My First Open Water Swimming Race: Part 1. Le Défi de Monte Cristo

Kamilla Linder
Jul 10, 2017 · 7 min read

Dry stats:

Goals: learn to swim freestyle; swim Le Défi Monte Cristo race in Marseille, France, on 06/25/2017.
Training time: Jan 27 — Jun 24, 2017
Training type: swimming pool; self-taught; 0 couch/group trainings
Kms swam from Jan to Jun, total: 80,91 kilometers (50,28 miles)
Results of Le Défi Monte Cristo 06/25/2017: 2,5 km in 00 hrs 53.01 minutes, 288th place (out of~600).

Me, straight after Le Défi de Monte Cristo, 06/25/2017. Marseille, France. Feels like I had the smallest fins of all the crew :)

…Because of how much I swam in previous months, even my impostor syndrome was quiet when the girl on the registration desk gave me my number (racer №3384), a Monte Cristo blue swimming cap, and told to put on my wetsuit in around 20 minutes.

June 25th was hot and windy; the water was warm (24ºC / 75ºF), but because of the wind there were offshore waves of ~1.5 meters, yellow alert on the beaches in Marseille. Plus, the start was set to 2 PM, when the sea was already choppy. People around were chatting, wandering around a sports supplies tent, warming up before the upcoming race or commenting the previous one, a full 5 km marathon from the Castle of If to the dry land. I did some stretchings with lovely folks from a Ukraine swimming club and went to put on the suit.

It turned into an unequal struggle: imagine that you’re putting on a seal skin and the seal is two sizes thinner than you. And it doesn’t want you to be inside. I’ve put on a wetsuit only once at a sports rental station and was planning to repeat it at home, but first I had no time, then it was too hot (you don’t want to wear a seal skin when it’s 90ºF outside). And finally, I was here, sweating, desperately fighting with the sleeves, taking the whole thing off again, finding the right leg, stretching it up, then the left leg, and losing time before the start. It felt like an eternity, and finally I thought “this is ridiculous, to come to a swimming race and lose the start because of putting the suit for too long ”. Still, the timing was fine; I entered the water several minutes before everybody started moving.

A photo captured from an airplane when we were landing Marseille.
Le Défi Monte Cristo, 1km marathon racers, 06/25/17. Credits: http://www.parismatch.com

It’s a very cool moment when you’re already in the water, and there are dozens of people on the beach waving at you, shouting words of support and wishing all of you good luck, and you feel gratefulness and excitement of something ready to begin, among many other people in the water waiting for the same second of the beginning of the race. A precious feeling of unity and determination.

Then, we swam.

Le Défi Monte Cristo, 07/24/17, one day before. Credits: http://www.telegraph.co.uk

For the first several minutes, it was awkward. When you’re in the middle of a swimming crowd, for the first ten minutes it feels like a human soup where it’s impossible not to hit anybody while trying to move towards the first far away buoy as fast as you can. Then the strongest swimmers and those with the largest fins went ahead, and I found myself on the way to the buoy, with around 15 swimmers around moving at my speed.

By that time, I was exhausted. I got tired because of messing with my wetsuit, lost the rhythm of my breathing and made too many unnecessary movements while trying to get out of our human shoal at the start. The water surface was rough, the waves were going up and down, I already drank too much salty water while trying to get some oxygen. I didn’t bring a breathing tube and with waves each time I opened the mouth I got lots of water, again and again. The shore was already far away, the bottom was far enough too somewhere below, and my organism started panicking that we were going to drown in the greenish middle of nowhere.

Most of the time, it looked like this. Credits: http://frogmom.com/

It was a cool moment when I had to calm down all the alarm signs flashing inside my head. Otherwise, I couldn’t move further. For a moment, I distanced from everything, turned to my back and asked, as an adult asks a child: am I afraid of death? I am. Here and now? Yes. Well, I answered to myself, it’s a reasonable fear. But it’s very unlikely: nobody has ever died in Le Défi, and this was one of the main reasons why I chose this marathon for my first time. So, the chances are actually very low, especially if I know how to swim. And I know. And I’m in salty water in a wetsuit, so it’s easier to maintain on the surface. So, the solution is, if I’m already here, to get out of this situation as beautifully and as smooth as I can. As always. Let’s have some fun, after all, it’s our beloved Mediterranean Sea, and Spain is so close. And it’s sunny June around. One stroke, another stroke, straight to the next buoy.

After this, everything went easier. I slowly recovered my breathing rhythm and lost the direction only once, taking too much to my right against another wave. The second of four buoys, before which I got the panic attack, was the hardest to reach. The third went easier, on the fourth I already caught a wave pace and found the optimal way to breathe, and then we came to the finish line to the beach. There’s an eternal song that the things seem harder or easier depending on your attitude, and it was cool to prove to myself again how different the same route felt for me in the beginning and in the end.

Things that are different in an open water swimming:

During this spring, I talked to as many people I could about swimming and open water – I didn’t have time to try it before the race because of a very busy schedule but being a highly adaptable learner, I decided to gain maximum information and then use it as efficiently as I could.

Le Défi Monte Cristo, finish. Credits: http://www.parismatch.com

One of the most common comments I’ve heard was that it’s very hard to orientate and that you hardly see a thing when you’re in open water. To prepare for it, I bought an antifog spray for my goggles (all of them get foggy relatively fast), and checked the direction each time I could during the race. So, surprisingly, it wasn’t as hard for me as it could be. Another interesting common observation was about the feeling of the distance: when you swim in a swimming pool, you normally see the tile grid below; so you know your speed, how much is left, and where are you going. In open water, you don’t see a thing as there’s only green depth around you. So, there are no indicators in the water that you’re moving anywhere, there’s too much open space around. But if you swim well, the objects move around you noticeably fast, and once got used to it, you feel calmer. Even with the waves.

It’s easier to swim in salt water, my parents told me, and it’s right, according to my Fitbit, I made around 3 kilometers in 53 minutes. So, sea water can be on your side more that you expect it. Or not, but in these cases, races normally get canceled.

The feeling I had during these 53 minutes was that every single of my trainings counted, and every 1 of 80 kilometers helped me keep going. How to move my arms, my legs, use the fins, keep my body on the water surface, keep breathing in and out, maintain the rhythm and go further. It really reminded me of how life works: first, you learn something and train it, getting better, automatizing the movements and responses. And then comes a situation when there are no training lines, no timing, no limits, just an open water, and to make it you have to apply and use, for every second you’re there, every skill you trained, without thinking how to do it even for a moment, because there is no time to think anymore.

When I went out of the water, took off my suit (this time, way easier), drank a couple of bottles of water and ate some snacks the organizers prepared for us, it was still crowded around, and the next swimmers were preparing to swim the 1 km distance. They were asking me and the others about water, and waves, and were putting on their wetsuits, and it was only 3 PM of a sunny French Sunday. I took the bus and headed to the Vieux Port. Amazing how dense one hour can be. And it would be lovely to swim a full 5 km distance next year.

Kamilla Linder

Written by

Teacher, traveler, storyteller

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