Swimming to Antarctica_ Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer - Lynne Cox [83]
He had to finish giving the team their workout. I waited, while Sandy said she wanted to go back and take a shower and get warm.
It was simply good to stand beside him and watch him coach. I could tell that his team loved and respected him just as much as I’d loved my past coaches. It was a wonderful thing to see.
When the workout was over and the team went back to the hotel, Monir and I stayed on the beach to talk.
He had traveled to England the year before to try to break my record but had missed it by twenty minutes.
He had thought I would return when my time was broken, to try to recapture the record. But I told him that I had helped coach the woman who had beaten my time, and that swimming the English Channel no longer had a great appeal for me; I had other things I wanted to do, things that had never been done before. But I was really sorry that he had not broken my record. It was very difficult to have that goal and not fulfill it. In the summer of 1975, Dave had attempted the English Channel. He was successful on the swim, but he didn’t break the record and he was very disappointed. I thought that was sad; it seemed so much out of perspective to train so hard, to have such a high goal, and then to discount it all because you didn’t break the record. There was still a great challenge in just completing the swim. Channel swimming was so different from pool swimming. So much could change in the space of eight hours. Monir laughed hard at that; he remembered that this was what I’d said to him just before we’d swum in the Nile race.
So much had happened in our lives, but it was simply wonderful to be there with him. Time had changed things, and he had changed too; but the core of him was the same, and I knew I was attracted to him more than ever before. I don’t know what signaled it, but he suddenly reached out to hug me, and we kissed. From the look on his face, he felt the same way I did. I’d never experienced anything like this before. We held hands and talked about what we had been doing, and then we had to leave to take care of our swimmers.
When I saw Monir the next morning, my feelings for him were so strong that I decided I had to avoid him or see him only when someone else was around. My responsibility, I told myself, was to be there for Sandy; she was my priority. After we finished coaching I met him again on the beach. I had never been drawn to someone that strongly. It surprised me. We kissed again, almost as if to confirm our feelings, and it happened again, that electrical charge.
A few days later Sandy started her swim from England to France. The weather was good, and she was well prepared. But seven miles from the French coast she became disoriented; shivering, she disqualified herself by touching the boat. That evening, we discussed what had happened and we decided that she had simply psyched herself out. She had stopped in the exact same place the year before, just within sight of the French coast. I suggested that she take some time to collect her thoughts, rest up, wait until the following year, and then make another attempt. I promised I would be back to help her.
For the next couple of weeks I explored France and Switzerland. After I swam across Lake Geneva, I called Sandy to find out how she was doing.
She didn’t sound very good. Less than a week after her attempt she had tried again. She had gotten within seven miles of the French shore and had passed out. Having been through a similar situation before in the Nile River, I tried to help her evaluate her swim. She decided to stay in England and train and attempt the Channel again the following year.
Then I called home to check on David Yudovin, who had attempted to swim from Anacapa Island to the mainland. He had gotten within four hundred yards from shore and then gone into complete cardiac arrest. Fortunately,