Laurin Weisenthal

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It’s 8:30 on a gray, cold, misty Sunday morning.  I’ve only been swimming for an hour, and things are not going well.  I feel colder than I did at the end of my 3 hour swim 2 weeks ago, and  I’m starting to freak out a little – I’m supposed to do 4 hours today.  How on earth am I going to make it if I’m already this cold?

I try not to think about it, but 30 minutes later, my teeth start chattering.  I’ve never, never been so cold that my teeth chatter while swimming.

Neal waves me over to the boat and tosses me a bottle of hot jasmine tea laced with sugar.  It tastes and feels delicious.

“You’re doing great!  Your stroke rate is holding steady at 35 cycles per minute.”  I nod.

“I’m very cold,” I say softly.

“There are dolphins swimming with you!”  Reuben calls, his huge grin infectious.  “Just over there!”

I turn and see a flash of something dark and sleek a couple of yards away.   I can’t help but smile – I love dolphins.  Okay, suck it up, I tell myself.  The Bay Bridge looks so close.  You can at least make it there.

As I swim, the ebb hitting me full in the face and reducing my speed to a mere fraction of what it could be, I continue to deteriorate.  A war begins to rage in my head.  One voice tells me to be tough, to not give up, to keep going as long as possible.  The other voice tells me that I’m not tough enough, that this is the most miserable experience ever, that I hate being cold and am therefore clinically nuts to intentionally put myself in the path of hypothermia.

My arms keep turning over, and I keep moving forward.  I don’t want to let Rueben and Neal down – they didn’t get up at 6am on a Sunday to have me wimp out after 2 hours!  But that second voice keeps getting louder.  Reuben looks a little worried.  I don’t know it, but my lips look ashen.

I look up, and realize that we’ve made it to the Bay Bridge!  With relief, I ask if we can go home now.

“Almost – let’s just make it past the middle of the bridge,” Reuben coaxes me.

Inside, I’m raging at him.  Hello, I still have to get BACK to the Dolphin Club!  But okay, fine – I keep my mouth shut, put my head down, and keep swimming away from home.  I have to admit – now that I’m under it, the Bay Bridge looks really cool soaring above me.  The anger in my head abates.  The panicky feeling does not.

“Okay, Laurin, this is the fun part!” Neal calls.  He doesn’t need to elaborate – I now get to ride the ebb home!   I do a flip in the water to ease my hips and legs for a moment – they feel so stiff – and pop up swimming in the direction of the Club.  My teeth are chattering harder now, and shivers are running down my body, aching.  It’s hard to breathe through my clenched teeth.  Without waiting for the boat to turn around, I take off, sprinting in desperation for home.

In a few strokes, the boat pulls alongside me again.  Neal and Reuben smile encouragingly,  and I can see them clapping when I turn my head to breathe.  The cold feels like rivers of ice in my core.  I really, really want to climb into the boat and huddle on the floor under wool blankets while they power me back to the Club.

“I will not get in the boat.  I will not get in the boat.  I will get back to the Dolphin Club under my own power.  I will not get in the boat.”  I chant the mantra in my head like a broken record.  I don’t care now whether I make it to 4 hours or not.  My goal now is to maintain my pride: I don’t care about anything except not getting out of the water until I walk up the Dolphin Club beach.

We fly past the landmarks that seemed to go by so slowly the way out.  Alcatraz has never looked so beautiful.

3 hours and 5 minutes after my start, I stumbled gratefully out of the water and shivered up the Dolphin Club stairs to the sauna.  I tried not to be too upset with myself:  it wasn’t as though I’d just wimped out, letting my mind defeat me.  My body physically shut down in the cold, and I knew there was no way I could have stayed in another hour today.  I was proud of myself for not asking to be rowed home.  However, I also hadn’t made my 4 hour swim.  It was hard not to beat myself up over that.

Talking to Reuben over breakfast, I finally began to see today as a success, and not a failure.  I’d pushed myself farther than ever before, and I knew now that I could tolerate swimming while shivering with my teeth chattering for over an hour.  It’s good to know that about myself.  It’s good to feel out the edge of my limits and discover new physical landmarks.  Next time, I won’t be so scared.

I may have only barely surpassed my last swim, but I did it in much more difficult conditions:

• Water: 54 degrees (56 last time)
• Air:  52 degrees (66 last time)
• Sky:  dark and misty (bright and sunny last time) <– (okay, so that’s mostly mental, but it makes a difference!)

My conversation with Reuben reminded me that this is why we use “practice” as a synonym for “training.”  When you train, you push yourself into new territories, and you practice what the real event will be like.  Yes, I didn’t meet my goal this time.  But I pushed myself, I learned new things about myself, I learned that I could keep going when I feel miserable, and I didn’t give up.

I could not have done this well today without Reuben and Neal – thank you both so much!!