Ways to conquer fears of open-water swimming

Illustration by Ramon Poblete

Eighteen-year-old Canmore, Alta., resident Nova Donelon became the second-youngest Canadian, and the fastest finisher in 2009, to swim across the English Channel. Delayed by almost two weeks of inclement weather, her window of opportunity was rapidly closing Sept. 6 when she made a daring gamble during a chance calm. Just after midnight, wearing only a bathing suit and cap, Donelon waded into the inky black water off of Dover and began her marathon swim, never having swum in the ocean before.

To appreciate the difficulty of Donelon's challenge, consider that successful English Channel crossings number less than a third of successful Everest summits. Due to strong currents, she ended up swimming almost twice the 34-km distance of the channel's span - the last few miles proving faster than the Bow River at high water.

All told, her journey lasted a little over 12 hours in bone-chilling water more than 30 degrees below her body temperature. Donelon was tossed by two-metre waves, wearing only a regular swimsuit and cap as stipulated by the rigid governing body of Channel swims. During her swim, Donelon battled cold water from the North Sea, suffered jellyfish stings, and dodged flotsam, tankers and ferries in the world's busiest shipping lane. When she had completed her crossing, Donelon stepped barefoot on the rocky French beach, took a moment to survey the roiling chasm, and then the indefatigable Canmore teen jumped back in the sea to swim back to her escort boat. Aboard, the six-foot-tall athlete cheerfully donned a pair of sweat pants and hoody for the return, casually chatting and singing with siblings, while consoling her seasick parents.

Open Water

Why is it that open-water swimming strikes fear in the hearts of so many triathletes and lap swimmers? What can we glean from open water enthusiasts and swim phenoms like Donelon?

Would-be triathlon competitors cite open water swimming as the greatest barrier to entering the sport, and many competent swimmers find themselves in a literal state of panic when confronted with the reality of a turbid and cold body of water with no black line to follow or edge to grasp. As one wag observed, "if they really wanted to make the sport exciting, they would put the swim last."

Most triathletes, even in their wetsuits and hoods, on supervised courses, have felt unnerved by mass starts, choppy waves, and brisk water temperatures. The reason is often too little open-water swimming, an absence of cold water conditioning, and a reliance on training in balmy pools that better resemble hot tubs than open-swim locales.

When Donelon is asked about the difficulty of training in landlocked Alberta for oceanic marathon swimming, her only lament is the lack of cold water accessibility. Incredibly, she regularly swims in water as cool as 6 C - without a wetsuit. Donelon's favourite swim spots include a partially ice-covered Quarry Lake in Canmore, glacier-fed Lake Minnewanka in nearby Banff National Park, and Lake Okanagan in springtime.

For most swimmers, submersion in such temperatures, even well-armoured in neoprene, would spell hypothermia if not death in only minutes time. How can swimmers like Donelon swim for several hours in such waters? It is all about cold-water conditioning and preparation. For all the time that multi-sport competitors spend training for lake and ocean swims, little or no consideration is given to the fundamental challenges of open water.

Immersion Shock

Any time your face is immersed in water below 21 C, you experience some degree of immersion shock: the gasp reflex, tachycardia (rapid heart rate), and hyperventilation that is synonymous with feelings of panic. Since nearly all bodies of water in Western Canada are rarely above 21 C on even the warmest days, this is the first problem to be tackled by the nascent open water swimmer.

Practising to deal with immersion shock is simple but unpleasant. Simply fill a mixing bowl with ice water, dip your chin into the water, and rock forward until your face is fully immersed. While your facial blood vessels are constricted and your blood pressure is jacking up, slowly and repeatedly begin to blow bubbles and safely experience the unpleasant onset of intense physical anxiety. Same thing goes with general cold conditioning - lower the thermostat, take off your sweater, and get used to cool (read: cold) showers.

During Donelon's training she faithfully used this technique. Donelon reminisced about the strange temptations of Channel swimmers. "When I was alone at home, I used to think I could take a hot shower right now and no one would ever know."

Training Techniques

Okay, so you are taking cold showers, breathing like a yogi, and sound like an aquarium filter while you aerate ice water at the kitchen table. Now it is time to head to a local lake. It is late spring and some short conditioning sessions in cold water with a wetsuit, followed by a summer full of swimming- naked, even, for the most enthusiastic - will allow you to stroke into the fall resetting your body's thermostat and ingraining some cold-water memory.

In early May, squeeze into that over-priced black body suit with the ads on front. Make it easier on yourself by rescuing a plastic grocery bag from your recycle bin and sheathing your foot in it - the wetsuit will slip right on. To be properly fitted, your wetsuit should be superhero-tight with no gaps under the arms or in the crotch. You and your partner, nee "swim buddy," should wade knee-deep and allow your bodies to slowly adjust to the cold, discomfort and numbness for five minutes. Proceed to waist-deep and repeat the ritual for the same time interval.

Now sit down, neck-deep, and allow the wetsuit to fill with water. The space in the small of your back should be the coldest and largest single space, with no more than a cup's volume. Your mission is to get as close as is comfortable and safe to mild hypothermia as possible. You are probably pretty cold and uncomfortable at this point, but there is more work to do.

Don your goggles, dip your chin, lower your face and practise dealing with immersion shock for the next five minutes. Twenty minutes has elapsed and you haven't taken a stroke, but you've made great progress. You need to use open water to learn how to relax your body before you can effectively exercise in these environs.

Once your body temperature lowers to 36 C, you will begin to feel the muscles along your neck and shoulders tighten in what's known as pre-shivering muscle tone. That means the temperature control centre in your hypothalamus has been stimulated, and your brain has ordered the constriction of the entire web of surface capillaries. Your hands and feet begin to ache with cold and you will begin to shiver. Time to get out and note your temperature (you did have some money left over from the wetsuit to buy a thermometer, right?). Warm up in dry clothes in a warm interior.

Just in case you are an over-achiever, remember it is essential to take it slow. The goal is to condition your body to perform in cooler temperatures, not to develop hypothermia. Water carries heat away from the body 25 times faster than air of the same temperature, and as a result, the body core immediately begins to lose heat to the outside environment. At first, the body tries to generate more heat by shivering, but this is not enough to offset the loss of heat to the water. Within 20 to 30 minutes, depending on water temperature, body core temperature drops to below 35 C, and cognitive functioning and judgement become affected. This cooling, if not checked, can lead to disorientation, unconsciousness, and eventually death.

Assuming you have survived the first onset of hypothermia, you aren't out of the ballpark yet. Afterdrop, an equally dangerous phenomenon, occurs when dangerously cooled blood returns from extremities to the core and can induce cardiac arrest. During her crossing, Donelon's escorts monitored her awareness and state of mind by asking her questions hourly. Take a page out of the book and communicate with your swim partner at frequent intervals.

Swim With Confidence

Once you have mastered the conditioning ritual, you are ready for some focused swimming. As a word of caution, you should always have at least one partner and preferably someone spotting from shore. Better yet is someone in a boat with a rope, life jacket, and a clue what to do with an oar - an absolute necessity for swims on lakes with powercraft.

Respect weather and lake rules, know your limits, and do not train in moving water, such as a river, unless you want to end up as fish food.

Many athletes new to open-water swimming experience feelings of unease and panic when confronted with a real live lake. Weeds, fish and imaginary creatures will not attack you and are best dealt with on a psychiatrist's couch - these fears are all in your head. In your wetsuit you are very buoyant and, with a minimum of effort, you should be able to float with ease.

Also be aware that open water is not even in temperature - dreadful cold spots and lovely warm spots are frequent, and temperature can deviate wildly. When all else fails, remember your secret wetsuit weapon of warmth. Like other private practices, peeing in one's wetsuit is perfectly normal, but no one talks about it.

When it comes to swim confidence, take a page from the baddest asses in the water. The United States Navy's special forces SEALS team relies on Herculean training requirements to weed out the vast majority of dive candidates. It experiences most of its dropouts in the portion of training ominously called "drown-proofing." Contrary to the description, the training is not physically arduous, but almost purely psychological. With hands and feet bound, the SEAL candidates are thrown into a swim tank with the simple criterion of surviving.

Watching would-be SEALS sink down and bounce off the bottom to return for their next breath for a few hours of testing is a lesson in mental discipline.

The exercise, sans Houdini-like restraints, is easy to replicate for five-minute sets. Combined with other breath-control drills, it is the best way to adhere to that timeless chestnut: Don't panic.

Navigation is best done with distant landmarks on the horizon and a quick glance every 40-plus strokes for those with a symmetrical stroke. Using an appropriately short and safe distance to shore as a measure, practise keeping parallel to the beach, and ignore the temptation to follow any pattern discernable on the lake bottom. In a race, it is tempting to look at the closest buoy, but this is a mistake more often than not since constant tacking is more time-consuming than simply making one large correction. In fact, after some practice, you should be able to go upwards of 100 strokes and still be on track. Remember what happens to lemmings if you are the type to blindly follow others.

Combat Swimming

Once you can regularly swim in open water with comfort and confidence, it is time to prepare for crowd control, or as it is sometimes cheekily called, combat swimming. Donelon's first open-water swim was at the tender age of 14 as a last-minute replacement on a triathlon relay team. Her enthusiasm bordered on dementia. "I loved dunking people's heads in the water racing to the front of the pack, not having to make turns - it was great," she said.

Although marathon swimming races ban the wetsuit and generally have a low opinion of triathlon swimming, they have no equivalent to the mass start. If you have never seen the iconic Ironman swim start with as many as 2,600 people simultaneously jumping into the water, it is fair to say it resembles an aquatic cattle drive. Like a mosh pit gone overboard, bumping, thrashing, slapping and being swum over are par for the course. Although you may be able to control your internal response to temperature to prevent panic, you now have a few thousand external stimuli to deal with.

Practising rough swimming with partners can include boxing each other in, swimming crossover S-patterns with partners, alternately swimming under and over each other, and having one friend play the bully - grabbing your legs, splashing water in your face and pulling your goggles off. When you are at an event, don't worry about drafting - after all, the person in the lead clearly is not. Drafting on an unknown pair of feet in a crowd is not a smart move. Instead, try to get an open space and get into your own tried and true rhythm and pace. Placing yourself on the outside corner to start means less traffic and a cleaner line. Starting wide on an Ironman course won't add more than a swimming pool's length to your overall distance. Don't be one of those suckers stuck in a pack and pinched against the buoys on turns - Pythagoras is your friend.

Going the Distance

Finally, when you fall in love with open water and divorce that clingy wetsuit, you'll be ready for some great swims. Whether it is swimming around a local lake or crossing an ocean, open-water swims are numerous, challenging, and without the herd hijinks. Not only are there great local resources for conventional open-water swimming, but for the intrepid swimmer, continental marathon swim competitions and open-water swims abound with the Marathon Island Marathon Swim, the Alcatraz Challenge, and the Catalina Island Swim. Moreover, Canadian challenges like the Cowichan Lake Marathon, the Great Lakes, La Traversée du Lac Memphremagog and La Traversée du Lac Saint-Jean are siren songs for the accomplished open-water swimmer.

Nova Donelon's next goal? She is now training to conquer the 12-km, shark-infested Cook Strait between the North and South islands of New Zealand and is planning on being the fastest Channel crosser in history. How are you going to spend your summer swim time?

About the author:

Brian McAsey wrote Swimming Without Walls. He has a depth of watery knowledge, as he is an aquatics surface and dive specialist with the Calgary Fire Department. He is also a firefighter peer fitness trainer, an open-water swim enthusiast and three-time Ironman finisher.

"Swimming without Walls" first appeared in the 2010 May/June Multisport issue of IMPACT Magazine.