is postulated it seems likely someone will so do. But more relevant is the mind of the swimmer/surfer/artist during the event. It seemed impossible for me, considering the marine environment is dominated by transient weather, that the idea of quantum waves wouldn’t metaphorically rear itself, the idea of the quantum nature of reality in which it only the privileged place of the observer that collapses the possibilities into reality.

By swimming/creating we take the possibly of all the things that could happen, and make one thing, one sequence of time-bound events, actually happen. Of course this applies to all life, but something about the considered slow -natured metronomic of swimming in skin, almost your entire surface exposed to the world, that links you more obviously into the world around you makes this a more deeply felt experience. Once again, this isn’t a conscious action, which moves it out of the realm of created art and into the psychological.

This is a difficult subject to write about, and I’m sure, if you’ve made it this far, to read. This is just me thinking through my fingers. I’m not claiming anything I do is specifically artistic but what is important, is that the writing is my own creative expression and that expression derives from the pursuit of swimming. More creative expression in the world can hardly be a bad thing, so maybe that’s another reason for some of us to swim, or for me anyway.

What is cold immersion diuresis in swimmers?

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That is: Why you pee more during and after swimming.

Diuresis is the medical term for increased urination. Cold immersion diuresis is common to cold water swimmers and is the strong desire to pee after (and sometimes during) swimming in cold water.

As we have now discussed many times, swimming in cold water leads to peripheral vasoconstriction, by the cold of the water leaching away the heat of the blood vessels closer to the surface. The blood vessels constrict resulting in reduction of blood flow in the body’s extremities to conserve heat in the cold.

This reduction in blood flow to the periphery therefore actually leads to a quick increase in blood pressure. The body attempts to compensate for this increase in arterial blood pressure by relieving itself of liquid elsewhere. The easiest, quickest and least costly expenditure from a metabolic (energetic) point of view is urine. So you will often find as cold swimmers do, that walking into cold water even before you are fully immersed, you will develop a sudden urge to urinate caused by this blood pressure increase. And during a swim liquid also builds up in the bladder but without practice, they are unable to urinate in really cold water while swimming, many swimmers, even very experienced cold water swimmers will have to stop or momentarily pause to urinate. Also when you exit the water the demand to urinate can reach quite powerful levels as the muscles finally relax.

A consequence of this increased urination often forgotten is mild dehydration. Marathon swimmers in cold water, such as the English Channel are taking most of their food as liquid carbohydrates. The volume of water needed or used is generally close to one litre an hour, and because of cold diuresis, more of the liquid processed by the kidney, instead of being absorbed back as is normal, goes to the bladder. Part of this mechanism is that the cold suppresses the production of ADH, aka vasopressin, the anti-diuretic hormone that suppresses diuresis (urination). The swimmer urinates more, so the swimmer needs more liquid to compensate for the mild dehydration. And you have a self-sustaining cycle as long as the swimmer is immersed in tolerable cold water.

Thus … the well-nourished high weeds behind the Sandycove Island parking spaces.

Hypothermia mortality rates in Ireland.

Mechanism of cold diuresis in rats.

Cold water immersion and cold-shock, the first three minutes (loneswimmer.com)

25 signs of being a marathon swimmer

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I came across this article on 25 signs that you might be a marathon swimmer, by Steve Munatones, on active.com because of a sudden slew of mentions of the article on Twitter. I think it was written some time ago, but I’m not sure.

I thought I’d see if I had the potential to be a marathon swimmer.

1. Your favorite author is Lynne Cox.

Lynn Cox wrote a famous to swimmers autobiography of her life and adventures in long-distance swimming. She isn’t my favourite author, I read too much, but I understand the point. And of course I have the book.

2. You have four jars of lanolin in your car.

Alan Clack brought in 1.5 kilograms of lanolin in two jars from Canada for me when I was running out last year and worrying about the national shortage that non-one was taking seriously. I’ve got sufficient for about ~~five~~ four years now. (I gave Gábor a tub after I wrote that sentence). No, you can’t have any of mine.

3. You equate the sight of neoprene with someone scratching their fingernails on a blackboard.

I recently felt compelled to write a haiku about neoprene for myself while I was swimming skin in 8 degree water. Yes, you’ll probably get to see at some point in the future.

4. You are Facebook friends with 36 of the 49 Triple Crown swimmers.

I’m not on Facebook but I sure know many of them, whether personally, through email, or through the marathonswimmers.org forum. I’ve even collected autographs!

5. Ocean’s Seven is on your bucket list.

I fail this one. Ocean’s Seven has not been a dream of mine.

6. An email from Philip Rush is like winning the lottery.

I remember the excitement the first time I got copied on an email from Ted Eriskson. And Penny Palfrey. And Anne Cleveland, Scott Zornig, Dave Barra, Chloe McCardel, etc. Steve Munatones was the common point of origin for many of these emails. Lisa Cummins is one of my friends, Kevin Murphy sent me Christmas wishes and Steve Redmond rang me for a chat this morning. Shameless name-dropping!

Mixing Maxim

7. You know the components of Maxim.

It’s just maltodextrin, aka rocket-fuel. I recently saw someone write somewhere that there is protein in it, which there isn’t. If you want the definitive discussion of maltodextrin in swimming, Evan’s blog is the place.

8. You feel like you’ve been to Sandycove even though you’ve never visited Europe.

Well I guess that’s obvious. Owen and I were talking recently and I reminded him of the Sandycove AGM a couple of years ago. I’d just created the Sandycove website and I wanted everyone to start pushing awareness of the website as the introduction to one of the world’s great open water swimming clubs, whenever they could, email signatures, forums, blogs etc. Almost everyone looked at me like I was mad. Two years later …

Sandycove panorama

9. You read Donal Buckley‘s blog first thing in the morning.

That’s quite gratifying, and thanks to Steve for that comment. My blog, a sign of mental aberration! LoneSwimmer.com is three years at the end of this month, by the way. For the first time in my life I have a nickname. Well, one that can be repeated on polite society. I do not yet refer to myself in the third person though. Sometimes it’s really hard to come up with new stuff, when it’s the depths of winter, there’s not a lot to report and the time in the water is too short to be very inspired. My 2012 photos have helped recently.

10. The MarathonSwimmers Forum is your favorite online property.

Again, this is great. marathonswimmers.org is becoming what Evan and I hoped, a real online meeting place and discussion and argument place for the world’s marathon and aspirant marathon swimmers.

11. For you, single-digit swimming is doable, not dangerous.

Single digit swimming is bloody unavoidable if you want to be an open water swimmer in Ireland or the UK. I know enough to know there’s a huge difference between 9 C and 5 C.

12. When Mike Oram speaks, you listen.

I do indeed read everything Mike Oram commits to the Channel chat group. (I don’t agree with it all though).

13. When you see a body of water, you wonder what the water temperature is.

I don’t really wonder about temperature of bodies of water unless I am actually going to swim in them. Is that a yes or a no? I just assume there are all cold, it’s easier.

14. When you see a body of water, you Google it to see if it has even been swum.

Google Earth is one of the great modern additions to marathon swimming, and I wish to hell Google would update the entire Irish coast in full resolution, especially the bit around Dungarvan.

15. & 16. Your first question upon landing in San Francisco is, “Where is Aquatic Park?”. You know the difference between the Dolphin Club and South End Rowing Club.

I know where Aquatic Park is (though I haven’t swum there). And La Jolla in San Diego (I have swum there). I do feel my swimming Curriculum Vitae is somewhat remiss by not having a South End membership on it. Yet.

17. After your 100 x 100s, you head to the beach.

I’ve swum 27,000 metres in the pool with The Magnificent Seven and then we’ve gone immediately to the sea and swum in 7 degrees Celsius water. That one sea swim is what led to my reputation with Coach Eilis as being reckless.

Six of The Magnificent Seven. From left; Ciaran Byrne, Donal, Liam Maher, Jennifer Hurley, Rob Bohane, Gabor Molnar. Channel swimmers one and all.

18. Swimming extra on holidays is a given.

Isn’t swimming what holidays are for? A better way of explaining this is that you are going somewhere where there is no chance of a swim. But you take your swimming gear anyway.

19. You always wonder if you have done enough and stress out when others do more.

My solution to mileage concerns has been to try to swim at least a million metres per year regardless. I still stress.

20. You fret about every twinge in your shoulders.

Fret is too mild a word when it comes to shoulder pain worry. Before MIMS last year for two weeks I kept repeating to Dee and Lisa that something was wrong, something was wrong but I couldn’t explain it. Nothing was wrong, apparently.

21. “Nothing great is easy”, is your favorite quote.

Nothing Great is Easy becomes your favourite quote when you’ve earned it the hard way.

22. You love bioluminescence.

I do. I really do. Bioluminescense is the sea’s gift to night-swimmers.

The Purple Stinger

23. & 24. You have considered—many times—how to punch a shark. You know more types of jellyfish than you do cats.

Sharks don’t actually exist. They are faked in the same studios as the moon landing. Jellyfish are a different matter. Those multitudinous feckers. I keep swimming into new types I don’t recognise. When did I ever think I’d start to recognise different species of jellyfish? Are there more than two kinds of cat; nasty and more nasty?

25. You diet to gain bioprene.

I’ve lost weight recently and my cold water tolerance is badly affected. Bad bad Donal.

Well, do I pass? Can I become a marathon swimmer?

Guest Article: Dr. Karen Throsby, on the complicated issue of fat amongst Channel swimmers

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It’s with great delight that I have this thought-provoking article from Dr. Karen Throsby. If you are a Channel swimmer you are most certain to know Karen or at the very least know of her.

Karen is a Sociology lecturer and researcher in Warwick College in the UK. I first met Karen in 2010 at the Sandycove distance week where she’d come to train for her (successful) English Channel attempt that year. In 2011 she completed the Catalina Channel and this year will tackle MIMS to complete the Triple Crown AND will also return to the Channel, making her part of the smaller group of swimmers who return to that battlefield. Karen once uttered what because one of my favourite swim sayings: “All I have to do today is swim” on any day with a long training session or even swim.

Apart from this, and apart from her excellent blog, one of my favourites, and apart from her research website, what also makes Karen so important and even vital for our global community, is that she is the prime (only?) sociological researcher of Channel Swimmers. She recently published her first research paper, “Becoming a Channel Swimmer“. Don’t let the title “research paper) put you off, it’s a fantastic and accessible-to-all read that I highly recommend for anyone who’s ever wondered about their own body image, and she’s working on a book on Channel Swimming that will be required reading for swimmers, organisers, writers, family, friends and even those with indirect interest in the deeper and personal and sociological aspects of our pursuits.

I’ve written a couple of posts related to weight or body image amongst open water swimmers. One linking pictures of the different types of bodies amongst various professional athletes remains quite popular, always attracting views. Another was on the difference between the presentation of images of swimsuit models versus what we ordinary swimmers actually tend to look like. And only recently I lost deliberately lost weight myself, the first time I ever set out to so do, (and am paying a swimming price for it). Karen’s blog is one of my favourites and I’d previously asked her for a guest post. As you can imagine, she is somewhat short of free time. But recently, after I’d already read her research paper, she was the author of what are my favourite-ever posts on marathonswimmers.org on the same subject, that for me would have been worth setting up the forum if nothing else had ever been written there. So I ~~badgered~~ asked her again, and this time she acquiesced.

I was standing on the beach in Dover, chatting with friends while preparing
for another 6 hour swim. We watched a group of young male swimmers noisily
slapping and wobbling the newly-rounded belly of one of them – the result of
purposeful weight gain to insulate against the cold. Playing along, he grabbed
his soft stomach fat and folded it into an improvised mouth. “Feed me, feed me,”
demanded the stomach-mouth. As we watched the young men fat-slapping
and joking, my friend – a man who sees himself as unambiguously fat – leaned
quietly over to me and said: “It makes you wonder what they must think of me”.
(fieldnotes, June 2010)

***

Channel swimmers talk about body fat a lot.

When I first stumbled into the marathon swimming world, I (mis)took this
for acceptance, even celebration, of a bodily property that is otherwise utterly
derogated in everyday life. But on closer inspection, I came to see this fat talk as
a much more complicated and contradictory mix of acceptance, celebration and
fat-phobia. We can see this, for example, in the physical comedy of the young
male swimmers. Their slapping and jiggling of body fat is intended to evoke
disgust, whilst simultaneously relying on a shared understanding that their fat
is not real fat, with all its negative connotations. It reminds me of lean actors
dressed up in fat suits, or gaining weight for a role, usually to comic effect. It’s
funny because we know they are not really fat, but it is also inevitably funny
at the expense of those who are fat. As with my friend on the beach, then, not
everyone can join in the fun.

And this is why Channel swimmers talk about body fat a lot: because the
purposeful maintaining / gaining of body fat is a socially precarious act in a
society where fat is routinely treated as disgusting, unattractive and as the
manifestation of the moral failure to exercise self-control. This precariousness is
reflected in playful banter of the young men on the beach, or the forum and blog
discussions about how much weight gain is enough, but not too much. It explains
why people describe using their upcoming Channel swim as their “get out jail
free card”, or their “alibi” for fatness. As a female swimmer who had transitioned
from the pool to the open water told me, she constantly reminded people she
was training to swim the Channel “so they didn’t think I’d just got fat”.

My point here is not that I think these defensive responses to fat are vain or
foolish. Bodies are complicated things to manage, the pressures are very real
and feeling ashamed about feeling ashamed is more paralysis than politics. But
I think that the Channel swimming community as a whole is missing a trick here
and falling in line with a dominant story of fatness that simply doesn’t make
sense. After all, what greater challenge to the equation of fat with ill-health
and laziness could there be than Channel swimming? And what if, instead of
reproducing those moral judgements about fatness, we actively refused them both
for ourselves and others? And what if we were to be collectively shocked that our
bodies – that any bodies – would need an alibi?

In the current context, it is perhaps inevitable that Channel swimmers talk about
fat a lot; but how we talk about it, and who is excluded by that talk, is not. This, I
think, is an opportunity for inclusion that collectively we are missing.

The Eastern Bay Swim Club Official Ice Mile attempt – Part 2 Post-swim and analysis

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Part 1.

Post-Swim Events

I struggled to get my sandals on, then climbed the steps to my swim box to get changed. It was another struggle, as my swim box wasn’t against the wall on the bench, as the other guys had filled up the space before me pre-swim. Instead it was balanced on the low wall above the steps. And there were people coming and going.

Struggling to get dressed

Many of my carefully learned post-swim processes and timing slowed.

I’d brought too many post-swim clothes. But I got dressed, putting on ski-pants instead of trousers, easier to pull on and very warm, then received some brief assistance from someone behind me to get the difficult first top base-layer on, as I was struggling with it, as usual. Afterdrop was coming on very hard, worse than usual. I may have taken ten minutes to get fully dressed instead of my usual five to six minutes and I only wore Crocs and Socks instead of shoes. Patrick Corkery shoved my woolly hat on my head.

A severely hypothermic Ger Kennedy being attended to by volunteers

The crowds and my position were very difficult, entirely my own fault. I noticed one swimmer being attended to, wrapped in thermal blankets and clothes, surrounded by people, but I didn’t see who it was and I wasn’t focused as I normally would be at such. Only later did Fergal tell me it was Ger Kennedy, who’d been removed from the water a couple of hundred metres from the end after he’d grabbed the kayak and asked for help, unable to swim the final couple of hundred metres.

Patrick Corkery’s brother John-Paul helped me back to his car to rewarm, my car a hundred metres further on must have looked too far, as I was walking somewhat unsteadily. I stayed there in the heat for about 20 minutes. I was quite hypothermic, extremely slowed speech and even cognition. I rang Dee to tell her I was okay, she later said I didn’t sound normal. But do I ever?

Fergal was so comfortable after his swim he had time to speak with one of his fans. He was actually able to speak clearly, unlike me.

Eventually I moved to my car. Fergal, apparently entirely recovered almost immediately, drove us back to his house for home-made soup and brown bread and cake from his wife Mags. (The joys of open water swimming include how we can eat, returning to that time when we were teenagers and food can at every meal or snack become your entire world, with no guilt, no long-term ramifications).

I left Fergal’s house about two hours from the end of the swim, completely recovered and I had plenty of time to reflect on the way home.

Analysis

As the blood cools, it thickens and slows, the increased viscosity therefore reducing the oxygen available to the brain. Cognition is impaired. It’s why I’ve previously stressed so often the importance of repetition, of learning what you are doing when you are really cold. It’s why we make out safety decisions outside the water, not when we are already cold. It’s why following a plan is important.

When you are hypothermic, you are still you, but you are also very distinctly not you.

In retrospect, it was the second worst hypothermia experience I’ve had, second only to the Blackwater to Cobh swim in 2007, early in my cold water swimming, when I’d had brief memory loss for ten to fifteen minutes afterwards.

The value of most of what I write here, is that I learn it all myself the hard way, and often make mistakes. And we all know mistakes often have more value than success.

I did complete the swim but it was maybe ~7°, maybe as low as 5.6°, not the necessary 5°, so it wasn’t a failure for me per se, but it was more difficult than I expected. For anyone experienced with cold water, that’s a wide temperature gap, as we all repeat to each other; every degree drop brings a new level of difficulty. This left me asking the question:

Why was I so hypothermic afterwards?

At home I checked my swim log: On the 1st of December I’d swim in 7.2° Celsius for forty minutes, by myself, and not been as hypothermic, driving safely away from the Guillamenes after about 40 minutes. Not that I wasn’t hypo, after every swim at the Guillamenes I usually spend about 20 to 30 minutes before I drive home, including the very short but very useful climb up the steps to my car.

Pre-swim everything was done right, I didn’t get cold, I’d eaten enough, I was a little short of sleep but it shouldn’t have been a factor.

I have written on more than one occasion that you can’t out-think the Laws of Thermodynamics, heat will always leave the body in cold water, cold will always win. The rate that heat leaves is based primarily on body size, body fat, cold water experience and movement. The first two are obvious physically limiting factors, the third doesn’t seem to be but is also.

Recapping the three aspects:

The larger the body, the greater the ratio of volume to surface area, so the slower the heat-loss. It’s why Polar animals are large, for example.
Fat is obviously an insulator specifically designed by nature to protect from cold.
As experience in cold water grows, heart-rate and stress hormones decrease, blood is not being pumped as quickly internally so heat loss is slowed.
I was swimming hard(-ish).

Since I have plenty of experience, and I wasn’t stressed about the swim, the problem could likely to be in the first two items. And this is where the big change has been with me recently.

Loneswimming

Here’s that picture of me from last autumn, pre-Coumshingaun swim.

I’m not the tallest of people, 170 centimetres. No change there except as I get older, I must be starting to shrink! No, the fact is that since November I’ve lost about seven kilograms. In fact I am lighter than I’ve been in at least four years, having dropped below my pre-Channel training weight. My winter swimming weight pre-Channel used to be about 75 kilos, whereas I’m now about 73 kilos.

No disrespect to my fellow swimmers, but I am somewhat significantly smaller than all of them. Only Ger is anywhere near my weight but probably still 10 kilos heavier. I’d guess the other four of them had 20 to 30 kilos of weight advantage on me.

Above is a photo of me greasing-up taken before the Ice-mile attempt. Since I didn’t know it was being taken, there was no belly-sucking, though I guess my torso is stretched, but both photos are from the side. I was genuinely surprised looking at the second photo how apparent the weight loss was (to me anyway).

Checking my log again, five days before that 7.2° swim in December, I was still 76 kg, three kilos heavier than now.

The other significant difference with Saturday’s swim was that I was actually swimming harder than my usual winter swims. That meant higher blood flow. I don’t know how to calculate the offset there. Swimming faster burns more energy and therefore produces more heat. But ironically that could have meant a greater exposure of warmed blood at the surface so it would cool quicker. I have no idea how to calculate the balancing factor here, but my feeling based on experience is that it was probably the smaller part of the story but at the same time, still important.

There’s yet another important factor: Colm was first out of the water at about 26 minutes. I was about 34 minutes. 34 minutes for 1600-odd metres is really really slow and I was swimming fast. And 26 minutes for 1600m is slow, especially for Colm. The return leg had taken us twice as long into the flood tide as the outward leg. All this indicates the strength of the flood tide we were swimming back against. Not the very best conditions if I was marginal on cold-exposure at that temperature.There could have been ten minutes extra swimming time. And remember also that I missed the turn, which probably added at least a minute. At this temperature spending extra time in the water wasn’t the optimum situation for me.

And I made another mistake. Earlier in the week I’d hoped to stay in the Dublin the previous night and hopefully have my sister accompany me, but she was working. Prior to the swim I should have taken a better changing location, knowing how hard it can be from experience AND I should asked for a designated person whose function was to help me dress afterwards.

I said to Fergal on Sunday that it felt like low 6° to me. A few days later Patrick Corkery told me he measured 6.7° out in the water on his watch, and swim watches almost invariably read a degree higher, even in very cold water, due to body heat (enough that swimmers often adjust for this). This puts the temperature potentially much closer to 5.5°.

So there you have it. I did the swim. I struggled afterwards. I made mistakes. Some factors were out of my control, some weren’t. At my current weight swimming in a temperature of three or four degrees for a sustained time is probably beyond me, but five might be possible. The official Ice Mile is still waiting for me.

Next time?

Next time I’d designate my helper.

Next time I’ll be more sure of the turning point.

Next time I’ll avoid flood tides for this type of swim.

Next time.

Thanks to Fergal and John, Eastern Bay Swim club, Dublin Sea-Scouts, the other swimmers and all the volunteers who assisted.

It’s worth closing with a comparison, and a warning. The day before this swim Finbarr Hedderman and Rob Bohane of Sandycove Island Swimming Club, two of the world’s finest *cold open water* swimmers swam 600 and 800 yards respectively in Totting Bec in 1.8C°. Speaking with Rob some days later, he’d suffered some nerve damage, having developed constant pins and needles in his fingertips. Lewis Pugh on his zero degree Antarctic mile suffered fingertip nerve damage that took 6 months to heal.

I’m not all about constant warnings here, I only give the occasional one. But cold water is dangerous. Almost all these people in Dublin and Tooting Bec are very experienced cold water experts . I try to give you as much information as I possibly can about cold swimming to help you. (In fact I don’t think you’ll find more anywhere else). But there is still risk. I’m not telling you shouldn’t take risks, but try to balance the risks with your capabilities. That point where risk and capability pivot about each is different for everyone.

Why would you swim in cold water? (loneswimmer.com)
The Golden Rules of Cold Water Swimming (loneswimmer.com)
Fergal’s report part 1

Eastern Bay Swim Club Official Ice Mile attempt – Part 1, the swim.

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Most of the Sandycove Island Swimming Club were away in London at Tooting Bec Lido for the British Cold Water Swimming Championships at the weekend, living it up in the 1.8° degree Lido water.

Earlier in the week however, Dublin English Channel soloist, and North Channel Aspirant Fergal Somerville circulated an email from himself and fellow Dublin English Channel soloist John Daly, looking for anyone who was interested in making an official ice-mile attempt in Dublin Bay run by his club, the Eastern Bay Swimming Club. (Anyone that is, who was regularly swimming in cold water and had a good swim record).

Along the Bull Wall, into Dublin Bay

And so it was that six of us assembled, with a veritable army of helpers and Doctors, volunteers, Sea-Scouts and safety crew, film-crew and photographers, well-wishers and looky-loos, at the outermost shelter on Dublin’s Bull Wall in Dublin Bay on Saturday morning.

The requirements for an official ice-mile are pretty straight-forward: 1600 metres in water that must measure 5° Celsius or less, verified using three different submerged thermometers, 30 centimetres under the surface. Swimmers swim under English Channel regulations; single cap, goggles and swimsuit, with lubrication sufficient only to protect against chaffing. The swimmers also must provide an ECG taken within 30 days before the swim.

The weather was very cold here for the previous two weeks but water temperatures had risen on the south coast. The previous Saturday’s swim at the Guillamenes was 8.6° Celsius, but the east coast of Ireland is always colder, and Fergal and John had measured 4° C the previous Saturday. However during the week safety officer and English Channel soloist Ger Carty measured the water at 6° C.

The morning was bright and cloudless on the Bull Wall, which runs from out in Dublin Bay back along north-easterly along Bull Island, marking the northern edge of Dublin Port harbour. Across the harbour is Dublin Landmark the Pigeonhouse power station. Measurements on Saturday morning indicated a temperature of 7° to 7.2° Celsius, well above the required mark, but there was no thoughts of us not swimming, treating it at least as a training swim.

Pigeonhouse Power station

I’d slipped off a rock while taking a photo for my blipfoto account earlier in the week and bruised my ribs and hadn’t been able to swim much in the pool, as I was hurting on tumble-turns, push-offs and backstroke, all aspects of swimming which luckily I didn’t need for open water.

I’d eaten enough that morning, and while my night’s sleep was shortish, it should have been sufficient.

Looking south across the harbour from above the Bull Wall toward the twin chimney's of Dublin's Pigeon House Power Station

Looking south (up) across the harbour from above the Bull Wall toward the twin chimney’s of Dublin’s Pigeon House Power Station

The swim was to be back along the Bull Wall toward the city, to just past the Golf Club. There were plenty of Sea-Scouts on kayaks and a safety boat also, and volunteers walking along the path watching us. The turn was to be just past the Golf Club and indicated by a flag on the wall.

The swim route. Nothing much to see here.

At 10am we assembled in the easternmost shelter at the end of the wall to get ready and assembled on the steps at just before 10.10 am. I’d greased slightly under my arms, something I’ve haven’t been doing for my recent swims, I seem to have finally gotten over the need to prevent chaffing for swims under 30 minutes, but I didn’t want any possibility of getting chaffed if I was really cold. The six swimmers were organisers John and Fergal, myself, Ger Kennedy and Colm Breathnach and Patrick Corkery, (Ger being the only one I didn’t really know), but all experienced open water marathon swimmers. We lined up for a photo beforehand, I was on the far side of the railing and struggled to peek out from behind The Wall of Men.

A wall of men. Big men. Manly men. What the hell am I doing behind there? From left to right; Colm, Fergal, myself peeking out, Patrick, Ger, John.

The water down along the wall was rippley but fairly flat. The air temperature was 4° C but the breeze felt cold and the wind-chill surely dropped the perceived temperature to about zero.

I’d been a bit nervous for a couple of hours the previous day, before I got over it. Sure the local temperature I’d been swimming in was higher and I hadn’t been training specifically for this swim, but I was as always swimming in the sea every weekend and I’d wanted to try this for a few years with no opportunity. I’d even had a sketchy swim only two weeks previously when a combination of wind strength and direction, swell and tide turned a 30 minute swim into a stern battle, that had been an appropriate training swim for this.

I felt confident beforehand, nice and calm, no internals symptoms of anxiety that would elevate my heart rate and make me get cold quicker than normal. We all entered the water just after 10.10.

The water was cold of course but nothing exceptional. No searing sinus pain, which tends to happen me when the temperature is six degrees or lower. Hands and feet were cold but not immediately on fire, no extreme gasping. All was good.

The group stroked off down the wall, Patrick out in front, Colm, a former national 400m champion, and probably one of the fastest open water swimmers in the country, quickly catching and passing the group. Fergal, Ger, John and myself together in a group before Fergal and I went to the front of the four, and swam shoulder to shoulder for a couple of hundred metres.

On the Bull wall there were plenty of people, volunteers and helpers and bemused morning walkers.

Fergal and kayaker

I felt great, swimming nice and strongly, breathing only to my right instead of bilaterally, to allow me put a bit of extra effort in. When I swim by myself most winter weekends, I just cruise. I rarely swim for speed, except for the final few hundred metres sprint. This time, I had upped my tempo a bit. Fergal and separated and he swam closer toward the shore and we each had picked up separate Sea-Scout kayakers. The water was very murky and sandy and my watch wasn’t visible, so I hadn’t been able to check time for the first five minutes elapsed. I hadn’t even started to look for the Golf Club or turn flag, when I realised I had passed someone on the wall waving 25 or 50 metres, and had paid no attention. Now the kayaker was shouting at me, which of course I couldn’t hear with my ear plugs in. I’d swum right past the turn point. I stopped and checked with the kayaker, and turned back. That was fast! Fergal told me afterwards we’d reached the 800 metres turning point in less than 12 minutes. Now turned, everyone was in front of me, heading back to the shelter.

Donal, left, before the turn, and Fergal, right, after the turn

My hands and feet were by now feeling painful, but not to the extent of the almost unbearable pain that occurs to me at around 5 degrees, the thermoceptors, the cold-receptors in my skin enervated but not quite overloaded.

I paid no attention to trying to catch anyone, I wasn’t treating this as a race, just concentrated on swimming, in case I forgot how. I was still breathing to my right so now I looking across the bay past the kayaker to the well-known twin chimney’s of the Pigeonhouse Power Station and the city and Wicklow Mountains beyond, the peaks still snow-covered after the foul weather all week.

After a long period I decided on a forward position check. There was a changing shelter on the shore coming up. It wasn’t the larger one at the end of the wall that we’d started from, but there was another one a few hundred metres beyond, hopefully that would be the end. Head down again I swim on. Next check I had still not arrived at the next shelter. Another swim, another check. The shelter was clear but it wasn’t the end.

What i hadn’t realised, and was only apparent afterwards when I looked at Google Earth, is that there are only three shelters along the wall. After the very quick first half returning toward the start was much slower, and just getting to the first of the three shelters, only 300 metres past the turn took almost as long as the first half of the swim. Usually you can feel when you are being slowed by a current, but when the location is new and the water is cold it’s not always apparent. I still felt I was swimming quickly, but didn’t realise how much the incoming tide had slowed my return.

Colm finishing first

The swim continued as a plod onwards, hands and feet still painful but still manageable, fingers still in control. The last shelter finally became apparent, the white vinyl banner of Eastern bay Swim club on the railings visible.

Fergal & Patrick

300 metres, 200 metres. I engaged my kick a bit more strongly. Slow progress. My hands hadn’t Clawed, I didn’t feel blown. And then the strangest thing happened. I noticed what looked like black dots in the sky when I looked skyward on my breathing. Calling them black spots in front of my eyes would a bit too strong but very definitely noticeable and they were there for the final 100 metres. So I reached the railings, and exited the water.

In Part Two, after the swim and post-swim analysis.

Donal, always wearing my CS&PF Channel cap

John – photo of the day I think, he looks totally unphased

Best LoneSwimmer photos of 2012 – Part 2 (last part)

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These are the final of my favourite photos from 2012. In the course of doing this series I’ve been very happy with the overall result and some of the rediscoveries. I’ve been reading a lot about photography lately, and one of the things that resonated most was actually a comment, to try to find the things that speak to me and about me and for me most. And there’s little doubt that for me, that is the sea, a difficult subject , and the Irish coast, and my swimming life. After putting this series together, My Swimming Life 2012, I’m already somewhat apprehensive about 2013′s images, maybe 2012 was a high-water mark for me.

Here’s another pictures of the English Channel. Dawn, leaving Dover and Shakespeare beach and evening returning to Dover Harbour, a slight hazy fog under the Varne cliffs. This photo became the banner image for the marathonswimmers.org forum.

Dover Evening

I crewed for Owen O’Keefe for his final Blackwater swim and took a nice picture of the Youghal bridge.

Blackwater Bridge

And if you’re a regular here, you know how I love the Copper Coast and sea thrift.

Kilfarassey Pinks

Storm bollards

That big storm in August gave me some great opportunities and one of the most viewed posts of the year. Knowing the area and the sea conditions probably allowed me to find the best vantage points of any of the droves of local and better photographers who were out that day.

Stormwave

Below is an image I’ve imagined capturing for a couple of years. Apart from the New York night image in the previous post, this is my favourite of all the photos I’ve taken this year.

The angry sea

The Skellig Islands, possibly my favourite place in the world, a World Heritage Site, often seem to me to be almost a dream of the sea. It also surprises me how few Irish people seem to have visited, but being 12 miles of the south-west and requiring advance booking of boats, in notoriously unpredictable weather,maybe that partially explains it.

Skellig Wave

Anyway, these are my favourites, a year of swimming and the sea, I hope you enjoy them. If you have a favourite I’d like to know? So here’s a poll where you can choose three

Wait. Just thirteen between both posts? Initially it was twelve, but these two (above and below) had to be included. I found the image below after I’d gone through all the other posts. I’d completely forgotten it. (Thanks to Catherine Drea for processing advice!) It was taken on that same day of torrential rain in August that I took the picture of Brown’s Island in the rain, while passing through Tramore looking back at the storm clouds gathered past Powerstown Head.

Calm before the storm

I’m proud of these photos. Let’s hope 2013 produces some great images. In the meantime Riana convinced me to sign up for blipfoto, where I am trying to pursue a photo-a-day project to improve my technical and composition skills, and I am already very glad she did, even the days I struggle. If you want to see my daily (often a real struggle) attempts, pop on over or follow the updates from my Twitter account.

Favourite LoneSwimmer photos of 2012 – Part 1

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Last year on New Year’s day I wrote about my thoughts of the coming year. I’m haven’t done a retrospective, if you follow the blog, you have a good idea of what happened. I originally just thought I might just round-up some of my favourite photos that I took during the year which then led to this series of My Swimming Life 2012. This is the end of that series, with the first of two parts, of my favourite photos from the year.

This site has meant I have gradually become more concerned with getting appropriate and useful images. This year I was fortunate to capture a few that I really like. There are black and white versions of a few of these in the Kindle Screensaver post, but here are medium resolution colour images, (good enough for screen-savers). Some of these I haven’t shared at all previously. I did discover over the course of this series that I’d taken more good shots than I’d realised and discovered a couple I hadn’t realised at the time, which was why I did my 2012 swimming locations, some faces of 2012, and the two posts on my Almost favourites of 2012.

I have high-resolution versions of all of these suitable for printing at larger sizes. This isn’t a commercial site, but should you like a high-resolution printed print of any of these, contact me directly and you can purchase any and we’ll out how to get prints to you.

I’ll start with dawn in the English Channel, leaving Dover and Shakespeare beach.

Next of course is Trent Grimsey, on the way to setting the new English Channel world record. I doubt I’ll ever take a better swimming photo. Everything was right, the position, the light, the sense of motion,and of course, Trent helped with that Mona Lisa smile! I’m proud of this photo.

The record-setter

Lisa came over for one weekend of horrible summer weather, and I took that one great shot with my Kodak PlaySport, swimming out to Brown’s Island, rain on calm water.

Brown’s Island in the rain

Alan Clack was here twice this year, in preparation for his English Channel solo. The weekend before we left for Dover, we climbed up to Coumshingaun for some cold water training beneath the 1000 foot tall cliffs. Since then I’ve noticed that Coumshingaun is being used as the backdrop for one of The Gathering advertising posters.

Swimming Coumshingaun

Another I took that day in Coumshingaun I was also pleased with, that will make any swimmer want to take a dip there, t he blue sky reflected across the glacial corrie.

Coumshingaun

And of course I went to Manhattan for MIMS 2012 where I took possibly one of the best photos I’ve captured. And without having a tripod. So we’ll pause here and return with the last seven in the next post.

Manhattan night

Swimming 2012 – the pictorial tour continues – Runners-up (loneswimmer.com)
A pictorial tour of my 2012 open water swimming locations (loneswimmer.com)
Swimming 2012, continuing the pictorial tour – faces of 2012 (loneswimmer.com)
My Swimming Life 2012. Almosts. (loneswimmer.com)

Review: Amphibia Sports Ring

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The simple ideas are often the best ones.

I’ve previously reviewed Irish Company Amphibia Sport‘s excellent Evo Sports Bag and I recently received in the post one of the company’s long-awaited (for me) silicon Sports Ring.

I forgot to test swim it the weekend after I received it, so it had to wait until this past week to be taken for a swim. And no better weekend to test it. How did it perform?

Before I answer, I’ll explain further what it is, and why it’s necessary.

Amphibia Sport ring protector

Technically, it’s a ring itself, as it goes around your finger. But it could also accurately be described as a ring-protector for sport, to wear over and protect a metal ring.

I used to wear a ring all the time, a thick silver band that I had custom-made many years ago. I learned early in open-water swimming to remove it (well most of the time I remembered), as shortly after immersion it would feel like it was going to slip off my finger and I would have to swim with my fingers tightly closed, something I don’t normally do. All my concentration would still be on whether the ring was still going to slip off, not a comfortable way to swim. The ring wasn’t oversized, so it wasn’t a case of being too loose. Metals, particularly precious metals, have very well-defined thermal properties, their expansion and contraction in heat and cold. We don’t think of organic materials as have expansion or contraction properties to anywhere near the same degree. We don’t for example think that our pants might fall down if the weather is colder!

So why does your well-fitted ring feel like it is going to fall off? (And in fact there are many cases of this actually happening to swimmers).

As we’ve often discussed about cold, cold immersion leads to various physiological responses, amongst which the most important is peripheral vaso-constriction, the reduction of blood-flow in the extremities. Another that goes along with this it he constriction of external blood vessels. This constriction causes other responses, (on which I’ve written a post that I still need to publish), but the relevant one here is the reduction in diameter of the fingers. And that contraction occurs in relatively warm water (for us Irish skin-swimmers) such as 12 to 14 degrees Celsius. In fact the diameter of the finger seems to contract more than any ring diameter will contract, so the ring becomes loose. Wedding bands, engagement rings and more have been lost this way.

The alcove at the Guillamenes. Room for one.

Test conditions at the Guillamenes were pretty ideal for experimentation. The air temperature had been dropping for a few days. The water was a quite acceptable 8.6 degrees Celsius, warm for the time of year, slightly up from where it had been for the previous weeks. But the air temperature was 4° C, with a biting northerly wind whose wind chill contributed to making it feel sub-zero. I put the ring on before I arrived and spent a short while taking some photographs (nothing much useful) so my hands were cold before I swam, something I usually try to avoid. I’ve also lost some weight recently so the ring hadn’t to be forced on, though I’d given up wearing it about two years ago.

And the water was rough, despite the off-shore wind, there was about two metres of swell incoming, with plenty of surface chop on top of it.

I swam for about 30 minutes, and with the wind it felt the coldest swim of this winter thus far. With the Amphibia Sport Ring protector in place, my hands could take their normal shape with fingers slightly parted (the optimum spacing for fingers while swimming is about half a centimetre). If I thought about it, I could feel the silicon protector comfortably touching the adjacent fingers. I never once felt like I was going to lose my ring, and in fact, and this is the important part, I very quickly forgot about the ring.

I’d hazard that maybe Amphibia Sport didn’t get to test the product in what many people would consider to be such extreme conditions, but not abnormal for Irish open water winter swimmers!

That’s a lot of words to say that the Amphibia Sport Sports Ring (protector) performs extremely well for open water swimming, a simple idea very well executed. Highly recommended.

Global Marathon Swimmer Awards 2012 – The Winners

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The voting for the inaugural Global Marathon Swimming Awards closed at the New Year and early last week the winners were announced. There were three categories of award for the first year, 2012:

Female Performance of the Year
Male Performance of the Year
The Barra Award for the most Impressive Overall Body of Work for the Year

Who was nominated?

Category: Solo Swim of the Year (Female) - the single most outstanding solo marathon swim by a female in 2012.

The nominees were:

Annaleise Carr - Lake Ontario crossing
Chloe McCardel - two-way English Channel crossing
Tina Neill - San Clemente Island to California mainland

Category: Solo Swim of the Year (Male) - the single most outstanding solo marathon swim by a male in 2012.

The nominees were:

Trent Grimsey - English Channel world record
Craig Lenning - Tsugaru Channel crossing
Bill Shipp - Lake Memphremagog crossing

Category: The Barra Award - the marathon swimmer (male or female) with the most impressive body of work, considered as a whole, in 2012.

The nominees were:

David Barra
Darren Miller
Anna-Carin Nordin
Stephen Redmond
Grace van der Byl

Why were these swimmers nominated?

Links to all the nominations can be seen here which includes links to the individual nominations AND the reasons for those nominations.

Who could vote?

Actual members of the forum can be assumed to be either marathon or aspirant marathon swimmers, or involved in the sport somehow. We believe peer recognition and the voting methods outlined below are the strength of the awards.

Why is voting restricted to Forum Members?

These awards do not have the reach, publicity nor media recognition of other awards. But those nominated and winning do have the knowledge and recognition that their efforts are respected and validated by the only people truly capable of appreciating their accomplishments; marathon swimmers, aspirant marathon swimmers, and those specifically interested in the sport, from around the world.

In most votes, voting is restricted (such as in national election where it is restricted to citizens) to those with interest in the specific subject. Otherwise vote rigging and vote-brigading for nationalistic or personal reasons, often not by the nominees become the dominant motive.

How was voting run?

Initially the awards were opened up to a nomination process. This allowed the possibility of any swimmer worldwide being nominated, the only criteria being that they followed accepted marathon swimming rules. Private nominations could be made to the Administrators (Evan & I) who subsequently published those nominations.

The nomination process was open for four weeks.

The process then moved to a finalist short list which was open from November to the end of the year.

Only signed up members of the forum could vote. Every forum member had one vote per nominee and these were cast by “liking” the nominees. At the close of voting tallies of likes were taken and panel consisting of the Administrators and members of the forum agreed on the winners.

What precautions were taken to insure the integrity of the Global Marathon Swimmer Awards?

Care was taken to determine that no vote-brigading was carried out through any sudden influx of members.
No ongoing tallies of votes were published during voting. Letting potential voters know of the state of the voting during a vote, is one the oldest and greatest flaws of any voting process.
Multiple voting by members by using different devices or IP address was not possible as voting was per Forum Membership ID. Vote early, vote often may be a joke, but with the above two is the other greatest flaw of online voting.

Who were the winners?

Female Solo Swim of the Year

Tina Neill - Unprecedented 52-mile swim from San Clemente Island to the California mainland

Tina Neill

Male Solo Swim of the Year

Trent Grimsey - English Channel world record (6 hours, 55 minutes)

The Barra Award for most impressive body of work in 2012, considered as a whole

Grace van der Byl - New Catalina Channel overall world record; new records in all 7 stages (plus overall time) of the 8 Bridges Hudson River Swim

Grace van der Byl

We would like to note that the Barra Award voting was extraordinarily close. Stephen Redmond was the runner-up to Grace by a margin of only two votes.

What do the winners receive?

Unfortunately, there is no physical award, Evan and I are just two guys, we wish we had physical awards to bestow. What the winners receive, for what it’s worth and along with all the nominees, are the respect and admiration of their peers and a significant number of the global marathon swimming population for their excellence and commitment to the marathon swimming tradition.

These are true swimming icons for us all to recognise, to celebrate and where possible, to attempt to emulate. They each embody the ethos of true marathon swimming, as indeed did all the nominees.

We congratulate them all, and thank the Forum Members for participating in the inaugural Awards.

(We are open to improvements and suggestions for next year).

It’s a water world. Swim it.

My Swimming Life 2012. Almosts.

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Continuing the series I started with the Swimming Locations of 2012, followed by Swimming 2012 Continuing the Pictorial Tour, this is the second post of “runners-up” for my favourite photos of the year. And a rename of the series, people seem to be enjoying, very gratifying for my moderate skills. There will be two more, of what I think are my best/favourite photos from 2012. You know what they say, just keep taking photos.

Dover shingle

An unoriginal photo, but a nice contrast of colours and high tide of the Dover shingle I mentioned in the last post.

Owen at sunset over the Channel

The Fermoy Fish is making quite a few appearances in this series. Looking over the Channel and Folkestone Harbour in the late evening. I think in 2012 Owen appreciated the magnitude of his Channel solo, when he became (and still is) Ireland’s youngest ever Channel swimmer. He’s also a very experienced crew person whom I can’t recommend highly enough. On the horizon is Dungeness Nuclear Power Station, rarely visible from Varne, where Lisa Cummins became the first (and only) person ever to land on her second lap of the Channel. Not even Kevin Murphy, who has done just about everything Channel-wise, has landed there.

River Suir

I’ve taken quite a few photos of the local traditional design Knocknagow fishing boats, an easy local subject that just keeps giving. Clinker-built with a flat bottom, as the river is tidal up past Carrick-on-Suir with lots of mud flats. They often sit idle in the estuary in the winter, filling with rain, and often even sink, only to be refloated and repainted in the spring.

Skelligs

I have taken many iterations of this same photograph over the years, one of my other favourite places on Earth, the Skellig Island, last vestige of Europe, twelve miles off the Irish south-west coast, here framed by the twin chimneys of a ruined cottage in Finian’s Bay. I probably took 30 or 40 photos on the day I took this one. To add to all the others over the years.

Copper Coast sunset

Shooting directly into the setting sun above the ruins of the Cornish Engine House situated on the cliff top at Tankardstown, above the old deep copper mining shafts. To get the sun and ruins silhouette, I had to use a high ISO, so there’s a lot of noise (grain). It came out as I wanted, though this is another subject that I revisit.

Brooding Copper Coast clouds

Clouds are rarely worth taking. But some days seem dramatically perfect for aerial shots, with a calm sea beneath. Tramore bay in the autumn.

From that summer storm post again, I was pleased with the candid fun nature of this photo.

Dover Light

Dover has three lighthouses within the harbour, one at each side of the harbour mouth, (the northern one seen in the blog banner), and this one is on the end of the Prince of Wales pier. The curved nature of the small lighthouse helps reduce the photographic no-no of converging perpendiculars usually associated with taking high building from ground level.

Folkestone Harbour dawn

One thing I am (very slowly) learning about photography, is to the chase the light, particularly early morning and late evening. Harder in the northern latitude when the days can be up to 18 hours long and I don’t really like getting up very early.

ZC2

I wrote on the marathonswimmers.org forum that I’d long wanted to get a good shot of ZC2 as it was one of my original ideas for the name of this website. I didn’t choose it as a name because it was too esoteric, too easy to mixup in casual conversation. ZC2 is a key waypoint for Channel solos. Being too far north/outside of it, as you sweep south-easterly on the ebb tide, means you will likely miss the Cap after the tide turns. I took this during Alan Clack’s Solo, he was within metres of it, whipping past it metres every second with the tide, passing on the inside. The day wasn’t perfect for my ultimate ZC2 shot, but it will suffice. A lot of the time I imagine a shot I want while no-where or no-when near the subject, then have to chase it.

Calais traffic

We know and talk about the English Channel marine traffic. Many swimmers will have big ship or two pass within a couple of hundred metres. But as you look out from Varne or the Cap, that traffic volume isn’t readily obvious, distance and haze and light obscuring it. This photo was taken with a 200mm telezoom just before a late dawn on a November Sunday morning on the Varne cliffs, of the traffic outside Calais. I rarely find a use for the zoom, as my eldest, a much better photographer than I warned me, but when you need it, it’s invaluable.

Channel Dawn, Cap Gris Nez and the Separation Zone

Cap Gris Nez is directly across from Varne, often visible. Once again the telezoom before dawn shows the middle of the Strait and the far side traffic, directly in front of the Cap and the radar station on the Cap itself. Foreshortening diminishes the width of the Separation Zone, at its narrowest point in front of the Cap of about a mile width, and seen here graphically between the northeastward-bound and southwestward-bound ships.

Channel Dawn, shadows and light

I have a great fondness/weakness for photos of shadows and light on the sea, caused by clouds and/or under-exposure. Just an occasional time, some of them work. In truth, I love almost any kind of photo of the sea.

You know, people buy cheap prints in TK Maxx and Home Furnishing stores to put on their walls and everyone has the same ones, the Brooklyn Bridge, a random beach, whatever. Contact me and you can get an original canvas print for yourself!

Swimming to the Emerald City

Swimming Manhattan. Dee took a photo of my and kayaker Brian swimming down the Hudson that I have a liking for, I’ll always think of it, (whimsically), as swimming toward the Emerald City.

Paraic’s bench

This is a bench erected at Varne Ridge, following an idea from Rob Bohane, by friends and members of Sandycove Island swimming club, in memory of Páraic Casey.

Swimming 2012, continuing the pictorial tour – faces of 2012

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The chief inadequacy amongst my many photographic skills is the portrait. In fact I don’t think of them as portraits, but the more prosaic “pictures of people”. I really struggle with them, with imposing on people, especially when I know that it’ll usually be a waste of their time. So I try to grab snapshots unobtrusively where possible, and that’s when I remember. I have had to learn that people are mostly interested in pictures of people. And then I cheat in making them look better by using black and white. I’ve read a comment by a photographer I can’t find, that colour photography shows you the picture of their clothes, black and white shows you the colour of their soul. Take that for whatever it’s worth being repeated by an atheist.

Here are some of my favourite photos of swimming people from 2012. Apologies to all the important people, friends and family, in my life who aren’t here. And bigger apologies to those who are.

Alan Clack at Sandycove,

Alan Clack, aka the George Clooney of open water swimming. I actually took this on my phone, hence the slightly grainy look (which is not deliberate).

Man of the Year

Stephen Redmond signing my book after returning from his final triumphant Ocean’s Seven swim in Japan.

President Billy

Billy Kehoe, President of the Newtown and Guillamenes swimming club. Seventy five years swimming there and a gentleman.

The record-setters

English Channel soloists Craig Morrison (left) and Rob The Bull Bohane (right). Craig set a new club record for the English Channel. And then Rob set a newer club record. It’s worthwhile visualising the pair drinking champagne from a bucket on Sandycove Island one autumn Friday night at twilight… in a storm. The bottle was in the bucket.

Liam Maher

At nine feet tall, English Channel soloist Liam Maher is twice the height of the average four and a half foot tall French person, Sylvain Estadieu, the Flying Frenchman excepted. Sylvain is a strangely small four feet high but with a wingspan of nine feet.

Loneswimming

Yours truly at Coumshingaun. How arrogant is that? I’m trying to overcome self-consciousness only exacerbated by this photo. This may not be the image to do it with. Photo taken by Dee.

Lisa

She’ll kill me for this. Irish Queen of the Sea, Lisa Cummins, visiting the spot where she tumble-turned off France after her first lap of the Channel.

Finbarr

English Channel Soloist and King of Cold Water Finbarr Hedderman hides his happy face. He had just recently lost his flowing locks. Micro-seconds after this was taken, I sure was subject to the usual Corkonian abuse.

Three amigos

Channel swimmers Rob Bohane (right), Ciaran Byrne (left), and myself (centre), after a training swim in Dover. ~~Owen O’Keefe~~ Maybe Lisa actually took this photo with my camera? I finally remember, it was Super Crewman Kieran O’Connor! ~~The Fermoy Fish did well.~~ Only after you’ve struggled out of the water up Dover’s almost-lethal shingle can you appreciate its difficulty.

The AUTHORITY

Sandycove island Club Chairwoman Liz Buckley (no relation, fake half-sister) is mammy to us all, while Club Secretary Ned Denison downs a quick swig of gripe-water. Not at all like the Soviet Politburo. At all.

The perfect picnic

I said on the day it was the best picnic ever. Cap Gris Nez. This was definitely better in colour, as was the day. Left to right: Liam Maher, Rob Bohane, Lisa Cummins, Paraic Casey, Riana Parsons, Catherine Walsh, Craig Morrison.

Paraic & Riana, Dover Castle

I need to swim now.

Swimming 2012 – the pictorial tour continues – Almosts

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This follows the 2012 Swim Locations post. I was considering calling it the My Swimming Life series. These photos were almost but not quite amongst my favourites for 2012, which will be coming soon. Like anyone with a camera, you notice that you sometimes take more photos on those really good days than you get to share. So here’s a chance to see some new ones, and revisit some others. Not all are chosen because they are good photographs, as some aren’t great, but they capture something relevant or interesting to me.

Also, I’ve been trying to improve my post-processing skills as well as my camera skills, the two in inextricable in the digital age, and I found a few that I didn’t take much notice of the first time around that have benefited from a run through the bit-machine.

Also, for a variety of reasons I’m struggling to write at the moment, so we’ll continue on this pictorial tour of 2012.

Alan Clack in the English Channel

The day before Trent’s swim, I crewed for Alan. Despite all I’ve written about Trent, Alan’s solo was personally more important. Alan first made in contact in 2010 after my solo and I guess we were on the Channel journey together ever since, (me in a supporting role of course). Alan travelled to Ireland three times, swum two full Distance weeks, (more than I’ve done). The risk of bad weather during his window was bigger for him considering the lack of travel availability from Canada. On the day, conditions were very choppy and not conducive to great photography, but I managed what has become a traditional Channel image for many swimmers. Alan swam a fantastic Solo, in a great time of eleven and a half hours.

Swimmers on the right, crew on the left.

One of the undoubted highlights of my 2012 swimming year was being on Sandycove Island for the final day of qualification swims. I was on crew on Saturday for the Total Brain and Body Confusion “torture” swim, as I was previously in 2011. However the last couple of years I’d swum on the final qualification day. This was my first time on the island, with Finbarr, Ned, Riana, and Andrew Hunt. It was an extraordinary day, to see from land-side what we put ourselves through. I know what it’s like to suffer unending hypothermia around Sandycove, to not be able to stand straight or talk clearly or use my muscles fully. To see it first-hand and up close was another thing again and to be able to help the swimmers was nothing less than a privilege with the level of marathon and Channel swimming knowledge and competence rising each year.

Tramore beach

Just another day in Tramore. The photo looks black and white, but isn’t. These are the colours of late winter in Ireland.

Tramore pier

Another wintery almost colourless shot, this was taken looking around the corner of Tramore pier out toward the Guillamenes, fractions of a second before the wave reflected back off the wall.

Blackwater morning

Some much-needed colour, motoring up a calm Blackwater on the late-summer morning with Owen for his swim from Cappaquin back down to Youghal.

Climbing to Coumshigaun

Long-suffering Dee, accompanying me up the Comeragh Mountains so that I could swim Coumshingaun. Look carefully, the doglet is at her feet.

Simple pink.

April is pinks (sea-thrift) month. I love pinks.

Trent

My other favourite of Trent, taken by hanging off the bow. I was sorry I didn’t take more from this angle.

Scout flying.

Scout regularly accompanies us to the coast along with my older dogs. He refuses to demonstrate his flying ability for others publicly though. The Pomeranian breed’s tendency to go ballistic with excitement has earned them the term berserking. And there’s nowhere more exciting than the coast.

Huge Newtown Cove breaking wave

The post of the south-easterly summer storm was one of the more popular during the year.

Owen in the Blackwater

Speaking of the Fermoy Fish, there were a few minutes early in his Blackwater swim that couldn’t have been better for photos. You’ll recognise this as his banner picture.

Inside the Cathedral

Looking out from inside St. John’s Island. I seem to have become a cave-swimmer over the past couple of years.

Near. Far away.

“Now, I’ll explain again Dougal.“

Please welcome, the Purple Stinger

2012′s special guest appearance, at every swimming location.

More to come …

A pictorial tour of my 2012 open water swimming locations (loneswimmer.com)

A pictorial tour of my 2012 open water swimming locations

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This post is now part the My Swimming Life, 2012 series.

I must start with the Guillamenes and Tramore Bay and Kilfarassey of course, my main swimming locations. My usual range in Tramore Bay is between Newtown Head (under the pillars) to the beach, along the west side of the bay, most of the range seen in this first photo, with much less regular venturing across or out deep. (I also regularly leave the bay by passing around Great Newtown Head into Ronan’s Bay).

Tramore Bay, May 2012

Swimming range in Kilfarassey is mostly based around swimming out and around Brown’s island, Yellow Rock and the big arch. Once the water warms up I will up past Sheep Island.

Kilfarassey to Sheep Island August 2012

Other locations on the Copper Coast: Bunmahon, Gararrus and Ballydowane. I didn’t, that I recall, swim at Kilmurrin, Ballyvooney or Stradbally this year. Funny how you just don’t make it to some places each year.

Tankardstown, past Bunmahon & to Tempevrick

Tankardstown, past Bunmahon (in behind the middle medium island) to Tempevrick

Ballydowane Cove across to St. John’s island

Gararrus across to Sheep Island with Eagle Rock just visible behind

Clonea beach, but only a couple of times. I didn’t swim at Baile na Gall.

Clonea beach across Dungarvan Bay to Helvick Head, new Year's Day, 2013

Clonea beach across Dungarvan Bay, past Carricknamoan, to Helvick Head, New Year’s Day, 2013

Sandycove, Garrylucas, Ballycotton, Myrtleville and across Cork Harbour.

Sandycove panorama, the first and fourth corners of the island to the Red House

Garrylucas, April 2012. Most boring photo of the year?

Ballycotton Lighthouse

Myrtleville beach at dawn, Oct. 2012

Roche’s Point to Power Head

Round Beginish Island, but I missed swimming at Derrynane, Finian’s Bay or Kells this year, which are usual Kerry locations for me most years.

Valentia Island and Sound panorama with Caherciveen bay and the small islands, July 2012

Valentia Island and Valentia Sound panorama, with Caherciveen bay and the small islands, July 2012

Kingsdale to Deal, Dover Harbour, and Cap Griz Nez.

Evening on Kingdale Beach

Dover Harbour from Dover Castle, July 2012

Les Hennes to Cap Gris, July 2012, taken on one great day with good friends.

Wissant beach to Cap Gris nez, past the WWII bunkers, July 2012, taken on one great day with good friends.

Inishcarra, Coumshingaun and Bay Lough are the lakes I can recall swimming. First year not swimming in any of the Kerry lakes for a while.

Inishcarra reservoir

Coumshingaun Lake panorama, Comeragh Mountains

Bay Lough, Knockmealdown Mountians

And of course Coney Island’s Brighton Beach and Around Manhattan.

Brighton beach, Coney Island

Lower Manhattan

All photos are of course my own.

Swimming 2012 – the pictorial tour continues – Runners-up (loneswimmer.com)

The Golden Rules of Cold Water Swimming

3 Replies

Thanks the people who responded with their thoughts on this list, Finbarr, Lisa, Carl, Jack.

The post on the advice for Christmas and New Year swimmers, all the other posts on cold water, well, that’s a lot of information. Sometimes too much. So I though I’d try to come with a short list of essentials. Brevity is not my long-suit.

1: Swim in groups.

That’s rule number one. But you’re an adult so if you MUST swim alone, make sure someone knows where and when.

2: Plan your swim and your exit.

Most safety decisions (and consequently mistakes) are made outside the water. Decide your plan based on current water and air temperatures and conditions, not what it was three weeks ago. Then stick to your plan. If you can’t be sure of getting out safely, don’t get in.

3: Watch the time.

If hypothermia starts to take hold, knowing swim time, stroke rate and time to exit can be vital. I’ve previously said a watch is my number one item of safety equipment.

4: Stay warm as long as possible before you get in.

Once you are ready to swim, swim, instead of standing around talking.

5: Get dressed and re-warming as soon as possible afterwards.

Exercise is the best way to safely rewarm. Have your clothes ready for immediately after your swim. Do it before you go for your swim. Multiple light layers are better than one heavy layer. Showers and sudden heat are to be avoided.

6: Don’t swim if you have been ill, or drunk alcohol in the previous 24 hours.

Macho idiots don’t impress. Tiredness also affects your cold-withstanding ability.

7: Splash water on your face before full immersion.

Or walk slowly into the water. This gives you a few seconds to adjust your breathing to the cold, this makes a big difference to your first three minutes which are the toughest.

8: Don’t dive in.

Concussed macho idiots don’t impress me.

9: Wind is dangerous.

It strips away body heat rapidly, changes water conditions and currents, and almost all the rules.

10: You can’t out-think the Laws of thermodynamics. Given enough time cold will ALWAYS win.

Loneswimmer returns from the sea, with the commandments of cold water swimming, (and a nasty rash on his shoulders from not shaving beforehand).

The Laws of pool swimming

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Universal Physical Laws, as applied to pool swimming.

Speaking as a swimologist …

Law of Gravity

When left unattended, a swimmer will gravitate to the worst technique possible.

Law of Inertia

A swimmer at rest will tend to remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. A swimmer in motion will tend to rest as soon as possible unless acted upon by an outside force.

Opposition Principle

When asked to kick rapidly, swimmers tend not to; when told not to kick, swimmers tend to kick rapidly.

The Space and Time Continuum

When swimming Breaststroke or Butterfly in practice, swimmers hands are attracted to the turning wall, each hand at a different speed, at different times, at different points not in the same plane. All time periods are multiples of a Master’s Minute.

Laws of Acceleration & Momentum

The Law of Acceleration may only apply for two Master’s Minutes after coach reminds swimmers that it is important, then the Law of Momentum becomes dominant. After multiples of a Master’s Minutes it is replaced by the Law of Inertia.

Static Law

Swimmers will automatically seek their own comfort level and tend to attract others to do the same.

Mind over Matter

The mind can overcome many obstacles during competition but the same does not usually apply during practices.

Law of Finite Attraction

Even after carefully explaining the efficiency and effectiveness of an ideal stroke rate, swimmers will invariably lose the ability to count strokes and think about any related concept within two Master’s Minutes. See similar anomaly under Law of Acceleration.

Relativity

The actual position of the swimmer’s body, in relation to the position in which it is supposed to be, may vary up to + or – 100%.

Vertical and Horizontal Telemetric Disassociation

When rotated 90 degrees from the vertical to supine or sublime position, the brain loses most of its ability to function.

The Babylonian Principle

Within three minutes of the start of coach speaking, the swimmers begin hearing unrecognisable tongues. See the similar anomaly under Law of Finite Attraction.

Fluid Mechanics

The amount of fluid the bladder can retain is indirectly proportional to the difficulty of the middle of the current practice set.

Some security video has recently surfaced of my first pool training session.

(I edited and rewrote some of these from http://www.tenbychaseswimclub.org/Swim_jokes.htm)

I don’t delude myself about my photographic ability except that I think that if you are reading this blog regularly, then we have an interest at least in the same sub-categories of images and you, like me, are probably also a reader.

Not content with the Kindle 4th Non-Touch (K4 NT) generation screen-savers, and bored with all the same free screen-savers around the place, I turned some of my own images into Kindle screen-savers and maybe you’d like some of them to do the same.

So, the first thing you need to do is hack your K4 NT. It’s pretty simple and anyone can do it. Thanks to this thread on mobileread.com for the hack. Since this isn’t a tech blog, I’ll leave you follow the (simple) instructions and disclaimers over there.

Once that’s done; (Kindle screen savers need to be 800×600 pixels gray-scale so you can create your own), here are mine. Click on the thumbnails for the full image.

: The Skelligs

: Trent Grimsey setting new English Channel World Record

: Crow & Newtown Head, Tramore Promenade, Waterford, Ireland

: Old pipe on Tramore Beach, Co. Waterford, Ireland

: River Suir, Co. Tipperary, Ireland

: Skellig Beag from Finian’s Bay

: Prince of Wales pier lighthouse, Dover, U.K.

: Newtown Cove & Powerstown Head

: Hook Head Lighthouse

: Newtown Cove & Newtown Head

: Ceiling light inside the Empire State Building

: Deco detail inside the Empire State Building

: Empire State Building

: Empire State Building

: Copper Coast Sunset

: The Chrysler Building, showing me the way while swimming around Manhattan

: Burke’s Island, Kilfarassey

: Alan Clack training in Coumshingaun

Cold water swimming and alcohol don’t mix

7 Replies

A couple of days ago I noticed some incoming traffic from a discussion thread on boards.ie.

Swimmers there planning a pre-New Year’s swim mentioned drinking whiskey and swimming afterwards. I though they were saying they’d consider it. In the same thread they mentioned my post on advice for a Christmas and New Year’s swim.

~~I was annoyed by such stupidity.~~ It turned out to be a misunderstanding. One of the posters contacted me to explain they also were neither condoning drinking alcohol nor irresponsible behaviour and were planning significant safety measures. Thanks to Paul for explaining.

This time of year remains a good time to repeat this reminder (along with the rare sunny summer holiday weekend).

I’ve probably swum skin longer, in colder water, than most people. I have repeatedly explained the physiology of cold water swimming. I didn’t write about not swimming after alcohol to fill space.

I have never, EVER swum after taking alcohol, not even once, nor has any other Channel swimmer that I know done so, (& I know a lot), and to do so is stupidity, not courage, and usually leads to someone more experienced taking responsibility for the person that does it.

I’m not generally about telling people not to do things, but in the case of mixing alcohol and swimming, think about the other people put at risk by doing so.

You can run across a road without looking and with your eyes closed and get across, but it doesn’t mean you’d do it every time. Most smart people would never do it.

And just because you’ve done it previously and been fine is not a meaningfull argument. If you do it, you also tarnish all responsible swimmers, because when the media covers your death, they won’t follow-up with the inquest results which will outline your stupidity as the cause.

Alcohol and water might mix, but alcohol and swimming never mix.

HOW TO: Annual advice for a Christmas or New Year’s swim in cold water for the irregular open water swimmer

2 Replies

[This is a repeat of a post from last year. And the year before, apologies to the longer term readers here if you feel you are not getting value for money. This post is pretty popular at this time of year, some editing to previous versions. }

With Christmas coming, many people who would never consider getting in cold water will be thinking of a Christmas or New Year's Day dip.

The experienced cold water swimmers will not need any of this information. And those of you in the Southern Hemisphere are doubtless annoyed because it's mid-summer for you. And there's the South Africans though, for whom the water can still be cold down there even in mid-Summer.

Guillamenes Christmas swim 2007

I’ll be down at the Guillamenes myself as usual, with the people who never normally go near the sea.

* Cold is a skill, not a talent so it can be learned. But if your first cold swim is Christmas Day, you won’t do learn it on that one day. So instead plan and know what to expect.

PLAN and OBSERVE:

* If it’s an irregular visit, your most important pre-swim action to make sure you know where to exit the water safely. Do not rely on the wisdom of crowds. Many of the people near you will know nothing and some will be acting macho.

* Watch the water before you get in. Regardless of the amount of people in it, if the water is breaking or surging more than about a metre, on steps, rocks or a ladder, the exit will be difficult, dangerous or even impossible.

* If you have been drinking alcohol the night before, don’t do it. Alcohol seriously impairs the body’s ability to deal with cold. The same applies if you haven’t slept the night before. Bravado has no place around cold water swimming when you don’t know what you are doing.

* Consider putting your swimsuit on *before* you go to the sea. You will spend less time getting cold before you swim.

* Make sure you have: a swim cap (silicone or neoprene preferably). If you only have latex, wear a couple of caps; a towel; goggles. And plenty of warm clothes for afterwards. Including a hat and gloves. Warm clothes are many light layers rather than a few heavy ones.

* Bring sandals or deck shoes. Winter swimmer Jack Bright points these are nearly as important as the towel.

* Bring something to stand on while changing. A spare towel, a piece of cardboard, a car mat.

* Forget grease. It does nothing for cold protection and you won’t in long enough to worry about chafing. If you are in long enough to need lubrication, you need none of my advice.

* Neoprene (wetsuit) gloves and booties will significantly reduce the discomfort if you are not used to cold.

Newtown & Guillamene club members, Christmas swim 2011

BEFORE THE SWIM:

* If it’s windy, disrobe from your lower body first. Keep your torso and body warm for longer.

* Change as close to the water as you safely can. You want to reduce the time exposed before and after swimming. Make sure your clothes are above the high water line though.

* Wear the sandals as close to the edge as you can. The ground usually will be colder than the sea. Cold = numb = lacerations = blood.

* DO NOT STAND AROUND TALKING once you are changed. Get to the water.

* IT’S NORMAL TO BE NERVOUS. Your body is adapted to avoid cold. Just be positive. Accept the increased heart rate. Tell yourself you are a swimming god.

* It’s not a competition. Depending on your location there may be lots of people who don’t know what they are doing in the water that day. There will be 100s at my regular spot, whereas the weekend before there’s just me. Stay clear and watch everything. Move carefully.

* SPLASH WATER on your face before immersion. This indicates to your body extreme cold is coming (by which I include temperatures of up to 12C/55F. I can’t take someone calling 14C/58F cold seriously, no matter how I try). It will allow your heart rate to settle quicker.

* Just as you get in … tell yourself it’s warm. It doesn’t matter if you hear the sucking sound of body parts rapidly shrinking inwards. Cold is partially about attitude. Tell yourself it’s actually better than you thought: Hell, it’s almost warm. I was worried about this?

* DO NOT DIVE IN. Just don’t do it. I don’t care how tough you think you are. Unless you are a very experienced cold water swimmer this is a dumb thing to do. It causes heart attacks and rock impacts. But don’t stand there trying to get in either. Walk in to your waist. Splash the water. Then off you go. No more than one minute getting immersed.

RNLI Rib on duty for the annual Guillamene Christmas swim

DURING THE SWIM:

* Without experience it is difficult to get the face into cold water. This is normal.

* Cold stimulates the gasp reflex through increased heart rate. After the initial 10 seconds It makes breathing difficult for the first three minutes. This is also normal. And why you splash water on your face and get in slowly.

* STAY CALM.

* Change your breathing pattern to head above water or breathing every stroke or 2nd stroke.

* DO NOT STOP IN THE WATER

* HAVE A GREAT TIME. Feel like a hero. Do 10 metres. Or 20 or 50 or 500 metres. It won’t kill you. Probably.

After a very cold 2010 and very low numbers in attendance, Guillamenes Christmas Swim 2011 saw a return of the crowds, with thousands of Euro raised for charity.

After a very cold 2010 and very low numbers in attendance, the Guillamenes Christmas Swim 2011 saw a return of the crowds, with thousands of Euro raised for charity.

EXITING:

* Watch your exit. Be careful. It is at this point most lacerations occur on the feet, legs and hands.

* Get your footwear on immediately and get to your clothes.

* If the temperature is below 10C, you will likely be a vivid lobster-red colour. Your skin will also be tingling all over your body. You will go from pain to numbness. There is no in-between.

AFTER YOUR SWIM:

* AFTER-DROP is dangerous. You have only a few minutes before its onset unless you only in a short time. After-drop is the body temperature dropping after you exit the water. It’s not a problem if you are only in a couple of minutes, though that time is less if the temperature is 5C (40F) or under.

* DO NOT VIGOROUSLY TOWEL YOURSELF. It speeds up the arrival of Afterdrop.

* Dry the torso first. Dress the torso.

* Then put on a hat.

* Then dress the lower body.

* Then and only then, have your chat, your hot chocolate or soup.

FEEL GREAT, job well done!

Go home and stuff yourself, secure in the knowledge you are hard-core.

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