Susan Sherwin is one of the founders of IISA (International Ice Swimming Association) Aotearoa New Zealand and runs the annual NZ Ice Swimming Championships . An ice swim needs to be in water that's 5°C (41°F) or less, swum only in togs, goggles, a standard cap, and with optional earplugs.
Susan is an accomplished ice swimmer herself, having completed two 'extreme' ice miles (2km). She is also one of just a handful of people to have achieved NZ's Triple Crown: Lake Taupō in 2020, Raukawa Moana / Cook Strait in 2021, and Te Ara a Kiwa / Foveaux Strait in 2022 at the age of 61. She now has her eye on Australia's Triple Crown – within two weeks this year she completed the Rottnest Channel Swim (20km) in Western Australia and the Derwent River Big Swim (34km) in Tasmania.
In this episode Susan talks about how she returned to swimming in her 40s after having kids, gradually building from a few kilometres to ultramarathons. For her, it's about being in the water, enjoying people and nature, and saying yes to new opportunities.
*
Questions, thoughts or suggestions about the podcast? Email me at swimchatswithshona@gmail.com
Follow Swim Chats on Instagram
Please support the podcast for free by following or subscribing, and leaving a rating and review. You can also become a Swim Buddy for $5 per month on Patreon for added perks. Find out more on Patreon.com/SwimChats
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Kyota and welcome to Swim Chats,a podcast about ocean swimming.
I'm Shona Riddell, a writer, former journalist and swimmer
from Wellington, Altairo in New Zealand.
For each episode, I talk to a different guest from our swim
community. Remember, if you have any
questions, thoughts or suggestions, you can e-mail me
at swimchatswithshona@gmail.com or follow Swim Chats on
(00:30):
Instagram. A few people have asked how they
can support the podcast. The best way to support it is by
listening to episodes, and you can follow or subscribe so you
don't miss 1. You can also leave a five star
rating which recommends the podcast to other people.
And for those who want to get more involved, I've set up a
Patreon account which you can join to sponsor the show and
(00:51):
become a swim buddy for $5 a month.
As a swim buddy, you get a shoutout on the podcast, access to a
private group chat, advance notice of upcoming guests, and
the opportunity to submit questions.
To find out more, go to patreon.com Swim Chats.
The link is in the episode show notes and in the podcast
(01:11):
description. But if that's not an option for
you, that's totally fine. Being a listener is.
Also awesome. Thank you.
First of all, Susan, welcome to Swim Chats.
I appreciate your time today. Yeah, no problem.
It's nice to meet you. Yeah.
I know you've just wrapped up the New Zealand Ice Swimming
(01:34):
Championships down South and sounds like everything went well
and there may have been a few world records as as well, is
that right? Well, we, yeah, now we went
exceptionally well. We, we actually had, I'm pretty
sure probably more longer distance swims than have been
(01:55):
done before, but I do need to check that.
I'm not 100% sure. So I just can't see it on any of
the records that have been done before.
So yeah, probably. Don't quote me on that one.
Yeah, sure enough, Yeah. I'm keen to talk to you about
the different distances. So just just to clarify for
listeners, the Ice Swimming Championships have been running
(02:16):
since 2022, is that right? Yeah.
So that this has been your 4th event and running St.
Bathans. I have to admit I I needed to
open Google Maps and have a lookto see where St.
Bathans was. It's a it's a very small town on
the South Island and from what Iread, it has quite an
(02:37):
interesting history as well. It was a gold mining town and
what's the population of it do you know?
At the moment, 55, Yep. It's a very, very small town,
it. Was quite a decent sized hill
and the gold miners basically got rid of the hill and made it
(02:57):
into a quite a deep lake so theythey spent a long time there
from the. The pictures I saw the is it the
Blue Lake? Is that what it's called?
Yeah. So it just looked beautiful.
And I know that each year you alternate between open water ice
swims and swimming in a pool. Why is that?
(03:18):
Why do you why do you switch between them?
I think it's nicer to do the longer distances in the open
water. You know when you get to a mile
in the open in a swimming pool, going up and down 25 metre pool
gets a little bit boring. And it's such a cool place at
Saint Bethan's. It's it's kind of magical.
So the Saint Bethan's is more about personal achievement and
(03:43):
personal challenge and getting alittle bit further than you've
done before or oh, can I actually swim, you know, that
sort of distance and that amountof time.
Whereas at the pool, it's becoming more of a competition.
And it's also our selection process for getting into the
(04:03):
world champs. So the world champs, world ice
swimming champs is every two years.
And it's it's usually in Europe somewhere.
So it has been in Russia before,but the last few years it's
alternated between France and Italy.
And I think next year there's going to be pretty fierce
(04:24):
competition for getting into that team.
We've got some awesome swimmers in New Zealand.
Yeah, definitely. And I know you're one of the
founders of the. I just want to get the name
right. The International Ice Swimming
Association, Alto in New Zealandis that.
Were you an ice swimmer before you founded the?
(04:47):
The organization, yeah, kind of.So I first got into it 2020
basically, which was the COVID year.
And because the pools were shut,we had to swim outdoors all
winter. So we were doing that and one of
our friends decided that maybe we should go and swim in some
cold lakes around down the SouthIsland.
(05:08):
And he'd heard about this thing called a nice smile.
So I went down there, pretty naive, not really knowing what I
was letting myself in for, but it sounded like a cool
opportunity. So we went down there and we
swam in Wakatabu like how we areboth like.
And then we went to up and a helicopter to Lake Acuron and I
(05:30):
got out of the helicopter and jumped out and there was a knee
depth snow and my mind just flipped.
It was doing all sorts of thingsand I went snow and swimming
just do not go together. So that was quite a challenge
for me because everybody else had gone down to the lake edge.
They'd set out tarpaulin for alltheir gear and.
(05:52):
And I was, you know, my mind wasgoing, Nah, this is stupid.
But in the end, it was like, well, they're all down there.
They look as though they're OK. So I'm just going to have to
pretend that I'm OK and go on down there and join them.
And by the time I got on the lake, I was OK and the mind had
stopped playing games so much. But yeah, so yeah, three of them
(06:17):
got in first and they did anywhere.
I don't know, they were in therefor a little while and then
Duncan and I got in and we had up on and what is Fred?
AK. So we thought, oh, if we can do
AK in this and that was 4°, maybe we can do this thing
called a nice smile. So we came out of that trip and
(06:41):
started doing some research. So the next year we went to Lake
London and we just basically asked a number of our friends
that we thought were pretty strong swimmers.
You know, a lot of them had beenopen water like cook straight,
(07:01):
favo straight, like topaw, etcetera, swimmers.
So we thought they had a reasonable chance of, of
success. So there were twelve of us that
went down, 12 swimmers and probably a similar number of
supporters. We had our camper vans down in
Springfield, camping ground there.
(07:23):
I don't think they ever normallygot camping ground, you know,
camper vans down there in the winter.
But we were there. We drove up to Lake Bay and set
out a course and we were pretty naive and thinking, Oh yeah, we
could do a 500 metre one day, A1K the next day and a mile the
next day. We've since realised that that's
(07:45):
really speedier and way, way toomuch.
Most people, however, six of the12 of us managed to do it and
which is pretty phenomenal. Although all of those 6 had done
one of the big swims, so I thinkthat makes a difference, having
that kind of acclimatisation in cooler water and for longer
(08:05):
periods of time. So yeah.
So then I came out of going, OK,I've done my, I smile, that's
it, we can pack up, go home and think nothing more of this
stuff. And then as everyone was
leaving, they all seemed to me, oh, I'm coming back next year.
I'm keen. I'm really keen to do it next
(08:26):
year. And I'm thinking it was what I
was thinking, but OK. And then within a couple of
days, my husband and I were going, well, we could do this
and we could do that. So we we kind of got hooked.
And I think the ice swimming is like open water swimming.
Once you start doing it and you find that it's your thing, it's
(08:48):
like, yeah, feels like home. Yep, you're in.
And so just for listeners who don't know what ice swimming is,
it's water that's 5° and below. Is that correct?
It has to be 5.00 on the thermometer or less.
(09:08):
And even if one of the thermometers is above that, we
can't use, can't use those things.
So we kind of hope that it's a little bit less than that.
We were right on the very borderline this year at Saint
Bethan's. So we were sitting on that 4.9
sort of mark, which was a bit nerve wracking every morning.
So you get up and go, is there afrost?
(09:31):
And then you go down to the lakeand.
And we just squeaked in for the whole time, which was great.
Awesome. Yeah.
A lot lot quicker because the air temperature was also above
0, whereas the year before at Alexandra the pole temperature
was 2.6 ish and the air temperature at times was like -4
(09:55):
-, 5 S recovery times. Even though the events were
shorter, the recovery took a lotlonger than we sort of expected.
Right. So at those levels, every degree
or even half a degree counts. Yeah, yeah.
So how many people participated this year in the event?
Is it something that you're finding is growing each year as
(10:17):
more and more people hear about it?
Yeah, definitely growing each year.
So we had twelve the first year at that sort of pre pre ISA
event. Our first ISA event we had 19
and it's just grown every year since then.
And this year I was sort of taken aback by the number of
people who were putting themselves out there for doing
(10:40):
the mile, because the mile is a pretty challenging thing to do.
But because we've kind of last year, I said, look, if you want
to do the mile this year, let's get stuck in and do the 500 or
1K the year before. Because to do a mile, you've got
to have done A500 and A1K beforeyou're even allowed to do it.
Right. So what are what are the
(11:00):
distances that people can enter?Because I know you have an an
extreme eye smile. So I'm interested to talk to you
about that as well, but what arethe smaller distances?
OK, so in the lake we do 250501Kand a mile.
Those are our standard distances.
And then for those people who have done a mile, they can apply
(11:25):
to do an extreme ice mile. So I basically look at what
they've done with their mile, how they swam their mile, their
speed and and their recovery from their mile last time and
decide whether they, in consultation with them, whether
it's a good idea for them to do it or not.
(11:46):
Because every sort of minute after sort of half an hour ish
is getting more and more dangerous.
So my kind of cut off is 50 minutes.
However, we can go a little bit longer depending on what the
swimmer is like and what the recovery is like in history.
And you personally have done an extreme eye smile, is that
(12:09):
correct? Which is about two KS.
Amazing. So yeah, there's there's a
number of things that you can doa 2K1 of them is on altitude.
One of them is if it's under 1° I think.
But also you can the the easiestone to do is to do the two Ki
mean the easiest 1 to organise. I'm not saying it's the easiest
(12:30):
one to actually achieve, but youknow, getting under 1° is pretty
unusual and difficult in New Zealand.
I I don't know that we would even get a lake that was under
1° in New Zealand and up in a helicopter somewhere because
access is always a problem too. So when you are doing
(12:53):
particularly extreme things likethat, you want to be able to
critically and get medical help if you need fairly quickly.
Yeah. So going on to my one I, I've
done 2 extreme eye smiles. The first one was 2K and like in
(13:15):
the Blue Lake at Saint Athens two years ago.
And it's probably the hardest swim I've ever done for the last
100 meters. That last 100 meters was
probably the first time I'd everfelt like I wanted to quit.
And I've done Cook Straight, Favo Straight and Lake Chopo.
So just your arms are not functioning as well as they
(13:38):
could. I think my brain was getting OK,
I could talk to people and but getting my arms to turn over for
that last 100 metres was, was pretty tricky.
However, when I got out of thereand a little bit later, I
thought, well, in the lake I probably didn't go as straight
(13:59):
as I could have done. I probably did quite a bit more
than two K, So I thought, well, I'm going to try for 3K in the
pool where it's, you know, standard distance, you're
turning around all the time. And so last year I got in the
pool at Alexandra and and I managed to do 2.1 K in the last
(14:22):
100 meters or so there too. I was feeling fine, but the
black line on the bottom of the pool started swaying and I went
when it first started I thought,oh that's interesting, I wonder
why it's doing that. And then in the last 50 meters
it was like swaying quite a lot and now it's time to get out.
So I actually pulled myself after the 2.1 K and it was
(14:47):
interesting talking to the people on sidelines too, because
they said actually you looked asthough you were swimming in the
sea. And so obviously my body wasn't
doing what it should be doing. And it was a really good choice
to pull myself out. But both times I recovered
pretty well too. So I seem to be able to tolerate
(15:08):
the cold pretty well. Not sure why that is.
Maybe it's because I grew up in in Topua and swam in the lake as
a kid a lot, you know, swam early spring right through to
sort of autumn. So I don't know, maybe there's
something that as a kid you train it into yourself by the
(15:30):
the silly things that you do. I'm curious to know sort of what
it feels like because I think the coldest water I've ever swim
in is maybe 8 or 9° here in Wellington.
And that would have been a very short dip for me rather than a,
a long swim. But so when you're physically
getting into ice water, is it painful?
(15:51):
Is it? Do you go numb pretty quickly?
It's kind of different each time, but a lot of similar
things and different people experience different things as
well. Getting it is the hardest
because it's mentally it's, it'spretty tough.
I find that in a competition it's or you know, like at
(16:12):
Alexandra or Saint Bethan's or at the world Champs that I was
at a couple of years ago, because there's so much
atmosphere and you know, hype and things like that, you can
get in and get going a lot easier.
But the getting under the water,even if it's 10°, getting under
the water is the hardest bit. I find sort of that 8 to 15
(16:35):
quite often we'll get the, you know, that massive cold headache
for some reason. I don't know whether it's
adrenaline or whatever it is at the OR maybe you just go numb
quicker when it's been under 5 for me, I haven't had the cold
headache so much. Interesting.
(16:55):
Yeah, sometimes I do a bit of backstroke there too, roll over
a bit of freestyle, a bit of backstroke to get sort of under.
But you're but I found the your fingers and toes get quite sore
quite quickly. And they qualify for a nice.
(17:17):
Smile, You can't wear any sort of protective gear, like no
neoprene, right? No, no gloves or anything.
It's just the togs, the cat, thegoggles.
Yep, Togs, cat goggles, That's it.
And earplugs. Earplugs actually make a
difference. And that protects you against
the cold does that. Well, I don't think ears are
(17:37):
designed for having that cold orwater on them so and sometimes
they can get really really sore if you swim in cold water
without the earplugs. So I find the earplugs in all
the time or blue tech. The only thing with blue tech is
normally when you swim with bluetech it comes out fine.
(17:59):
When you swim with it in sort ofunder 5°, you have to leave it
in for a wee while until your head warms up and you can.
Actually kind of freak all theselittle details you might not
know unless you're doing it right.
And there must be other logistics and running a nice
swimming event. I know you have to think even
(18:19):
more about health and safety. So you've got, I know you have
paramedics on site and you've got the support boats and I know
that every participant has a sort of pre swim medical check.
Is that is that correct? Yeah, so they have to have a.
It's a two page, actually three page now document that your
(18:41):
doctor has to sign and fill in various things, do various
health checks and also you have to have an ECG.
So to make sure that your heart is in good condition, because
one of the things about getting into cold water is your heart
can do silly things. So we don't want anybody with a
pre-existing heart condition or sky high blood pressure or that
(19:03):
sort of thing getting into the water because although we've got
the safety measures there. So if it does happen, we get
them out and we'll deal with them pretty quickly.
But we don't want to have that risk of having people who are
unwell getting in and, you know,putting themselves at risk.
(19:27):
Yeah, the other main thing with.So apart from that first part
and also when you when you are learning to go into cold water,
you have got to make sure that you control your breathing and
get your breathing under control.
Because the last thing you want to do is to get a fright.
And you know when when you get afright you go.
(19:48):
So if you do that underwater andthen that is getting water in
your lungs, which is also not a good thing.
So making sure you have had thatexposure to cold water
beforehand and learnt to get under safely, that is really,
really important. Other part that's sort of
dangerous is right at the end. So as you're losing your
(20:13):
function, you can take on water and other things like that too,
and you're putting your body on a lot of stress if you push it
right to the limits. And the next part that's a
little bit dangerous is when youget out of the water and after
you're dressed sort of somewherebetween 15 minutes and a half an
(20:33):
hour after you're dressed, you get the after drop.
So that's where your blood is kind of circulating through to
the cold. Cold blood is circulating
through to your organs and they're going, I don't like this
very much. And you are basically
hypothermic and you shake quite vigorously.
So it's making sure people are warming gradually and.
(20:56):
I saw you have, I saw you have apacking list on the website of,
you know what people should bring to warm themselves up
afterwards. Yeah.
So lots of hot water bottles, sleeping bag.
Yep, Yep. So we get people to bring as
much as they can, but we also provide things like we've got
beds that they can lie down in the stretchers, lots of chairs
(21:19):
and also, you know, warming things afterwards.
So having your snacks, which gives you the sugar to give you
the energy to recover and also, you know, warm drinks, not not
really hot drinks because that actually is not good either.
So it's, it's having, it's, it'sthat gradual rewarming which is
(21:40):
really, really important. Do you envisage with, as you
know as the years progress that the distances will increase as
the ice swimmers get more, you know, as you sort of tick off
these different milestones, willwill there be an extreme,
extreme, I smile, will the watertemperature go down?
(22:03):
Yeah. Well, we, we did have an
extreme, extreme one this year. We had Jackson Arledge, you
probably know from Wellington. He was an absolute machine and
he did 2.75 kilometres. Incredible So.
It is incredible. And you know, next year, I'm
sure two years time, I'm pretty sure that he will be looking at
(22:27):
doing further than that having that speed.
So he's he's pretty quick, so way, way faster than I am.
So he can actually churn throughmore distance and less time.
So you know, he can just about do 3K when I do 2K.
So it means that he can actuallyup those distances a lot more.
(22:47):
And yeah, he's such a character and just got that determination
to be able to do that. Yeah, that's amazing.
And you you talked earlier about, you know, your first ice
swim and just needing to get yourself mentally in the zone in
order to get in and do it. How do the the ice swimmers,
(23:13):
does everyone sort of tend to have a similar process to get
themselves in the right headspace in terms of, you know,
do they do breathing exercises? Their own sort of way of doing
it. I mean, I like to sort of look
at the water and go, yeah, I cando that sort of thing and, and
(23:34):
just calm myself, look at how beautiful it is and sort of do
those sorts of things. So everybody has their own
tricks mentally and as to being able to get in the water And,
but being calm is, is really, really important before you get
in the water. So it's how you calm yourself
and how you talk to yourself. So a lot of it is talking to
(23:57):
yourself before you get in and, and saying the right sort of
things and not the, you know, eliminating the negative sort of
things, sort of breathing helps,but you cannot hyperventilate
before you get in. So I've never looked, I haven't
actually looked at the wormhole stuff, but you don't want to be
(24:21):
hyperventilating before you get in.
That's because that's quite dangerous too.
So it's different. I think the wormhole stuff is a
lot more plunging and sort of just getting in and sort of
being in the water and experiencing the water.
Whereas swimming is very, very different.
You need to just calm yourself, control your breathing, get your
(24:41):
breathing under control before you put your head underwater.
Then once you get your head underwater, you'll probably find
that you're in a bit of a slightpanicky sort of bit, but you've
got to learn to control that too.
So it's, it's learning techniques that work for you.
And you, you do that by talking to other swimmers and, you know,
swimming with other swimmers andgoing, oh, you do that.
(25:05):
Yeah, that makes sense. And I was thinking about
training for these events as well.
I imagine it's a similar thing where people are swapping advice
and slowly, gradually helping their bodies to adapt to cold
water so that their body is ready for the the ice swim.
It's really important to do thatacclimatisation and we're
(25:30):
actually really, really lucky now because we've got people in
most places around New Zealand. We've got Northland, Auckland,
Taranaki, Taronga, sort of Nelson, Melbourne area,
Christchurch, Dunedin and then over in Queensland, Queenstown
sort of area over there, plus random people throughout.
(25:54):
So it's quite easy to go, hey, how about you go and swim with
Francois down in Dunedin and he will help you with, you know,
various things. So there's a group of them now
down there that, you know, the newbies can go and swim with
them and learn the tricks and, and also, you know, when I was a
(26:18):
kid, it was always drummed into me.
Never swim alone. And I think that's even more so
important with the ice swimming,you know, once you get under
15°, it's it's getting dangerous, you know, the the
cold shock and the after drop can happen, you know, anything
under 15°. So really, really important that
you always swim with somebody. So I just try to buddy everybody
(26:41):
up around the country so they have got that support and it's
always, I think nicer to actually learn from others in a
face to face sort of situation than it is to just read a list
of things to do, Although we do have those lists as well.
You mentioned earlier that you have also completed some ultra
(27:04):
marathon swims, so I'm keen to talk to you about those as well.
I know that you've done the New Zealand Triple Crown, so in 2020
you swam Lake Popo, 2021 Cook straight Rokau and Wina and 2022
Favo straight to Outer Kiwa. So first of all,
(27:24):
congratulations, that's an incredible achievement.
And also to swim them all so sort of quickly one after the
other, that's that's a pretty incredible feat too.
Do you mind saying how old you were when you completed the
third swim? I was 61 so. 61 Amazing.
(27:50):
Yeah, when I did Taupo, I thought that was going to be my
only swim. See, this is a bit of a pattern
here, something that I'd kind ofhad in the back of my mind
because when I was, you know, a kid at Taupo Swimming Club names
(28:11):
just got in my head. The first, first woman to swim
like Taupo was Margaret Sweeney.Yeah, we had a float.
You know how the old Christmas parade floats that you went
through town on Christmas? Well, she was with us.
And so we were all dressed up inold fashioned swimming togs,
(28:34):
which were made from, you know, witches, britches and those
sorts of things, all decorated and whatnot.
And yeah, so actually getting tobe with her and hang out with
her and. And know that she'd actually
swam the length of Lake Taupo and yeah, it just sort of sat
(28:55):
there for a long time until we. Yeah.
So there is a swim across Lake Taupo 2, which is the 5K from
Acacia Bay to Two Mile Bay. And because I was, I think I was
8-9 and ten when my dad rode across with somebody as a
support person and I was in the boat with him.
(29:17):
And each time I was saying I canswim faster than this person,
why won't they let me do it? And was pretty angry that they
wouldn't let me do it because I was too young.
So I think that kind of helped the motivation as well.
And then I went on to be a New Zealand Rep swimmer in the pool.
(29:39):
We did a little bit of open water swimming, like mostly like
Carapiro sort of 2K swims and things like that.
But it wasn't really until I gave up swimming and saw Philip
Rush and Meta McKenzie and thoseguys doing their thing with Cook
Straight, etcetera, that I sort of found out about the longest,
(30:00):
longest swims. And if I had gone back to it and
done at the end, it would have been so much easier.
But you know, life had moved on as it does and had kids and
whatnot. And yeah, and then I once I had
(30:22):
kids, I spent a lot of time withthem and sort of ignored myself
as a lot of mums do. And I try to tell mums these
days, you know, make sure that you do look after yourself and
take time for yourself and your exercise so that you don't end
up, you know, well overweight and with health problems and,
and whatnot, sort of before yourtime.
(30:45):
I was in my 40s and well overweight and beginning to have
some health problems. And I saw the harbour crossing,
the very first harbour crossing.And so in 2006 I went, oh, I
wonder if I can do that. Got in the pool and swim, you
know, worked up to throwing 3K and went, OK, I'll enter now.
(31:06):
So I entered and got halfway across and went, oh, I'm
exhausted, but I was like halfway across.
It's like, well, can't go back, might as well carry on forward
and got to the other end. And it was just an amazing
feeling to have achieved doing that, you know, after being
(31:26):
quite nervous at the start and getting out and just the bunch
of people were amazing. And I got hooked on to open
water swimming and was doing theocean swim series for, you know,
I still do them. I.
Think it's going to be one of myquestions whether you still do
the the smaller swims, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I do like the, in
(31:50):
Auckland, we've got the Koimarama Swim Series every
Thursday night over the summer. And that's great because you
just you're into the series and you just turn up, Do you swim,
have a chat to everybody, get out and then go home.
And the Ocean Swim Series, I don't do the full series anymore
because just fitting in other swims that I do, but I usually
(32:11):
do at least two or three swims every year.
And I really enjoy it because it's it's getting in with other
people that often you're standing at the beginning of the
race and you're chatting away tosomebody who's never done it
before and they're pretty nervous.
That's just nice to be able to pass on that, that good feeling
that people care about you and people want you to do so that
(32:34):
you can do so just giving peoplethat extra little bits boost
it's gives. Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah. And so I get the feeling you,
you know, after quite a break having kids and you got back in
the water and then gradually just started growing your
(32:57):
distance when the when opportunities came up, you would
take them. Is that right?
Pretty much that's me. It's like somebody comes along
it's like yeah, OK, think about it afterwards.
But yeah, yeah, like a friend ofmine been doing the 3K for quite
some time and was getting prettyused to it and, and almost
(33:18):
getting a bit blase and go, Oh yeah, I can jump in and do that
without too much training. And, and then so a friend of
mine said, how about we do this 10K and and topo.
And this was like about two months before and I hadn't been
doing a lot of training before that.
So I think we got up to 515 K before we did it.
(33:38):
And so the two of us jumped on this 10K race.
And because it's along the shoreof Lake Taupo, it was like I
could get out anytime I want to,you know, as you're going along.
And the 1st 3K was OK and then the 4th K was not too bad.
(34:01):
But from about 4:00 to 8:00 KS, I really struggled because
mentally I hadn't really done the distance, I hadn't done the
training and mentally it was really, really tough.
So was very tempted to, to get out, but then I passed Mike who
was the guy that I entered with and because his arm was really,
(34:24):
really sore and he was sort of swimming, limping along
basically. So I thought, well, I've got
past and now I can't stop now. So just a little bit competitive
and carried on to finish the 10Kjust before him, which was the
last time he ever let me beat him.
So, you know, got to got to havebragging rights somewhere along
(34:45):
the line. That's right, and it's always
good to have someone to compete with.
It can be quite motivating, can't it?
Yeah. So after that it was, yeah, it
did a number of 10 KS. They got easier and then they
were doing the epic, epic, whichwas the 5K, then 10K, then 2
(35:06):
1/2, all in one day. So entered that and we ended up,
because the weather was pretty awful, the Adacia Bay going
around in circles there, and that's what I was swinging with.
Ah, and I was swimming side by side with Katrina Price and she
(35:30):
had done Topor a few years beforehand.
And I'm going, oh, I can't be that slow after all.
Maybe I can do Topor. So then decided to put that in
in motion and sort of had a chatto Phil and he gave me a little
bit of advice and and yeah, so in 2020 I set out for to do
(35:54):
Taupo. Amazing.
And then after you'd completed that swim, was that when you
considered doing the other swimsin the Triple Crown, or was that
more after Cook Straight? Well, I went to because I hadn't
had any coaching for a long, long time.
I thought I will go see Brent Foster and just just get him to
(36:20):
check out my stroke and see if there's anything I need to
premises before I did Topor. And he jumped in the water with
me and we looked at my stroke, looked at speed and whatnot.
And I said to him, he said to me, have you ever considered
doing cook straight? And I said no, no, I'm too slow
to do that. And he said, actually there's
(36:40):
people that are slower than you that have made cook straight, so
you should really give it, give it some thought.
So once I'd done Taupo, I said to Phil, you know, would I be
fast enough to do cook straight?And he said you'd have to do a
bit more speed work and whatnot,but we'd give it a go.
(37:02):
So that's what we did. Yeah, yeah, that was actually
going to be one of my questions because I know from talking to
other swimmers on this podcast, when you're swimming, cook
straight and favo straight, you've got to beat the the
changing tide. And that's what partly why speed
is so important, so you don't get sort of pushed out away from
(37:23):
your destination. Yeah.
So how, how do you work on speed?
I don't know if that's a silly question, but I find the the
faster I try and swim, often theslower I am.
Is that is that something where you you stop trying to swim fast
and you just concentrate on a certain technique?
(37:44):
This is a couple of things. So if you're always swimming in
the sea, generally you either stay the same speed or you get a
bit slower because you're just doing the same thing over and
over and over again. Your speed work comes in the
pool. So doing your sets of two
hundreds or 4 hundreds, even your 50s and 20 fives, it's
(38:07):
really, really important. So what I was doing is I swam
with the squad at West Wave withSue Pilkington.
And it's great because you get in the new in the morning before
work or whatever, you get the program, you get told what to
do. You don't have to think, which
is great. And you've got other people to
(38:27):
motivate you to swim a little bit faster and to push yourself
to go, oh, can I beat them today?
Or, you know, and there's that friendly rivalry that and, and
lots of fun. So before cook straight, I was
doing the 6:00 session and the 7:00 session and then staying in
and, and doing anywhere between 20 and 31 hundreds afterwards on
(38:51):
a certain time. And that was actually fantastic
because when it came to the end of my swim the last two hours, I
had to really, really push it because the tide was coming in
quick and I was going to be swept in the wrong direction.
So, and if I'd done that, I would have had another three
(39:12):
hours of swimming if I hadn't hit shore.
So it was having to actually up the gears in that last two hours
after you've been swimming already for 8 hours and so doing
those 2031 hundreds after, aftertwo hours of up squad I think
made the big difference. Right.
(39:33):
Just being able, having had thatpractice with Sprint training as
well as endurance. So if you're going sort of on
145 and trying to hit a certain time, I think that's and to
improve that time each time. And I think when you're trying
to improve your speed, you've got to really work on technique
as well, because a lot of peoplewhen they go faster, well, when
(39:58):
they think they're going faster,their arms are turning over
quicker, but they're losing efficiency.
So it's. It's turning your arms over
faster and keeping the efficiency and the number of
strokes per length and things like that.
It's really important to be ableto keep an eye on that sort of
thing as well. And when you train, you
obviously need to have experience swimming in all sorts
of different weather conditions because you presumably don't
(40:22):
know what's exactly is going to happen on the day.
How do you find swimming in sortof choppy water?
Is that something you're quite confident in?
I actually really and, and well,the choppy not so much, but the
big waves and stuff like that, Ifind it quite fun.
So I recently did Rottnest Channel Swim, which is from
(40:42):
Perth to Rottnest as well. And we had two to 3M waves going
sideways at us, which I actuallyquite enjoyed.
But you know, a lot of people don't.
The bit I didn't enjoy was trying to feed because I was
either trying to be the bat waves were either trying to push
me under the boat or I was trying to catch the boat to get
my bottle. And I'd have like a mouthful
(41:05):
have to put the top on and let it go and then swim to catch up
again. And you know, those sorts of
things, which is more challenging.
And then getting the food as well off the boat when it's, you
know, that sort of waves, that'sreally challenging as well in
the end, because the Rodney's Channel swim has just recently
(41:28):
allowed you to use a tow float. So if your kayaker can't cope
for whatever reason, and my kayaker couldn't cope anymore.
He was cold, He was frozen and exhausted from, you know,
battling the wind and the waves because it's actually harder for
them than it is for the swimmer.So to have be able to get him
(41:48):
out, get him warm and for me to have the tow float on was was
good because I could keep keep with the boat quite happily
that. And in the end I just said to
them, look, throw my drink bottle over and I just tied it
to my tow float and used that for the last three hours.
I think when I was in Rottnest it was just easier than trying
(42:11):
to feed off the boat. What sort of food and drink do
you like to have for a long swim?
A lot of it's just mainly like Ido have water Mag Foss in it too
too in case I get cramp. Coke sometimes towards the end.
And food I try to keep as natural as I can.
(42:34):
So things like Ginger crunch or your brownie, those slices
slices or sandwiches, peanut butter or Vegemite sandwiches,
that kind of my go to occasionally.
I have gels. I have the gels there as well if
I want those, but I find that the natural food actually sits
(42:56):
better on my stomach and it's just square.
I'm showing my age there. I have centimeters doesn't
doesn't have the same ring to it.
And during your three Triple Crown swims, did you have any
exciting encounters with marine life?
(43:17):
So, you know, some people meet dolphins on their swims or.
Yeah, anything like that? In Cook Straight I had, I think
they were dusky dolphins. They were fairly small ones.
It might be Maui dolphins, I'm not sure.
But they kind of swim perpendicular to us, so
underneath me on the boat, and then they do a jump or two on
(43:39):
the other side. Then they come back again.
So they were, but they zoomed out so quick.
That was so cool. So they hung around for about 10
minutes or so, and I kept calling them back, but they
weren't listening. It's funny to talk to yourself
about when you're swimming, yeah.
Well, yeah, that would have beenpretty, pretty exciting and
(43:59):
motivating, I'm sure, in that moment.
Oh, was it? Yeah.
Kind of keeps you motivated to think, oh, maybe.
I wonder if some more are going to come and that sort of thing
too. Cook Straight.
I had some a whole bunch of really colourful jellyfish
underneath me and they were actually really well behaved
(44:19):
jellyfish because they stayed about a metre or so underneath
me. So that kept me amused as far as
looking at them but didn't causeme any problems.
Didn't see too many other fish in Cook Straight favos.
Mind you it was pretty rough, sowe had quite decent sized swells
for the chop as well. For Cook straight Ivo straight
(44:41):
to start with we had huge big white jellyfish which looked to
start with a bit like the old plastic bags from the
supermarket. They just were quite raggedy and
I thought that's not very cool. And then but when I was swimming
and swimming above them and theywere diving down and pulsating,
(45:02):
they were perfectly round and absolutely beautiful, especially
with the morning sun on them going down.
I did try to avoid the tentacleswhen I was swimming and didn't
get stung. I felt a few of them on my skin,
but nothing too serious. But Grenya Moss, who was
swimming at the same time as me,she got a few quite nasty welts
(45:26):
on her from the jellyfish. But yeah, I was quite
disappointed in Favo Straight because I really didn't see many
fish, sort of saw maybe half a dozen little snapper about the
size of my hand. And and then every now and then
there were like swarms of teeny tiny little fish and they were
(45:48):
about a metre under. So yeah, when, when I was
swimming above them, it was like, I wonder what would happen
if I go and dive down to them. So I dived down to them and
scared the hell out of my crew who was who thought there was
something wrong with me. Yeah.
Wondering what on earth you weredoing?
But I'm quite a nosy swimmer. Like when I went down to a
(46:13):
distance camp in Lake Brunner with Pit and Abel.
There was a lot of junk on the bottom of the lake, and every
time I went, we did loops. Every time I went round, I would
pick something up. And yeah, one of the things I
picked up was a big Magnum wine bottle which somehow I carried
back to the shore and put it on the shore.
(46:34):
So by the end of several laps I'd given them a nice big pile
of rubbish to take somewhere else.
It's good now, yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you mentioned earlier thatyou swam the Rottnest Challenge.
Have you got other long swims planned for the next couple of
(46:56):
years? Yep, So I also did the Derwent
River swim this year as well. So did 2 swims in two weeks.
So that's part of the Australiantribal crown.
SO34K down the Derwent River from New Norfolk Bridge to
Tasman Bridge. So I did that one first and
(47:18):
really loved that one because itwas it was so cruisy going.
Well, it was was with the tide for the last half of it and it
was just so peaceful. I'd started in the middle of the
night and so it was completely dark.
And because New Norfolk is out in the country, actually the
(47:41):
trick is I was sitting at the boat and I said get on the water
and I went, I can't, I can't seewhere the water is.
Mind playing tricks on you? So even though you know it's
sort of there, it's like stepping out into something
without knowing where the bottomis, you know where the where
(48:01):
you're going to put your foot. It was like.
Just blackness. Blackness, just complete
blackness are. You allowed to film with a
light. Oh yeah, well, so the boat has
lights on it, so they shone the light onto the water and said
get on. Yeah, push actually.
So he got in and got started andthe boats lit up with lights
(48:26):
along the side of it. So I just followed the lights,
basically swim alongside the boat and just really, really
peaceful. But again, I'm pretty nosy while
I was swimming and I found it quite hard to start with because
I couldn't even see what the crew were doing.
So I could see the lights on theside of the boat, but I couldn't
sort of see their movements. And also there were very few
(48:54):
lights on the side of the river either.
So that was pretty much in in total darkness for quite some
time. So it took a little while just
to get get used to. Yeah, that total lack of input,
visual input. Yeah, and also you'd be swimming
(49:15):
with the current. I imagine so, and in fresh
water. Quite a different experience
from the ocean. Yeah, so start with, for the
first few hours the tide was coming in, so the flow of the
river and the tide was sort of neutral, so you didn't get any
assist to start with. But it was just lovely and
(49:35):
peaceful and very, very calm. So we'd actually struck pretty
much no wind. And so it was lovely and
peaceful until we went past one of the factories and I can't
remember what sort of factory itis, but the smell was pretty
disgusting. So it was like, OK, keep your
mouth closed at the moment. Get.
(49:56):
Past it. Yeah, so the bits and pieces
like one spot there are a lot of, you know, little tree
branches and stuff like that sort of coming at you so they
could donk on you, but nothing too serious.
And then another patch we there was as we were got into the, the
(50:17):
river mouth, basically a lot of patches of sort of some sort of
seaweed sort of Mets. So going through that was was
interesting too. And the seagrass kind of got it
everywhere. And I think there's one that
makes me look a bit like Sigmundthe Sea Monster, which you'll
probably be yanked. You mentioned there are three,
(50:40):
three swims on the Triple Crown,obviously.
What's the third swim? So it's from Sandy Bay to Palm
Beach and just north of Sydney, the swim there and there's a
swim, but you can also do it with captain who will take you
along. When you complete a Triple
(51:01):
Crown, do you, I mean, apart from the enormous feeling of
accomplishment, do you get some sort of official documentation
like a trophy certificate or your name folded in there?
So I've got. All the famous for all my
swarms. Actually I don't think there is
a New Zealand Triple Crown certificate.
Maybe that's what they need to do, I think.
(51:23):
You should. There should definitely be
something here to mark that because I don't know how many
people have completed the TripleCrown, but I imagine it can't be
that many. No, it's not.
It's just over 10 I think. Now I can't.
I haven't looked it up for a while.
Yeah, but the Australian cripple.
(51:44):
But it's all on a website, so you can sort of print out bits
and pieces. But it would be nice to actually
have an official certificate. Yeah, and I'm not sure I've got
certificates for both the Australian ones too.
Yeah, but if I can do it, reasonthe next one reasonably soon, I
might be the first one. First person in New Zealand to
(52:06):
have done the New Zealand TripleCrown and the Australian Triple
Crown. Wow, that would be really cool.
Yeah, I know that some of the Wellington Wellington swim crowd
swims in the ice swim championships.
Do you ever come here and swim in Wellington?
Yep, Yep. I've swum down that Oriental Bay
(52:26):
a number of times, not only in the swim series, the ocean swim
series, but also just when I've come down and hang out with the
Wellington crowd and the washingmachines, etcetera.
They're an awesome bunch of people and it's like at the Ice
Swimming Champs, if you want something done, you just ask the
Wellington crowd and somebody will do it for you.
(52:49):
They're such a supportive group of people.
And you know, if you get someonewho's into the chips and lives
in the Wellington area, you knowthey're going to be well looked
after. So it's it's such a cool group
down there and yeah, I really enjoy swimming.
Yeah. It's a great community and I
imagine you must have people around the country that you can
swim with now. Oh yeah, Yep, I can go just
(53:11):
about anywhere in the country. And swimwear.
Like when we were on our way back from Saint Bethan's,
stopped off at Tamaru and swam with a bunch of people there, a
bunch of ice swimmers there, which was really cool.
On my way home. Cool.
Well, Susan, I've really enjoyedtalking to you this morning.
(53:32):
Is there anything else you want to mention that I haven't asked
you about? I could just mention that my
daughter's also done like Taupo,so we're the only mother
daughter combo that have done that.
That's awesome. Well.
Yeah, so she did it before me, so that was part of my
motivation to do it as well. So, yeah, yeah, I think just to
(53:57):
have a bit of a shout out to allof the ice swimmers and the
ocean swimming community out there for the great work that
they do without even realizing it, for the health and
well-being, mental wealth being well-being too of swimmers
around the country. Because being out in the water,
(54:17):
being together, being in nature is just so good for you.
And it's it's what floats my boat basically, and keeps me
strong, keeps me healthy. And I just love it.
Yeah, that's a perfect way to finish the podcast.
Thank you. Yeah, I feel exactly the same.
I know what you mean. Yeah, that's we're so lucky that
(54:40):
we get to swim in the in the outdoors.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Swim Chats.
Please remember to follow or subscribe to the podcast so you
don't miss an episode. And if you enjoyed it, you can
leave a five star rating and review, which helps other people
find it too. Enjoy the water and we'll see
you next time.
Kyota and welcome to Swim Chats,a podcast about ocean swimming.
I'm Shona Riddell, a writer, former journalist and swimmer
from Wellington, Altairo in New Zealand.
For each episode, I talk to a different guest from our swim
community. Remember, if you have any
questions, thoughts or suggestions, you can e-mail me
at swimchatswithshona@gmail.com or follow Swim Chats on
(00:30):
Instagram. A few people have asked how they
can support the podcast. The best way to support it is by
listening to episodes, and you can follow or subscribe so you
don't miss 1. You can also leave a five star
rating which recommends the podcast to other people.
And for those who want to get more involved, I've set up a
Patreon account which you can join to sponsor the show and
(00:51):
become a swim buddy for $5 a month.
As a swim buddy, you get a shoutout on the podcast, access to a
private group chat, advance notice of upcoming guests, and
the opportunity to submit questions.
To find out more, go to patreon.com Swim Chats.
The link is in the episode show notes and in the podcast
(01:11):
description. But if that's not an option for
you, that's totally fine. Being a listener is.
Also awesome. Thank you.
First of all, Susan, welcome to Swim Chats.
I appreciate your time today. Yeah, no problem.
It's nice to meet you. Yeah.
I know you've just wrapped up the New Zealand Ice Swimming
(01:34):
Championships down South and sounds like everything went well
and there may have been a few world records as as well, is
that right? Well, we, yeah, now we went
exceptionally well. We, we actually had, I'm pretty
sure probably more longer distance swims than have been
(01:55):
done before, but I do need to check that.
I'm not 100% sure. So I just can't see it on any of
the records that have been done before.
So yeah, probably. Don't quote me on that one.
Yeah, sure enough, Yeah. I'm keen to talk to you about
the different distances. So just just to clarify for
listeners, the Ice Swimming Championships have been running
(02:16):
since 2022, is that right? Yeah.
So that this has been your 4th event and running St.
Bathans. I have to admit I I needed to
open Google Maps and have a lookto see where St.
Bathans was. It's a it's a very small town on
the South Island and from what Iread, it has quite an
(02:37):
interesting history as well. It was a gold mining town and
what's the population of it do you know?
At the moment, 55, Yep. It's a very, very small town,
it. Was quite a decent sized hill
and the gold miners basically got rid of the hill and made it
(02:57):
into a quite a deep lake so theythey spent a long time there
from the. The pictures I saw the is it the
Blue Lake? Is that what it's called?
Yeah. So it just looked beautiful.
And I know that each year you alternate between open water ice
swims and swimming in a pool. Why is that?
(03:18):
Why do you why do you switch between them?
I think it's nicer to do the longer distances in the open
water. You know when you get to a mile
in the open in a swimming pool, going up and down 25 metre pool
gets a little bit boring. And it's such a cool place at
Saint Bethan's. It's it's kind of magical.
So the Saint Bethan's is more about personal achievement and
(03:43):
personal challenge and getting alittle bit further than you've
done before or oh, can I actually swim, you know, that
sort of distance and that amountof time.
Whereas at the pool, it's becoming more of a competition.
And it's also our selection process for getting into the
(04:03):
world champs. So the world champs, world ice
swimming champs is every two years.
And it's it's usually in Europe somewhere.
So it has been in Russia before,but the last few years it's
alternated between France and Italy.
And I think next year there's going to be pretty fierce
(04:24):
competition for getting into that team.
We've got some awesome swimmers in New Zealand.
Yeah, definitely. And I know you're one of the
founders of the. I just want to get the name
right. The International Ice Swimming
Association, Alto in New Zealandis that.
Were you an ice swimmer before you founded the?
(04:47):
The organization, yeah, kind of.So I first got into it 2020
basically, which was the COVID year.
And because the pools were shut,we had to swim outdoors all
winter. So we were doing that and one of
our friends decided that maybe we should go and swim in some
cold lakes around down the SouthIsland.
(05:08):
And he'd heard about this thing called a nice smile.
So I went down there, pretty naive, not really knowing what I
was letting myself in for, but it sounded like a cool
opportunity. So we went down there and we
swam in Wakatabu like how we areboth like.
And then we went to up and a helicopter to Lake Acuron and I
(05:30):
got out of the helicopter and jumped out and there was a knee
depth snow and my mind just flipped.
It was doing all sorts of thingsand I went snow and swimming
just do not go together. So that was quite a challenge
for me because everybody else had gone down to the lake edge.
They'd set out tarpaulin for alltheir gear and.
(05:52):
And I was, you know, my mind wasgoing, Nah, this is stupid.
But in the end, it was like, well, they're all down there.
They look as though they're OK. So I'm just going to have to
pretend that I'm OK and go on down there and join them.
And by the time I got on the lake, I was OK and the mind had
stopped playing games so much. But yeah, so yeah, three of them
(06:17):
got in first and they did anywhere.
I don't know, they were in therefor a little while and then
Duncan and I got in and we had up on and what is Fred?
AK. So we thought, oh, if we can do
AK in this and that was 4°, maybe we can do this thing
called a nice smile. So we came out of that trip and
(06:41):
started doing some research. So the next year we went to Lake
London and we just basically asked a number of our friends
that we thought were pretty strong swimmers.
You know, a lot of them had beenopen water like cook straight,
(07:01):
favo straight, like topaw, etcetera, swimmers.
So we thought they had a reasonable chance of, of
success. So there were twelve of us that
went down, 12 swimmers and probably a similar number of
supporters. We had our camper vans down in
Springfield, camping ground there.
(07:23):
I don't think they ever normallygot camping ground, you know,
camper vans down there in the winter.
But we were there. We drove up to Lake Bay and set
out a course and we were pretty naive and thinking, Oh yeah, we
could do a 500 metre one day, A1K the next day and a mile the
next day. We've since realised that that's
(07:45):
really speedier and way, way toomuch.
Most people, however, six of the12 of us managed to do it and
which is pretty phenomenal. Although all of those 6 had done
one of the big swims, so I thinkthat makes a difference, having
that kind of acclimatisation in cooler water and for longer
(08:05):
periods of time. So yeah.
So then I came out of going, OK,I've done my, I smile, that's
it, we can pack up, go home and think nothing more of this
stuff. And then as everyone was
leaving, they all seemed to me, oh, I'm coming back next year.
I'm keen. I'm really keen to do it next
(08:26):
year. And I'm thinking it was what I
was thinking, but OK. And then within a couple of
days, my husband and I were going, well, we could do this
and we could do that. So we we kind of got hooked.
And I think the ice swimming is like open water swimming.
Once you start doing it and you find that it's your thing, it's
(08:48):
like, yeah, feels like home. Yep, you're in.
And so just for listeners who don't know what ice swimming is,
it's water that's 5° and below. Is that correct?
It has to be 5.00 on the thermometer or less.
(09:08):
And even if one of the thermometers is above that, we
can't use, can't use those things.
So we kind of hope that it's a little bit less than that.
We were right on the very borderline this year at Saint
Bethan's. So we were sitting on that 4.9
sort of mark, which was a bit nerve wracking every morning.
So you get up and go, is there afrost?
(09:31):
And then you go down to the lakeand.
And we just squeaked in for the whole time, which was great.
Awesome. Yeah.
A lot lot quicker because the air temperature was also above
0, whereas the year before at Alexandra the pole temperature
was 2.6 ish and the air temperature at times was like -4
(09:55):
-, 5 S recovery times. Even though the events were
shorter, the recovery took a lotlonger than we sort of expected.
Right. So at those levels, every degree
or even half a degree counts. Yeah, yeah.
So how many people participated this year in the event?
Is it something that you're finding is growing each year as
(10:17):
more and more people hear about it?
Yeah, definitely growing each year.
So we had twelve the first year at that sort of pre pre ISA
event. Our first ISA event we had 19
and it's just grown every year since then.
And this year I was sort of taken aback by the number of
people who were putting themselves out there for doing
(10:40):
the mile, because the mile is a pretty challenging thing to do.
But because we've kind of last year, I said, look, if you want
to do the mile this year, let's get stuck in and do the 500 or
1K the year before. Because to do a mile, you've got
to have done A500 and A1K beforeyou're even allowed to do it.
Right. So what are what are the
(11:00):
distances that people can enter?Because I know you have an an
extreme eye smile. So I'm interested to talk to you
about that as well, but what arethe smaller distances?
OK, so in the lake we do 250501Kand a mile.
Those are our standard distances.
And then for those people who have done a mile, they can apply
(11:25):
to do an extreme ice mile. So I basically look at what
they've done with their mile, how they swam their mile, their
speed and and their recovery from their mile last time and
decide whether they, in consultation with them, whether
it's a good idea for them to do it or not.
(11:46):
Because every sort of minute after sort of half an hour ish
is getting more and more dangerous.
So my kind of cut off is 50 minutes.
However, we can go a little bit longer depending on what the
swimmer is like and what the recovery is like in history.
And you personally have done an extreme eye smile, is that
(12:09):
correct? Which is about two KS.
Amazing. So yeah, there's there's a
number of things that you can doa 2K1 of them is on altitude.
One of them is if it's under 1° I think.
But also you can the the easiestone to do is to do the two Ki
mean the easiest 1 to organise. I'm not saying it's the easiest
(12:30):
one to actually achieve, but youknow, getting under 1° is pretty
unusual and difficult in New Zealand.
I I don't know that we would even get a lake that was under
1° in New Zealand and up in a helicopter somewhere because
access is always a problem too. So when you are doing
(12:53):
particularly extreme things likethat, you want to be able to
critically and get medical help if you need fairly quickly.
Yeah. So going on to my one I, I've
done 2 extreme eye smiles. The first one was 2K and like in
(13:15):
the Blue Lake at Saint Athens two years ago.
And it's probably the hardest swim I've ever done for the last
100 meters. That last 100 meters was
probably the first time I'd everfelt like I wanted to quit.
And I've done Cook Straight, Favo Straight and Lake Chopo.
So just your arms are not functioning as well as they
(13:38):
could. I think my brain was getting OK,
I could talk to people and but getting my arms to turn over for
that last 100 metres was, was pretty tricky.
However, when I got out of thereand a little bit later, I
thought, well, in the lake I probably didn't go as straight
(13:59):
as I could have done. I probably did quite a bit more
than two K, So I thought, well, I'm going to try for 3K in the
pool where it's, you know, standard distance, you're
turning around all the time. And so last year I got in the
pool at Alexandra and and I managed to do 2.1 K in the last
(14:22):
100 meters or so there too. I was feeling fine, but the
black line on the bottom of the pool started swaying and I went
when it first started I thought,oh that's interesting, I wonder
why it's doing that. And then in the last 50 meters
it was like swaying quite a lot and now it's time to get out.
So I actually pulled myself after the 2.1 K and it was
(14:47):
interesting talking to the people on sidelines too, because
they said actually you looked asthough you were swimming in the
sea. And so obviously my body wasn't
doing what it should be doing. And it was a really good choice
to pull myself out. But both times I recovered
pretty well too. So I seem to be able to tolerate
(15:08):
the cold pretty well. Not sure why that is.
Maybe it's because I grew up in in Topua and swam in the lake as
a kid a lot, you know, swam early spring right through to
sort of autumn. So I don't know, maybe there's
something that as a kid you train it into yourself by the
(15:30):
the silly things that you do. I'm curious to know sort of what
it feels like because I think the coldest water I've ever swim
in is maybe 8 or 9° here in Wellington.
And that would have been a very short dip for me rather than a,
a long swim. But so when you're physically
getting into ice water, is it painful?
(15:51):
Is it? Do you go numb pretty quickly?
It's kind of different each time, but a lot of similar
things and different people experience different things as
well. Getting it is the hardest
because it's mentally it's, it'spretty tough.
I find that in a competition it's or you know, like at
(16:12):
Alexandra or Saint Bethan's or at the world Champs that I was
at a couple of years ago, because there's so much
atmosphere and you know, hype and things like that, you can
get in and get going a lot easier.
But the getting under the water,even if it's 10°, getting under
the water is the hardest bit. I find sort of that 8 to 15
(16:35):
quite often we'll get the, you know, that massive cold headache
for some reason. I don't know whether it's
adrenaline or whatever it is at the OR maybe you just go numb
quicker when it's been under 5 for me, I haven't had the cold
headache so much. Interesting.
(16:55):
Yeah, sometimes I do a bit of backstroke there too, roll over
a bit of freestyle, a bit of backstroke to get sort of under.
But you're but I found the your fingers and toes get quite sore
quite quickly. And they qualify for a nice.
(17:17):
Smile, You can't wear any sort of protective gear, like no
neoprene, right? No, no gloves or anything.
It's just the togs, the cat, thegoggles.
Yep, Togs, cat goggles, That's it.
And earplugs. Earplugs actually make a
difference. And that protects you against
the cold does that. Well, I don't think ears are
(17:37):
designed for having that cold orwater on them so and sometimes
they can get really really sore if you swim in cold water
without the earplugs. So I find the earplugs in all
the time or blue tech. The only thing with blue tech is
normally when you swim with bluetech it comes out fine.
(17:59):
When you swim with it in sort ofunder 5°, you have to leave it
in for a wee while until your head warms up and you can.
Actually kind of freak all theselittle details you might not
know unless you're doing it right.
And there must be other logistics and running a nice
swimming event. I know you have to think even
(18:19):
more about health and safety. So you've got, I know you have
paramedics on site and you've got the support boats and I know
that every participant has a sort of pre swim medical check.
Is that is that correct? Yeah, so they have to have a.
It's a two page, actually three page now document that your
(18:41):
doctor has to sign and fill in various things, do various
health checks and also you have to have an ECG.
So to make sure that your heart is in good condition, because
one of the things about getting into cold water is your heart
can do silly things. So we don't want anybody with a
pre-existing heart condition or sky high blood pressure or that
(19:03):
sort of thing getting into the water because although we've got
the safety measures there. So if it does happen, we get
them out and we'll deal with them pretty quickly.
But we don't want to have that risk of having people who are
unwell getting in and, you know,putting themselves at risk.
(19:27):
Yeah, the other main thing with.So apart from that first part
and also when you when you are learning to go into cold water,
you have got to make sure that you control your breathing and
get your breathing under control.
Because the last thing you want to do is to get a fright.
And you know when when you get afright you go.
(19:48):
So if you do that underwater andthen that is getting water in
your lungs, which is also not a good thing.
So making sure you have had thatexposure to cold water
beforehand and learnt to get under safely, that is really,
really important. Other part that's sort of
dangerous is right at the end. So as you're losing your
(20:13):
function, you can take on water and other things like that too,
and you're putting your body on a lot of stress if you push it
right to the limits. And the next part that's a
little bit dangerous is when youget out of the water and after
you're dressed sort of somewherebetween 15 minutes and a half an
(20:33):
hour after you're dressed, you get the after drop.
So that's where your blood is kind of circulating through to
the cold. Cold blood is circulating
through to your organs and they're going, I don't like this
very much. And you are basically
hypothermic and you shake quite vigorously.
So it's making sure people are warming gradually and.
(20:56):
I saw you have, I saw you have apacking list on the website of,
you know what people should bring to warm themselves up
afterwards. Yeah.
So lots of hot water bottles, sleeping bag.
Yep, Yep. So we get people to bring as
much as they can, but we also provide things like we've got
beds that they can lie down in the stretchers, lots of chairs
(21:19):
and also, you know, warming things afterwards.
So having your snacks, which gives you the sugar to give you
the energy to recover and also, you know, warm drinks, not not
really hot drinks because that actually is not good either.
So it's, it's having, it's, it'sthat gradual rewarming which is
(21:40):
really, really important. Do you envisage with, as you
know as the years progress that the distances will increase as
the ice swimmers get more, you know, as you sort of tick off
these different milestones, willwill there be an extreme,
extreme, I smile, will the watertemperature go down?
(22:03):
Yeah. Well, we, we did have an
extreme, extreme one this year. We had Jackson Arledge, you
probably know from Wellington. He was an absolute machine and
he did 2.75 kilometres. Incredible So.
It is incredible. And you know, next year, I'm
sure two years time, I'm pretty sure that he will be looking at
(22:27):
doing further than that having that speed.
So he's he's pretty quick, so way, way faster than I am.
So he can actually churn throughmore distance and less time.
So you know, he can just about do 3K when I do 2K.
So it means that he can actuallyup those distances a lot more.
(22:47):
And yeah, he's such a character and just got that determination
to be able to do that. Yeah, that's amazing.
And you you talked earlier about, you know, your first ice
swim and just needing to get yourself mentally in the zone in
order to get in and do it. How do the the ice swimmers,
(23:13):
does everyone sort of tend to have a similar process to get
themselves in the right headspace in terms of, you know,
do they do breathing exercises? Their own sort of way of doing
it. I mean, I like to sort of look
at the water and go, yeah, I cando that sort of thing and, and
(23:34):
just calm myself, look at how beautiful it is and sort of do
those sorts of things. So everybody has their own
tricks mentally and as to being able to get in the water And,
but being calm is, is really, really important before you get
in the water. So it's how you calm yourself
and how you talk to yourself. So a lot of it is talking to
(23:57):
yourself before you get in and, and saying the right sort of
things and not the, you know, eliminating the negative sort of
things, sort of breathing helps,but you cannot hyperventilate
before you get in. So I've never looked, I haven't
actually looked at the wormhole stuff, but you don't want to be
(24:21):
hyperventilating before you get in.
That's because that's quite dangerous too.
So it's different. I think the wormhole stuff is a
lot more plunging and sort of just getting in and sort of
being in the water and experiencing the water.
Whereas swimming is very, very different.
You need to just calm yourself, control your breathing, get your
(24:41):
breathing under control before you put your head underwater.
Then once you get your head underwater, you'll probably find
that you're in a bit of a slightpanicky sort of bit, but you've
got to learn to control that too.
So it's, it's learning techniques that work for you.
And you, you do that by talking to other swimmers and, you know,
swimming with other swimmers andgoing, oh, you do that.
(25:05):
Yeah, that makes sense. And I was thinking about
training for these events as well.
I imagine it's a similar thing where people are swapping advice
and slowly, gradually helping their bodies to adapt to cold
water so that their body is ready for the the ice swim.
It's really important to do thatacclimatisation and we're
(25:30):
actually really, really lucky now because we've got people in
most places around New Zealand. We've got Northland, Auckland,
Taranaki, Taronga, sort of Nelson, Melbourne area,
Christchurch, Dunedin and then over in Queensland, Queenstown
sort of area over there, plus random people throughout.
(25:54):
So it's quite easy to go, hey, how about you go and swim with
Francois down in Dunedin and he will help you with, you know,
various things. So there's a group of them now
down there that, you know, the newbies can go and swim with
them and learn the tricks and, and also, you know, when I was a
(26:18):
kid, it was always drummed into me.
Never swim alone. And I think that's even more so
important with the ice swimming,you know, once you get under
15°, it's it's getting dangerous, you know, the the
cold shock and the after drop can happen, you know, anything
under 15°. So really, really important that
you always swim with somebody. So I just try to buddy everybody
(26:41):
up around the country so they have got that support and it's
always, I think nicer to actually learn from others in a
face to face sort of situation than it is to just read a list
of things to do, Although we do have those lists as well.
You mentioned earlier that you have also completed some ultra
(27:04):
marathon swims, so I'm keen to talk to you about those as well.
I know that you've done the New Zealand Triple Crown, so in 2020
you swam Lake Popo, 2021 Cook straight Rokau and Wina and 2022
Favo straight to Outer Kiwa. So first of all,
(27:24):
congratulations, that's an incredible achievement.
And also to swim them all so sort of quickly one after the
other, that's that's a pretty incredible feat too.
Do you mind saying how old you were when you completed the
third swim? I was 61 so. 61 Amazing.
(27:50):
Yeah, when I did Taupo, I thought that was going to be my
only swim. See, this is a bit of a pattern
here, something that I'd kind ofhad in the back of my mind
because when I was, you know, a kid at Taupo Swimming Club names
(28:11):
just got in my head. The first, first woman to swim
like Taupo was Margaret Sweeney.Yeah, we had a float.
You know how the old Christmas parade floats that you went
through town on Christmas? Well, she was with us.
And so we were all dressed up inold fashioned swimming togs,
(28:34):
which were made from, you know, witches, britches and those
sorts of things, all decorated and whatnot.
And yeah, so actually getting tobe with her and hang out with
her and. And know that she'd actually
swam the length of Lake Taupo and yeah, it just sort of sat
(28:55):
there for a long time until we. Yeah.
So there is a swim across Lake Taupo 2, which is the 5K from
Acacia Bay to Two Mile Bay. And because I was, I think I was
8-9 and ten when my dad rode across with somebody as a
support person and I was in the boat with him.
(29:17):
And each time I was saying I canswim faster than this person,
why won't they let me do it? And was pretty angry that they
wouldn't let me do it because I was too young.
So I think that kind of helped the motivation as well.
And then I went on to be a New Zealand Rep swimmer in the pool.
(29:39):
We did a little bit of open water swimming, like mostly like
Carapiro sort of 2K swims and things like that.
But it wasn't really until I gave up swimming and saw Philip
Rush and Meta McKenzie and thoseguys doing their thing with Cook
Straight, etcetera, that I sort of found out about the longest,
(30:00):
longest swims. And if I had gone back to it and
done at the end, it would have been so much easier.
But you know, life had moved on as it does and had kids and
whatnot. And yeah, and then I once I had
(30:22):
kids, I spent a lot of time withthem and sort of ignored myself
as a lot of mums do. And I try to tell mums these
days, you know, make sure that you do look after yourself and
take time for yourself and your exercise so that you don't end
up, you know, well overweight and with health problems and,
and whatnot, sort of before yourtime.
(30:45):
I was in my 40s and well overweight and beginning to have
some health problems. And I saw the harbour crossing,
the very first harbour crossing.And so in 2006 I went, oh, I
wonder if I can do that. Got in the pool and swim, you
know, worked up to throwing 3K and went, OK, I'll enter now.
(31:06):
So I entered and got halfway across and went, oh, I'm
exhausted, but I was like halfway across.
It's like, well, can't go back, might as well carry on forward
and got to the other end. And it was just an amazing
feeling to have achieved doing that, you know, after being
(31:26):
quite nervous at the start and getting out and just the bunch
of people were amazing. And I got hooked on to open
water swimming and was doing theocean swim series for, you know,
I still do them. I.
Think it's going to be one of myquestions whether you still do
the the smaller swims, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I do like the, in
(31:50):
Auckland, we've got the Koimarama Swim Series every
Thursday night over the summer. And that's great because you
just you're into the series and you just turn up, Do you swim,
have a chat to everybody, get out and then go home.
And the Ocean Swim Series, I don't do the full series anymore
because just fitting in other swims that I do, but I usually
(32:11):
do at least two or three swims every year.
And I really enjoy it because it's it's getting in with other
people that often you're standing at the beginning of the
race and you're chatting away tosomebody who's never done it
before and they're pretty nervous.
That's just nice to be able to pass on that, that good feeling
that people care about you and people want you to do so that
(32:34):
you can do so just giving peoplethat extra little bits boost
it's gives. Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah. And so I get the feeling you,
you know, after quite a break having kids and you got back in
the water and then gradually just started growing your
(32:57):
distance when the when opportunities came up, you would
take them. Is that right?
Pretty much that's me. It's like somebody comes along
it's like yeah, OK, think about it afterwards.
But yeah, yeah, like a friend ofmine been doing the 3K for quite
some time and was getting prettyused to it and, and almost
(33:18):
getting a bit blase and go, Oh yeah, I can jump in and do that
without too much training. And, and then so a friend of
mine said, how about we do this 10K and and topo.
And this was like about two months before and I hadn't been
doing a lot of training before that.
So I think we got up to 515 K before we did it.
(33:38):
And so the two of us jumped on this 10K race.
And because it's along the shoreof Lake Taupo, it was like I
could get out anytime I want to,you know, as you're going along.
And the 1st 3K was OK and then the 4th K was not too bad.
(34:01):
But from about 4:00 to 8:00 KS, I really struggled because
mentally I hadn't really done the distance, I hadn't done the
training and mentally it was really, really tough.
So was very tempted to, to get out, but then I passed Mike who
was the guy that I entered with and because his arm was really,
(34:24):
really sore and he was sort of swimming, limping along
basically. So I thought, well, I've got
past and now I can't stop now. So just a little bit competitive
and carried on to finish the 10Kjust before him, which was the
last time he ever let me beat him.
So, you know, got to got to havebragging rights somewhere along
(34:45):
the line. That's right, and it's always
good to have someone to compete with.
It can be quite motivating, can't it?
Yeah. So after that it was, yeah, it
did a number of 10 KS. They got easier and then they
were doing the epic, epic, whichwas the 5K, then 10K, then 2
(35:06):
1/2, all in one day. So entered that and we ended up,
because the weather was pretty awful, the Adacia Bay going
around in circles there, and that's what I was swinging with.
Ah, and I was swimming side by side with Katrina Price and she
(35:30):
had done Topor a few years beforehand.
And I'm going, oh, I can't be that slow after all.
Maybe I can do Topor. So then decided to put that in
in motion and sort of had a chatto Phil and he gave me a little
bit of advice and and yeah, so in 2020 I set out for to do
(35:54):
Taupo. Amazing.
And then after you'd completed that swim, was that when you
considered doing the other swimsin the Triple Crown, or was that
more after Cook Straight? Well, I went to because I hadn't
had any coaching for a long, long time.
I thought I will go see Brent Foster and just just get him to
(36:20):
check out my stroke and see if there's anything I need to
premises before I did Topor. And he jumped in the water with
me and we looked at my stroke, looked at speed and whatnot.
And I said to him, he said to me, have you ever considered
doing cook straight? And I said no, no, I'm too slow
to do that. And he said, actually there's
(36:40):
people that are slower than you that have made cook straight, so
you should really give it, give it some thought.
So once I'd done Taupo, I said to Phil, you know, would I be
fast enough to do cook straight?And he said you'd have to do a
bit more speed work and whatnot,but we'd give it a go.
(37:02):
So that's what we did. Yeah, yeah, that was actually
going to be one of my questions because I know from talking to
other swimmers on this podcast, when you're swimming, cook
straight and favo straight, you've got to beat the the
changing tide. And that's what partly why speed
is so important, so you don't get sort of pushed out away from
(37:23):
your destination. Yeah.
So how, how do you work on speed?
I don't know if that's a silly question, but I find the the
faster I try and swim, often theslower I am.
Is that is that something where you you stop trying to swim fast
and you just concentrate on a certain technique?
(37:44):
This is a couple of things. So if you're always swimming in
the sea, generally you either stay the same speed or you get a
bit slower because you're just doing the same thing over and
over and over again. Your speed work comes in the
pool. So doing your sets of two
hundreds or 4 hundreds, even your 50s and 20 fives, it's
(38:07):
really, really important. So what I was doing is I swam
with the squad at West Wave withSue Pilkington.
And it's great because you get in the new in the morning before
work or whatever, you get the program, you get told what to
do. You don't have to think, which
is great. And you've got other people to
(38:27):
motivate you to swim a little bit faster and to push yourself
to go, oh, can I beat them today?
Or, you know, and there's that friendly rivalry that and, and
lots of fun. So before cook straight, I was
doing the 6:00 session and the 7:00 session and then staying in
and, and doing anywhere between 20 and 31 hundreds afterwards on
(38:51):
a certain time. And that was actually fantastic
because when it came to the end of my swim the last two hours, I
had to really, really push it because the tide was coming in
quick and I was going to be swept in the wrong direction.
So, and if I'd done that, I would have had another three
(39:12):
hours of swimming if I hadn't hit shore.
So it was having to actually up the gears in that last two hours
after you've been swimming already for 8 hours and so doing
those 2031 hundreds after, aftertwo hours of up squad I think
made the big difference. Right.
(39:33):
Just being able, having had thatpractice with Sprint training as
well as endurance. So if you're going sort of on
145 and trying to hit a certain time, I think that's and to
improve that time each time. And I think when you're trying
to improve your speed, you've got to really work on technique
as well, because a lot of peoplewhen they go faster, well, when
(39:58):
they think they're going faster,their arms are turning over
quicker, but they're losing efficiency.
So it's. It's turning your arms over
faster and keeping the efficiency and the number of
strokes per length and things like that.
It's really important to be ableto keep an eye on that sort of
thing as well. And when you train, you
obviously need to have experience swimming in all sorts
of different weather conditions because you presumably don't
(40:22):
know what's exactly is going to happen on the day.
How do you find swimming in sortof choppy water?
Is that something you're quite confident in?
I actually really and, and well,the choppy not so much, but the
big waves and stuff like that, Ifind it quite fun.
So I recently did Rottnest Channel Swim, which is from
(40:42):
Perth to Rottnest as well. And we had two to 3M waves going
sideways at us, which I actuallyquite enjoyed.
But you know, a lot of people don't.
The bit I didn't enjoy was trying to feed because I was
either trying to be the bat waves were either trying to push
me under the boat or I was trying to catch the boat to get
my bottle. And I'd have like a mouthful
(41:05):
have to put the top on and let it go and then swim to catch up
again. And you know, those sorts of
things, which is more challenging.
And then getting the food as well off the boat when it's, you
know, that sort of waves, that'sreally challenging as well in
the end, because the Rodney's Channel swim has just recently
(41:28):
allowed you to use a tow float. So if your kayaker can't cope
for whatever reason, and my kayaker couldn't cope anymore.
He was cold, He was frozen and exhausted from, you know,
battling the wind and the waves because it's actually harder for
them than it is for the swimmer.So to have be able to get him
(41:48):
out, get him warm and for me to have the tow float on was was
good because I could keep keep with the boat quite happily
that. And in the end I just said to
them, look, throw my drink bottle over and I just tied it
to my tow float and used that for the last three hours.
I think when I was in Rottnest it was just easier than trying
(42:11):
to feed off the boat. What sort of food and drink do
you like to have for a long swim?
A lot of it's just mainly like Ido have water Mag Foss in it too
too in case I get cramp. Coke sometimes towards the end.
And food I try to keep as natural as I can.
(42:34):
So things like Ginger crunch or your brownie, those slices
slices or sandwiches, peanut butter or Vegemite sandwiches,
that kind of my go to occasionally.
I have gels. I have the gels there as well if
I want those, but I find that the natural food actually sits
(42:56):
better on my stomach and it's just square.
I'm showing my age there. I have centimeters doesn't
doesn't have the same ring to it.
And during your three Triple Crown swims, did you have any
exciting encounters with marine life?
(43:17):
So, you know, some people meet dolphins on their swims or.
Yeah, anything like that? In Cook Straight I had, I think
they were dusky dolphins. They were fairly small ones.
It might be Maui dolphins, I'm not sure.
But they kind of swim perpendicular to us, so
underneath me on the boat, and then they do a jump or two on
(43:39):
the other side. Then they come back again.
So they were, but they zoomed out so quick.
That was so cool. So they hung around for about 10
minutes or so, and I kept calling them back, but they
weren't listening. It's funny to talk to yourself
about when you're swimming, yeah.
Well, yeah, that would have beenpretty, pretty exciting and
(43:59):
motivating, I'm sure, in that moment.
Oh, was it? Yeah.
Kind of keeps you motivated to think, oh, maybe.
I wonder if some more are going to come and that sort of thing
too. Cook Straight.
I had some a whole bunch of really colourful jellyfish
underneath me and they were actually really well behaved
(44:19):
jellyfish because they stayed about a metre or so underneath
me. So that kept me amused as far as
looking at them but didn't causeme any problems.
Didn't see too many other fish in Cook Straight favos.
Mind you it was pretty rough, sowe had quite decent sized swells
for the chop as well. For Cook straight Ivo straight
(44:41):
to start with we had huge big white jellyfish which looked to
start with a bit like the old plastic bags from the
supermarket. They just were quite raggedy and
I thought that's not very cool. And then but when I was swimming
and swimming above them and theywere diving down and pulsating,
(45:02):
they were perfectly round and absolutely beautiful, especially
with the morning sun on them going down.
I did try to avoid the tentacleswhen I was swimming and didn't
get stung. I felt a few of them on my skin,
but nothing too serious. But Grenya Moss, who was
swimming at the same time as me,she got a few quite nasty welts
(45:26):
on her from the jellyfish. But yeah, I was quite
disappointed in Favo Straight because I really didn't see many
fish, sort of saw maybe half a dozen little snapper about the
size of my hand. And and then every now and then
there were like swarms of teeny tiny little fish and they were
(45:48):
about a metre under. So yeah, when, when I was
swimming above them, it was like, I wonder what would happen
if I go and dive down to them. So I dived down to them and
scared the hell out of my crew who was who thought there was
something wrong with me. Yeah.
Wondering what on earth you weredoing?
But I'm quite a nosy swimmer. Like when I went down to a
(46:13):
distance camp in Lake Brunner with Pit and Abel.
There was a lot of junk on the bottom of the lake, and every
time I went, we did loops. Every time I went round, I would
pick something up. And yeah, one of the things I
picked up was a big Magnum wine bottle which somehow I carried
back to the shore and put it on the shore.
(46:34):
So by the end of several laps I'd given them a nice big pile
of rubbish to take somewhere else.
It's good now, yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, you mentioned earlier thatyou swam the Rottnest Challenge.
Have you got other long swims planned for the next couple of
(46:56):
years? Yep, So I also did the Derwent
River swim this year as well. So did 2 swims in two weeks.
So that's part of the Australiantribal crown.
SO34K down the Derwent River from New Norfolk Bridge to
Tasman Bridge. So I did that one first and
(47:18):
really loved that one because itwas it was so cruisy going.
Well, it was was with the tide for the last half of it and it
was just so peaceful. I'd started in the middle of the
night and so it was completely dark.
And because New Norfolk is out in the country, actually the
(47:41):
trick is I was sitting at the boat and I said get on the water
and I went, I can't, I can't seewhere the water is.
Mind playing tricks on you? So even though you know it's
sort of there, it's like stepping out into something
without knowing where the bottomis, you know where the where
(48:01):
you're going to put your foot. It was like.
Just blackness. Blackness, just complete
blackness are. You allowed to film with a
light. Oh yeah, well, so the boat has
lights on it, so they shone the light onto the water and said
get on. Yeah, push actually.
So he got in and got started andthe boats lit up with lights
(48:26):
along the side of it. So I just followed the lights,
basically swim alongside the boat and just really, really
peaceful. But again, I'm pretty nosy while
I was swimming and I found it quite hard to start with because
I couldn't even see what the crew were doing.
So I could see the lights on theside of the boat, but I couldn't
sort of see their movements. And also there were very few
(48:54):
lights on the side of the river either.
So that was pretty much in in total darkness for quite some
time. So it took a little while just
to get get used to. Yeah, that total lack of input,
visual input. Yeah, and also you'd be swimming
(49:15):
with the current. I imagine so, and in fresh
water. Quite a different experience
from the ocean. Yeah, so start with, for the
first few hours the tide was coming in, so the flow of the
river and the tide was sort of neutral, so you didn't get any
assist to start with. But it was just lovely and
(49:35):
peaceful and very, very calm. So we'd actually struck pretty
much no wind. And so it was lovely and
peaceful until we went past one of the factories and I can't
remember what sort of factory itis, but the smell was pretty
disgusting. So it was like, OK, keep your
mouth closed at the moment. Get.
(49:56):
Past it. Yeah, so the bits and pieces
like one spot there are a lot of, you know, little tree
branches and stuff like that sort of coming at you so they
could donk on you, but nothing too serious.
And then another patch we there was as we were got into the, the
(50:17):
river mouth, basically a lot of patches of sort of some sort of
seaweed sort of Mets. So going through that was was
interesting too. And the seagrass kind of got it
everywhere. And I think there's one that
makes me look a bit like Sigmundthe Sea Monster, which you'll
probably be yanked. You mentioned there are three,
(50:40):
three swims on the Triple Crown,obviously.
What's the third swim? So it's from Sandy Bay to Palm
Beach and just north of Sydney, the swim there and there's a
swim, but you can also do it with captain who will take you
along. When you complete a Triple
(51:01):
Crown, do you, I mean, apart from the enormous feeling of
accomplishment, do you get some sort of official documentation
like a trophy certificate or your name folded in there?
So I've got. All the famous for all my
swarms. Actually I don't think there is
a New Zealand Triple Crown certificate.
Maybe that's what they need to do, I think.
(51:23):
You should. There should definitely be
something here to mark that because I don't know how many
people have completed the TripleCrown, but I imagine it can't be
that many. No, it's not.
It's just over 10 I think. Now I can't.
I haven't looked it up for a while.
Yeah, but the Australian cripple.
(51:44):
But it's all on a website, so you can sort of print out bits
and pieces. But it would be nice to actually
have an official certificate. Yeah, and I'm not sure I've got
certificates for both the Australian ones too.
Yeah, but if I can do it, reasonthe next one reasonably soon, I
might be the first one. First person in New Zealand to
(52:06):
have done the New Zealand TripleCrown and the Australian Triple
Crown. Wow, that would be really cool.
Yeah, I know that some of the Wellington Wellington swim crowd
swims in the ice swim championships.
Do you ever come here and swim in Wellington?
Yep, Yep. I've swum down that Oriental Bay
(52:26):
a number of times, not only in the swim series, the ocean swim
series, but also just when I've come down and hang out with the
Wellington crowd and the washingmachines, etcetera.
They're an awesome bunch of people and it's like at the Ice
Swimming Champs, if you want something done, you just ask the
Wellington crowd and somebody will do it for you.
(52:49):
They're such a supportive group of people.
And you know, if you get someonewho's into the chips and lives
in the Wellington area, you knowthey're going to be well looked
after. So it's it's such a cool group
down there and yeah, I really enjoy swimming.
Yeah. It's a great community and I
imagine you must have people around the country that you can
swim with now. Oh yeah, Yep, I can go just
(53:11):
about anywhere in the country. And swimwear.
Like when we were on our way back from Saint Bethan's,
stopped off at Tamaru and swam with a bunch of people there, a
bunch of ice swimmers there, which was really cool.
On my way home. Cool.
Well, Susan, I've really enjoyedtalking to you this morning.
(53:32):
Is there anything else you want to mention that I haven't asked
you about? I could just mention that my
daughter's also done like Taupo,so we're the only mother
daughter combo that have done that.
That's awesome. Well.
Yeah, so she did it before me, so that was part of my
motivation to do it as well. So, yeah, yeah, I think just to
(53:57):
have a bit of a shout out to allof the ice swimmers and the
ocean swimming community out there for the great work that
they do without even realizing it, for the health and
well-being, mental wealth being well-being too of swimmers
around the country. Because being out in the water,
(54:17):
being together, being in nature is just so good for you.
And it's it's what floats my boat basically, and keeps me
strong, keeps me healthy. And I just love it.
Yeah, that's a perfect way to finish the podcast.
Thank you. Yeah, I feel exactly the same.
I know what you mean. Yeah, that's we're so lucky that
(54:40):
we get to swim in the in the outdoors.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Swim Chats.
Please remember to follow or subscribe to the podcast so you
don't miss an episode. And if you enjoyed it, you can
leave a five star rating and review, which helps other people
find it too. Enjoy the water and we'll see
you next time.
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.