An Animal Fear
The first time I swam in the bay I overdid it.
I picked a weekend day that was sunny out. I met a swimmer at the club who’s a pro and she offered to swim with me. I said I hadn’t been in the bay to swim yet, but was mostly worried about the cold not the distance. She suggested swimming to the opening of the cove and back — 1/2 mile total. I was swimming that amount regularly in the pool. No problem. At the cove opening you could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the water! That seemed like a cool milestone to reach! I told her I had been practicing with cold showers for 6 months and thought was as good a preparation as any.
Hahahaha. Nope. Totally different ballgame.
I got in, just a speedo and a swim cap. It was cold! Real cold! But the trick is to do your best not to gasp and just keep breathing and going.
Halfway to the opening I switched to breaststroke to soak it in and enjoy. It was wonderful! It was so sunny out! And yea I was cold, but I felt fine! Woooo! It was glorious being in the cold water on a sunny day!
Nearer the opening I started to get nervous. I switched to breast stroke again and slowed down (a mistake). I felt colder. But I was close to the opening, so swam a bit further so I could see the bridge. Woah! Open water! Beautiful bridge!
Then my stomach dropped. Something felt funny. All of a sudden I felt cold. I let myself feel nervous. (Another mistake). I felt real cold. I told my partner and asked her to call for help to be safe (never a mistake!). She signaled some kayakers, but they just waved back.
I was wrestling with myself mentally. The breakers out there offer no support or surface to climb on. While I was confident in my swim buddy, I felt like my life was in my hands. That was scary. I started talking to myself. ‘Well Sean you reap what you sow … time to make good on it’. I did breaststroke while I focused on controlling my breath and staying calm. That was surprisingly hard.
My swim buddy told me that we had to keep moving and swim back. I agreed. I switched back to freestyle to swim faster and generate more heat. My buddy called other swimmers and they ‘podded’ up around us. I made it back to the beach on my own steam, but was real darn cold coming out. I couldn’t talk (which is an interesting sensation). They handed me hot water, but I was shaking so bad, I couldn’t really get any of it in my mouth. They hustled me into the sauna.
The experience from getting out of the water onwards was surreal. It felt like being fall down drunk but never falling or losing consciousness. It was
bewildering. I honestly don’t have a real good sense of how long I was in the
sauna or shower. I would guess around 20 minutes in the sauna, and another 30 in the hot shower. I think I freaked my swim buddy out. She waited till I emerged and said she owed me a drink because she felt bad I didn’t have a more positive experience. What a trooper.
I’m not proud of my first experience. I need to make that clear. I felt very foolish after that.
And there was one lingering effect that I couldn’t shake. Fear.
After my first swim, I realized I needed to get back in the water to ‘normalize’ the experience. But the rain and my own fear made it hard to get back in the water.
Let me backup.
I joined the swim club (SERC) at the beginning of the year. At that time, SF was getting the rain it very much needed. However, there’s no real buffer in the SF waste system, so with the rain came lots of sewage in the water. I had to check the biohazard site regularly to see if the water was safe to swim. When the water is bad there is elevated e.coli and other stuff in the water. I asked about the water hazards on the SERC mailing list and was told to ignore it — it only matters for ‘immuno compromised’ people. Paired with an offer to swim with me (a new member), it was well intentioned advice but landed like a slap in the face. This is San Francisco. You don’t just throw around ‘immuno compromised’ like there’s no one in SF that falls into that category. It felt like I had to ‘Come Out’ to explain why I wasn’t getting in the water. I wasn’t ready to do that. Instead I bided my time and would check the water stats regularly for a day that I could swim. This limited my options to one day every week or two.
If you know me, you know how much I like to be in purposeful motion — moving towards a goal. If the mental difficulty of having a scary first experience wasn’t enough, now I couldn’t get back in that often to ‘normalize’ the experience. That was torture for me. It seemed like I could get in just often enough reinforce the fear.
And it was a powerful fear.
The night before I was doing a bay swim I’d never sleep well. I’d get night sweats. I’d toss and turn. Sleep is a really important part of my health dance, and I’ve worked hard to sleep well, so disturbances to my sleep really suck. I’d have fever dreams — often directly about swimming, often just stress dreams.
And morning of, I’d procrastinate as only someone with a lifetime of practice
could. What follows is what a typical morning fighting myself to get in the
water looks like.
I’d wake up tired. Hit snooze. Try and filibuster myself out of going swimming. Basically getting up slowly enough so that I feel anxious that I’ll be late for work and try and get out of swimming. Do that to some degree. Get out of bed. Decide to go swimming anyway.
Drive to the swim club. Put down my stuff. Use the restroom and fiddle on my phone. Change. Go to the day room. Check the tides and currents. Look at the cove to get a visual feel of what’s going on (wind, currents, anomalies, where swimmers are or aren’t, etc). Sit and look at the water. Pet the dog at the club. Sit and stare at the water some more. Maybe meditate a bit inside looking at the water. Realize I really am going to be late for work. Go outside on the dock. Do some stretches. Do some breathing. Do some more stretches. Fiddle with my watch. Try not to feel cold in the wind. Do some more stretches. Put my toes in the water. Go up to my shins in the water. Get acclimated to that cold. Ok … nothing left to procrastinate with … time to jump in!
I should mention at this point in time I had shifted way way down into low gear. I bought a 2 piece wetsuit so that I could get acclimated. My biggest goal was to eliminate the fear of being in the water. Still, it was fucking cold. Even with the wetsuit, my adrenaline was high and my heart raced.
(In fact, if you look at my heart rate vs water temp … you can see only
recently have I been able to stay calm getting in the water.)
I was no longer swimming out to the opening, just along the buoys near shore. The first few times in my goal was to do a half buoy line, which is probably less than 1/4 mile. Just get in, swim a bit, and get out. I needed to convince my subconscious that this was normal. That I would be ok.
You’d be surprised how stubborn your subconscious can be. The next handful of times, even with the wetsuit, there was constant fear and doubt. And it was fascinating!
Jump in! Yikes! Cold!
The first several seconds in the water are the most important. Ideally you don’t ‘gasp’ for air or let your body react against the cold in a fight or flight response.
For me, the adrenaline was there. Definitely. So I swam quickly to keep my body heat up.
The whole time my mind was racing! There is something beautiful about being in the cold. Your mind and body need to be in full balance, and if they’re not, the cold will make you confront that immediately! Your lizard brain (fight or flight response) will definitely be talking at you. Your 5 year old brain (your emotional self) will be talking at you. Your higher brain (analytical thinking) will be talking, but it won’t be alone in the room.
The loudest voice was the animalistic fear.
WHERE IS THE SHORE? HOW FAR ARE YOU FROM THE SHORE? ARE YOU OK? I THINK MAYBE YOU’RE NOT OK! MAYBE YOU SHOULD SWIM TO SHORE RIGHT NOW! IT’S RIGHT OVER THERE! HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN DO THIS? THIS SEEMS DANGEROUS!
And that’s a tough one to fight. Especially with MS. That common refrain. And here’s my first dance move — Letting Go.
What would a ‘normal’ person do in this situation? They would probably be experiencing some similar emotions and fight or flight response. That’s totally normal! But then, they can rely on normal. I cannot.
There are a ton of folks who swim in the aquatics park of all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, and physical abilities. So most folks can get in the water and think “Phew! Ok! Other people do this … this is normal … I’ll be ok.”
But. I can’t rely on that baseline. Because all of my life experiences have told me I’m different. I have MS. I’m not normal. I need to be extra careful. I need to evaluate IF I can do something in the best of conditions. I need to evaluate IF it’s good or bad for my health. I need to continuously evaluate my state of being. I need to evaluate if there are reasons why my MS could make it dangerous to do under anything but ideal conditions. Are there things about my MS that make this more dangerous?
Maybe. Probably. That’s hard to admit.
I get fatigued doing certain types of exercise. These days I’m a bit concerned
about some early symptoms of ‘foot fall’. I’m not sure I have enough aerobic
capacity to swim fast enough to generate enough heat in the water to stay in for as long as I need to. Taking hot saunas afterwards probably isn’t great for me either.
When I first was getting in the water, I didn’t assume I was the first person with MS to do this, but I didn’t know of one either. Since then, I’ve met a club member who has MS who has done this swim. Like I said … this club is full of the best people you’ll ever meet! But still, everyone’s MS is different.
And so I can’t rely on the fact that other folks do this all the time. While it may be true that I can do this, I need to evaluate that for myself. No one else can do it. Though for the record, my doctor says to go for it.
And this is what makes this whole mental exercise that much harder. It seems like I can’t just ‘trust’. I do have to be aware of my surroundings. I do have to evaluate what’s going on. Nothing I’m saying here sounds outlandish. This is all part of learning how to be a responsible open water swimmer. Logically this all makes sense. But emotionally this is hard. I have to learn it my way. I have to learn my limits.
And this is where the dance move comes in. Letting go. Having MS can be
bewildering. It’s difficult to trust your senses and your body. But you must. In many ways, that’s all you have. That’s all you can trust. Only you can tell how you feel and what is working for you.
Hearing Wim Hof speak, he said one thing that really stuck with me.
‘Remember’. Remember that you can do this. Mother nature knows how to do this. And mother nature is a part of you. That’s where your lizard brain comes from! It’s ok. She’s got you. Remember that. And let go.
It took me a while to start letting go. That’s ok. It is hard. Especially when it seems like being attentive to your body is your only defense to this disease. The deeper fear isn’t being in the water. It’s not the fear of drowning. It’s not sharks. It’s MS. That’s the thing I don’t want to drown in. It’s my ongoing wrestling match with MS. It’s hard to put my defenses down. Just typing that still makes me anxious. It’s hard to trust your body, when your body is fighting itself. It’s hard to allow yourself the space to relax. It’s hard to relax in the face of a challenge. It’s hard not to retreat. But. It’s also liberating. You’re going to be O.K. You can trust yourself. You can thrive. You can dance.
A lot of people have asked me why I want to swim Alcatraz. More specifically, why I want to get in the cold water. Is it a macho thing? Is it a pride thing? Nope! It’s therapy! It’s a tool that shows you where you’re out of balance. Already, my training has given me so many gifts in the form of personal growth. In the water, anything that is out of balance you need to address. I’ve had to look my fear in the face and make friends. There is no running from the cold. There is no running from MS. There is nothing there to fight but yourself.
There are always going to be reasons to not do something. Especially with MS. But that doesn’t need to stop you. Let go. Trust yourself. Get out on that dance floor!
