6 hour qualifier completed!

I did it, 6 hours in 16C or less water!  This has been sitting on the back of my mind since my failed attempt last April.  I was definitely fighting some serious doubt demons as to if I was capable in reaching this benchmark.  It seems as if the additional physical adaptation to the cold and more importantly, more experience to arm my brain with mental weapons were enough.  I am far from done in my training but I am now ready to enter the next phase of training with more confidence.  I would very much want to thank my training partners Eliz and Katie for their support in both the training and the actual qualifying swim in which they also achieved their goals.

Now the more detailed description of the swim.  After the determination that the water temperature had dropped low enough to qualify, we scrambled to check our schedules to see when we all could make the swim.  We quickly narrowed it down to Thursday, Oct 1, very early in the morning.  We started ludicrously early in the morning for two reasons.  One was to complete before our normal work schedules started and another was to get off the lake before any boats.  Eliz had the more restricted time schedule so she started at 12:20 am to complete her 6 hours by 6:30am.  I started at 3am to complete by 9am. Katie started at 5am to complete by 9am (the qualifying requirement for her swim was 4 hours).  After we set the date and time, we checked the weather and found we picked the worse day of the week.  A cold front was coming in bringing cold weather, high winds and clouds. We briefly chatted about postponing the swim but concluded that if this scared us away, we were not ready for the Channel.  Remember, train for the worse, hope for the best.

A little before 3am, I am standing at the water's edge in 8C (46F) air temperature, 15.2C(59.4F) water temperature with the wind whipping at about 20-25mph wondering what I was doing here. The lake we were swimming in was about 1 mile long.  Our plan was to swim across into the wind then back with the wind to our back.  I jump in and start stroking away.  I struggled into the waves trying to find a rhythm in the waves that would allow me to take a breath without a mouth full of water.  It was work but the return trip with the wind to the back was refreshing.  After about 20 minutes, I started feeling cold and the mental battle began.  This time, I had more weapons in my arsenal to do battle so I fought on.  Previous training swims and some feedback from Eliz showed that at about 2 hours, I would break through the mental barrier and the swim would become easier.  Sure enough, at 2 hours, I was not comfortable but it no longer was a mental battle.  It just "was" and I swam on, focusing on letting my mind wonder onto random thoughts.  During the 2nd crossing into the wind, I was fighting the waves pretty hard.  In the back of my mind, I noticed the waves were large and it felt like a washing machine but mentally it did not bother me.  It just felt like it was what was dealt to me and to just deal with it, no problem.  At 5am, Eliz and I meet up with Katie.  Eliz made some comment about how the waves were "interesting" or something understated like that as a warning to Katie.  As we heading back into the wind, I noticed it seem to die down for about 30 minutes and then pick back up.  This had me curious so afterwards, I found a nearby weatherstation that tracked wind speed and found the following chart.

The winds had been in the 40-46mph range in the 3:30-4am range but dropped down to 10mph shortly after Katie joined us.  I think if I had known I was swimming in 46mph winds, I would have gotten out.  Instead, ignorance was bliss and I kept swimming.  It is now a great confidence boost to realize I swam in winds at that speed with no mental issues with the wind.  This will come in handy assuming that there is a good chance I will have some sort of winds while crossing the channel.

After our half hour of light winds, the winds pickup up to the 20mph range.  The water did not feel like a washing machine with winds at this speed, just some chop to fight through.  Eliz completed her 6 hours successful and heading to work.  At about the 5 hour mark, I started feeling the physical fatigue of the swimming.  I was somewhat surprised that it showed up that early but given that I had not done a swim greater the 3 hours since April, it should not have.  Battling the mental games that come with fatigue is far from new to me so it was no problem keeping the swimming up, I just slowed down quite a bit.  The last hour seemed to go on for a long time due to the fatigue but I made it and felt I could have continued for longer, even in my slow, fatigued state.  As I got out in the now 10C (50F) air, I was definitely cold and shivery for the next 30-60 minutes.   I was again amazed on how much quicker I was recovering compared to last spring from the colder swims.

Overall, this swim was much tougher then the attempt last spring in Malta.  The water temperature was about the same but we found out in Malta that fresh water will feel colder then salt water at the same temp (not sure why).  The swim was done in much colder air temperature with over 4 hours of the swim at night where you get no solar heat from the sun.  Of course, it had the added issue of the winds that were not present the day we attempted the 6 hour in Malta (it was previous days).  I don't know if I would have planned it this way normally but I felt the conditions were close to what some of the challenging conditions we could see during the channel with the exception of salt water, tides and jellies.  Given we live thousands of miles from the sea, this was about as good a simulation as we could get at this location.  It was a fantastic confidence booster knowing I was still able to complete it.

I plan to keep the cold water swimming up until the temperatures drop below 10C (50F).  It very much depends on the weather but I am hoping to make it until November.  Then I will be restricted to pool swimming and an occasional trip to Eliz's Endless pool that she plans to keep at 12C (55F).