Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [14]
“How are you all feeling?” Ron asked.
“Good,” the team chimed, and I said, “Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.”
My teammates didn’t think I was being serious, but I was. For the team, open-water swimming was old news. It was hard to drag themselves out of bed at four-thirty in the morning and dive into cold water. It was hard to not just roll over and go back to sleep. They had to want to do this. But they’d been working toward this goal for a year. Somehow Ron understood that having someone new on their team would help rekindle their excitement and revitalize their spirit. And I knew I was lucky to be included.
Ron gave us another set: “I want you to swim five miles. Descending. That means you’re going to swim the first mile at a moderate speed, then make each one after that faster. The last mile should be an all-out sprint.
“And Lynne, go at your own speed. Also, you’re going to find that the straps of your nylon swimsuit chafe badly. You might want to do like the other girls and tie a string around your waist so you can drop your straps. That keeps your swimsuit from falling off. You can use Vaseline instead on the friction points, but it doesn’t work very well.”
The orange sun rose slowly above the lip of the sea, creating a river of light that bathed the swimmers in gold. We swam the first three miles together, and then Stacey and Andy broke away with me. We were flying across the sea, arm to arm, breath to breath, pulling deeper into the water, pressing each other forward, moving faster and faster. Inside me there was still so much more energy ready to burst forth. But it was better for me to hold back, and until I had been with them longer, I didn’t want to pose a challenge to them; I wanted to fit in and be part of the team.
One of our toughest training swims came a week later. We were supposed to make a ten-mile swim from the Seal Beach Pier to Bolsa Chica State Beach and back. Ron was rowing in front of us in a heavy wooden dory. We were taking short breaks to test our different hot drinks. In 1971, water bottles hadn’t been invented yet, so before workout we had filled plastic ketchup bottles with hot tea with sugar, warm orange juice, beef broth, hot apple cider, hot chocolate, and coffee loaded with sugar. We were trying to figure out what we could use on the Catalina crossing to boost our blood sugar and replace lost heat. With salt water in our mouths from swimming in the sea, the orange juice was absolutely disgusting, beef broth was bad, and hot chocolate was a real mistake because it contained milk solids, which were known to make swimmers nauseated. We narrowed our choices to coffee, tea, and hot cider.
That morning, we swam against a slight current, less than half a knot, as we headed south along the California shore, past Surfside and Sunset Beach. The sky was cerulean blue, without a single cloud, and the summer sun was warm on our shoulders. When we made the turn at Bolsa Chica beach, the wind started blowing across the sea, piling the water into half-foot waves. Not only was swimming directly into the chop tiring, it was hard to breathe because we were getting so much spray in our faces and we were swallowing seawater. Nancy began to feel seasick and cold. Ron urged her to stay in the water, and he told us to pick up our pace. The wind increased to fifteen knots. Short, fast waves smashed over our heads. Nancy, who was thinner than the rest of us, was complaining and shivering in the water. Ron recognized that she might be going into the first stage of hypothermia; her body temperature was probably dropping from the prolonged exposure to sixty-eight-degree water. He finally stopped and pulled her out. He was not happy. It was tough work rowing against the waves, and he was disappointed in the team’s performance.
I kept working hard, enjoying it, drawing from every experience, learning how to feel the rhythm of the ocean, hear the tempo of the waves, and dance with the water using my balance, my strength,