Summer Update: Touring Tahoe and Islands in Mempremagog

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Hello and welcome to marathon swim stories, where we explore the human side, of the superhuman feats of endurance swimmers and those who support them. I’m marathon swimmer and coach, Shannon Keegan.

Just me today, a bit of a summer update. First of all, if you were a guest on marathon swim stories between April and December of 2020. Your interview will be part of a qualitative study of the motivations of endurance swimmers. If you would like your interview to be excluded from the study, please let me know. You can reach me at shannon@intrepidwater.com. Personally, I was thrilled to find out that the interviews that I had conducted for myself last year would be of value to a researcher. So I jumped at the opportunity when I was approached by the PhD professor and his student, but once again if you were interviewed last year we’d like your interview excluded, please let me know.

I also had a few big swims in July that I wanted to tell you about. On the night of July 12, I set out to complete my Lake Tahoe triple crown. This came about after completing the length of Lake Tahoe, and 2019. I received a beautiful gift from the pilots later that year. A drawing of the lake, with the three different courses on it; a very thoughtful gift, but I couldn’t bring myself to hang it on the wall because I’d only done one of those courses. The closer that I looked at it, I didn’t seem like it was very far from the end of the true width to the beginning of the Vikingsholm. So I contacted Sylvia from Pacific open water swim company, and we hatched a plan to combine the routes. I think that was early last year and have got pushed out to this year. I ended up loving the transitions between the routes, I got out at the end, so that I could have standalone time for each course, and I really enjoyed taking a minute to stretch under gravity’s weight before continuing on to the next part of the swim. It went pretty well, smooth sailing. It was a dark night, and I had some trouble with depth perception, as the night to drug on. The sun had already set by the time we left around 9:15 PM and the moon set shortly after that. And so it was a beautiful, beautiful Starry Night, but there wasn’t that much ambient light. And I just found myself getting a little bit fatigued of the dark, and while there’s lights on the side of the boat, I couldn’t always tell if I was drifting away or swimming into it. But eventually, I think it was about six and a half hours in, we made it to the beach, signifying the end of the True Width. I trudged out of the water, and did some quick stretching, and then jumped right back in, and was just in awe of how clear the water was, it was still really dark. And I could still see the sandy bottom just even in the barely hints of first light. It was a nice, to have something else to focus on in the water. But this next stretch, we were calling it The Connector between the true width, and the Vikingsholm, became the hardest part of the swim for me. I was just exhausted, and had started caffeine somewhere along the line in the middle of the night. And so, didn’t feel like anything was keeping me awake, and it’s just a horrible sensation when you feel like you really want to sleep, and my body doesn’t have any trouble moving, but keeping my mind on the task. So even in the early morning light, which helped with the depth perception problem I was having I started having some kind of crazy hallucinations and seeing all kinds of things on the boat, seemingly. I had something similar happen to me when I did the length swam, I have some work to do on a long overnight swims I don’t know how some of the long, long distance swimmers out there do it. I’ve even tried to cut back a little on my caffeine going in, hoping that it would have a greater effect on me, but I must have more work to do in that area.

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The connector was only about, I think, three and a half miles, and once I kind of got out of that uncomfortable part which probably only lasted half an hour. Yeah, so a big chunk of that connector piece but then we started getting into some really beautiful. The water wasn’t as clear it was getting really murky and the water but there were some really beautiful rock formations that we swim around, going up to the beginning of the Vikingsholm. And that was really energizing and walked up on the boat ramp there again did another little stretch, whereas a fisherman there was trying to stay out of his way and he wasn’t that excited about a swimmer being on his boat ramp so I hurried out of there. And then I really just got into a rhythm, and I was feeling really, really good. Once the morning light was starting to come up from behind the mountains, but also ended up being you know that’s kind of a seventh inning stretch so to speak like a part of it. That just kind of drags on, but I was really able to find a rhythm. One of the things I did this way um that was really really helpful for me is, I wrote out technique tips. I’m a big technique focused training person, and I think about my technique and just kind of recenter on it throughout my swim so I’d written down I think like 23 or it wasn’t quite 30, because I was trying to get one for every feed but anyway, I ended up writing about 23 Different techniques tips, and I passed them on to my crew so that they could share with me. Something to surprise me with some kind of thing to focus on with every single feed, and that was extremely helpful, like I said just kind of a way to center when you’re especially when you’re getting into another sloggy parts, and especially when you start to get tired refocusing on my technique was key. So that got me through the, through the middle part of the Vikingsholm and then the last hour to coming into Emerald Bay, it was getting close to like 11 or noon I guess it would have been around maybe starting around 10:30, or 11 and there started to be a lot more wave action because there’s a lot more boats and ski doos and all of a sudden I started realizing my crew was just starting to get on really high alert, and everyone was awake, there’s two observers and they were taking turns, but all of a sudden everyone each, everybody was up better. There’s two. Yeah, two observers and pilot and then my crew, and so there was four people on the boat, each one of each quadrant, like watching out for areas and just signaling to boats, kind of slow down swimmer in the water. And as we got closer and closer to the mouth to Emerald Bay they’re letting me know I really needed to stay right next to the boat.

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So I thought I did pretty good at following instructions and so that last part was pretty intense. I think mostly, I had to breathe, to my left side which is probably my more comfortable side to breathe. But I had to do it for like an hour, hour and a half and I I like breathing to both sides, I don’t like breathing every stroke but I was really concerned about holding my position next to the boat. So I did, and was really relieved when we finally got to the point where we could see the the little dock, and the kids and there’s all kinds of people on the beach, and we go on the day before so I knew what the ending was going to be like and I was really really grateful to have had that in my mind and try to follow the directions of you know just not looking, not looking at not looking where I’m going and just swim, swim, swim, swim, swim until they told me that I could, I could totally set my sights and swing myself then. So, ended up being a great pretty uneventful swim. I think I had a little bit of kind of bloating and digestion and discomfort, I’d say over the night but nothing as bad as I had when I did the length swim. And it was a little bit longer, it came out to about 26.2 miles. And I was really glad with how everything worked out, and it ended up being really beautiful, beautiful time down there in Tahoe, and then I turned around, got home from Tahoe the next day, and started getting ready for our trip to the East Coast, or heading to Vermont where we used to live or we have some friends, and started getting ready for Border Buster, which I intentionally set close to my Tahoe date. In retrospect, I should have cut out the time to really stretch out, get some stretch out swims. I’d continue doing… no, you know, thinking back, I don’t think I did much of anything except get back rest up to kind of recalibrate. After swimming overnight back to daytime hours and then the next thing we know we were on a plane to Vermont. And I was really more focused on resting than I was on really stretching. And that ended up catching up with me. So it’s with my family during the week, and my husband came and took the kids to Maine where he grew up. And I got to hang out for a night and see some of you all, and that pre dinner before before Porter buster. And then on Saturday with set off, bright and early right on time. And my friend was kayaking for me, and was amazing, who did a fantastic job and was so well prepared it was really comforting knowing that he was there, and I was doing great for the first couple hours it really felt great,

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and I guess I was calling it we were calling it the border bumper island tour because we weren’t able to cross the border this year. And when we did that, after so we get up close to the border and you swim across the lake from one side to the other, then you cover on the islands and then we had to had to head all the way back across the lake, and I hadn’t really looked at the Course Map tag closely and that ended up being quite a slog pretty early on, just about two and a half hours in and. The lake was still and calm, but sometimes that can make a slog even seem like more of a slog. And I just felt like nothing was nothing was coming up fast enough. But, but at the end of the day it ended up being a good swam I was, I was tight, early on I just kept trying to lean into my stroke and really, really stretch it out and just trying to get it done, hand. And I did it was, it’s always nostalgic swimming in Lake memphremagog. That was where open waters swimming really started for me. I had dabbled in track along but I’d never really committed to swimming any distance and not like until I lived in Vermont and 20 2010 timeframe, and the islands around Derby bay where we’re a playground so a lot a lot of memories. Swimming in that lake. I’ve been out in it, quite a few times since. So it ended up being a really, really good time. There’s something about that setting though with, you know, leaving the beach with a bunch of other people and rounding all the buoys, I get a little more competitive. My mind than I really want to be. So I kind of long for that solo aspect, sometimes when I’m in that setting. So I come out of it, wondering you know who’s in front, who was behind. And as much as I don’t want to care, I do. So I am still investigating the competitive part of myself. There’s something about trying to be somebody else that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe it’s because I’m approaching middle age or because I have young kids. I don’t know what I’d rather focus on my own personal progress, improvement, against my own goals. Rather than focusing on outdoing other people, but I was pleased with how things turned out and my time ended up being spot on, what I thought it would be at the pace that I, that I could usually hold. So all that was really good. Since getting back to Southern Oregon. We’ve had some smoky days due to the fires out here. This is the time of year where everything’s just incredibly dry, and we’ll get end up getting a beautiful thunderstorm roll through, and maybe even a little rain, but those lightning strikes, They hit the trees up in the mountains and they just go up like matchsticks. So we’re just hunkering down. Don’t even get me started on COVID. At the moment, I’m grateful that I’ve gotten some swims in this year, and now I can reset with my land based training since swimming’s outside isn’t happening right now. And I have time to focus on my clients, and hearing more stories from Marathon swimmers. If you’ve been following TuneIn journey to Taho, which she so graciously shared with us this year, in a four part series we’ve recorded parts one, two and three, And if you didn’t see she completed, the 21 mile length of Lake Tahoe. On July, 30, was I think when she finished huge congratulations to Janine, all your hard work, really paid off.

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Looking forward to catching up with her for part four, to see how she’s doing post swim. And coming up for you up with marathon swim stories we’ll have part three of GS journey to swim around Manhattan here in a couple of weeks. And a lot of other great marathons fun stories coming your way, so stay tuned. Finally, last item I just launched my intrepid water technique focused coaching program. If you’re interested in improving your technique. This is a great opportunity to get some guidance on how to shake your bad habits and build new ones, so that you can start swimming efficiently. You provide video footage for me to do analysis, and then we meet once a month to get you on the road to achieving your swimming goals. You can find out more about the W technique focus, coaching, ongoing coaching program at intrepid water calm. Additionally, the intrepid water accountability group is a great place to get some support and encouragement. As you continue on your swimming journey. We endeavor to do swimming related challenges each month, that could be anything from stretching to lambaste exercises, we even do journaling topics. And we also meet once a month for a deep dive topic to get deep on something and everybody gets to contribute. It’s a really great environment, I’d love to see you there. I hope you’re having a great summer. Until next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai