Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [27]
“I’m training in the ocean all winter long with Ron Blackledge. The water’s in the low fifties. We usually start workout around five a.m. My mom takes me down to the beach and waits for me in the car. Usually we’re done by seven, or sometimes eight if it’s a long workout,” I said.
“Is this something you love doing?” she asked with a cautionary note in her voice. I think she wanted to make sure that this was my idea, not something my parents wanted me to do.
“Oh, I love swimming in the ocean. It’s so beautiful, and hard, and fun. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to drag myself out of bed and go work out. Sometimes I’m just really tired. But I know that if I miss any workouts I won’t be prepared, and I have to train as hard as I can for the English Channel. I have to be ready for it. It’s supposed to be a lot more difficult than the Catalina Channel. Is that true?”
“Yes, the English Channel is colder by nearly ten degrees. And the currents in the English Channel are much stronger. You really have to find a good pilot and pick the best day. Do you have a pilot yet?”
“Not yet, but my mother wrote to the Channel Swimming Association a couple of months ago. Guess it takes the letter a long time to get to England. But we should hear back from them soon.
“Do you remember your swims?” I asked eagerly. “Do you remember if they were really hard? Did you ever get really tired or ever feel like quitting?”
“Funny, yes,” she recalled. “I remember some parts of my swims, but it’s been so many years ago. My English Channel swim took around fifteen hours, and it was very long and cold. It helps if you have some extra body fat on you. That will help insulate you from the cold. Yes, there were times when I got very tired, but I just kept going—you know, you learn to do that on a long swim. You just keep going and somehow you find more energy from somewhere so that you can do that. I don’t think that I ever felt like quitting. I trained hard for that swim. But I think you are training even harder.” I’d told her about the types of workouts I’d been doing, and she remarked upon that now. “You’re employing a new type of training method, something that was never done in my time. You do interval training in the ocean. You do repeats, and sets of swims. We just used to swim for a certain period of time and then get out of the water. I think you’re doing exactly what you need to do for this swim. Yes, I think you’re going to be in great shape for it. Here, let me give you my phone number, and please feel free to call me if you ever have any questions. I’d like to help you as much as I can.”
From time to time I would call her, asking questions like “Did you coat yourself with Vaseline or lanolin for your swim across the Channel?”
She had used lanolin and told me that I could get it at a chemist’s and she explained that in England, a chemist’s was the name for a pharmacy. I often thought of Florence and how she too had trained for her swims and how she had wanted to be the best. Sometimes I imagined that I was swimming beside her, staying right with her; although she’d told me that I was much faster than she’d been, I still wanted to swim with her.
During my winter workouts, Ron Blackledge would meet me at Seal Beach, dressed in a heavy parka with a wool hat and gloves, his eyes and nose running from the cold. He would watch me from the pier and often he’d say, “I really can’t believe you’re doing this. It’s so cold. There was frost on the windshield of my car this morning.”
It wasn’t easy. Sometimes the beach sand was so cold that I felt as if I were standing in snow. Only half an hour after crawling out of a warm bed, I’d be walking into the water, each shocking cold wave hitting me higher, taking more of my body’s sleepy warmth.
For the most part, though, I really enjoyed being in the ocean before the dawn, immersed in the water and bathed in the light of sunrise. It was a great and beautiful adventure. Sure, most