Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [28]
There were days when Ron and I would set off on a long swim; he would row a dory and I would follow close behind. We started from the pier in Seal Beach, and I swam out to the end of the pier, then headed north, toward Long Beach. This first half mile was well sheltered, and in the early morning the water was as flat as black ice. As we passed the river jetty, we altered our course slightly, turning west, toward the man-made oil islands about a mile from Long Beach’s shore. The islands were named White, Grissom, and Chaffee, for the astronauts who’d been killed in a launch test preparatory to the inaugural Apollo mission.
As we passed each island, I thought of them, and the intense training and the courage it must have taken to break through the stratosphere and fly into space. Compared to theirs, my goal was very small, but they inspired me, and I thought of them before the tragedy, on other missions, blasting off the launchpad and floating in space, and I wondered if it was the same sensation as floating in the water.
Sometimes as I swam across the black water, I imagined that we were in outer space, traveling to distant planets instead of man-made oil islands. It was fun being out so far from shore, exploring places most people got to see only from boats.
Ron continued to work with me in the mornings in the ocean, and with his help, I got stronger and faster. He seemed very pleased with my progress and had only encouraging things to say. About a month before we were supposed to leave for England for the Channel attempt, Ron called me and said that he didn’t think he could go. He said that he couldn’t afford to be away from the Seal Beach team for two or three weeks. A lot of people didn’t think a fifteen-year-old girl could swim the Channel and had spoken to Ron about it. My father thought that had strongly influenced his decision. It was very tough for me because I had depended on him, and I felt let down. What I had to do was to recognize that Ron had taken me as far as he could, and I needed to continue moving forward.
“Why don’t you talk to Coach Gambril?” my mother suggested. “I bet he’ll coach you if you ask him. Your father and I have been discussing this situation, and we know that he would not be able to go to England with you, so either Dad or I will.”
This made me happy, and I recognized just how much they believed in me. That day I called Coach Gambril, who said that he would be happy to coach me, but he was concerned that he had not coached a long-distance swimmer before. I told him that was okay; I had never swum the English Channel before. Coach Gambril adapted his workouts from the pool to the ocean. He had me doing interval training and pyramids, and he incorporated stroke work into my workouts. This was an entirely new method for long-distance training.
In the mornings I worked out with Coach Gambril and his college team at California State University Long Beach, but soon we discovered that it was counterproductive for me to swim in the seventy-six-degree pool. It reduced my ability to adjust to cold water. So I started doing all my workouts in the ocean. My mother accompanied me in the morning, and in the afternoon, my father and mother alternated beach-walking days. One would walk with me along the shores of Long Beach, while the other went inside the Belmont Plaza complex to watch my brother and sisters work out. Once in a while, though, they would walk together. Having them with me was very useful. They helped me develop a pace. They walked at a constant speed along the shore, and I had to stay up with them, whether I was hitting currents or swimming into wind and waves. This was challenging, but it taught me how to feel the current and wave-pattern changes and how to adjust my technique accordingly, so that no matter what I faced, I knew what speed I needed to maintain; for the most part,