The post Guest Post: The Fine Line Between Fear and Excitement appeared first on Total Immersion.

But the subjects in that study weren’t even the least efficient swimmers. They at least could swim well enough to participate and all probably thought their swimming was ‘OK.’   It’s also been estimated that elite swimmers are between 9% and 10% efficient. Yes, Virginia, even Sun Yang wastes over 90% of his energy.

This is far better than the rest of us, but still way short of the efficiency of land athletes (nordic skiers, runners, cyclists) which can be as high as 36%.

Most of us are  in a somewhat nebulous middle. Is it possible to estimate your own efficiency? Are you 4% efficient. 6%? Maybe even 8%?

I’ve drafted a set of experiential descriptions–how your swimming feels, more than a time you may swim for a particular distance–that I believe are fairly good gauges of the level of efficiency you’ve reached. I.E. At any level of efficiency, how are you likely to experience swimming, or what capabilities are you likely to possess. Here’s what I came up with.

Efficiency Index of Human Swimmers in Freestyle

(Note: Some, but not all, of the experiences listed in each category, can qualify you. E.G. You might be 5% efficient, but not yet feel fully comfortable in open water.)

1% to 2% Swimming crawl for even the shortest distance (a few strokes) is unpleasant and exhausting. (Though you may be able to swim a bit farther, and even feel reasonably comfortable, using breaststroke.) You experience considerable difficulty and discomfort with staying afloat (you feel your legs sinking) and it’s always a struggle–or even panic-inducing–just trying to breathe.

3% to 4% You can swim for a minute or two continuously. You can extend that distance–up to perhaps as much as 1500 meters—with artificial support from a pull buoy or wetsuit, or with regular rest breaks, but feel somewhat drained afterward. If you do triathlon, you spend part of the cycling leg recovering from the swim—or feel the entire rest of your race is compromised by the difficulty of the swim. Swimming faster seems too much to hope for since even slow paces are so tiring. You never improve, no matter how much you swim. Swimming may feel like a ‘good workout,; but you do it more out of obligation than enjoyment.

To reach the next level you need: Balance.

5% to 6% You feel great comfort in the water. You can swim a mile with sufficient ease that it seems plausible to complete a 5k (equivalent of a half-marathon in running) or more. You feel confident about swimming in open water. If you do triathlon, you feel quite fresh at the conclusion of the swim leg and regularly achieve a respectable, mid-pack position. Your kick and breathing both feel relaxed and controlled. . You can achieve small increases in pace with reasonable effort.

To reach the next level you need: A more stable and sleeker body position.

7% to 8% You feel more at home in the water than anywhere else, and swimming feels better and is more satisfying than any other physical activity. Your stroke—including both catch and 2-beat kick–feels integrated and seamless up to about 85% of maximum effort and heart rate. You can swim faster, whenever you choose, with a reasonable amount of effort. Swimming a marathon distance seems completely plausible, if you devote a concentrated period of 10 to 12 weeks to preparing for it. If you compete in open water swimming (inclusive of triathlon swim legs) you regularly place in the Top 5% to 10% of your age group.

To reach the next level you need: Highly effective propulsion skills–particularly a firm catch and well-tuned 2-Beat Kick.

9% or more If you had youth and athleticism, your efficiency would probably put you among the elite. But, in middle age or beyond, you enjoy something more valuable—a sense that you swim with a skill (even artistry) and awareness shared by few. You regularly experience psychological Flow States in practice—and occasionally in competition. You virtually always feel you work with the water, even at close to maximum effort. When you lose effectiveness, it’s minor. You quickly sense the cause and can easily adjust your stroke to get back in flow. You have a clear sense of your Kaizen opportunities—no matter how subtle—and know how to achieve them. You can consistently and proportionately convert an increase in SPL or Tempo into an increase in Pace.

How are you swimming?

Do these descriptions ring true for you? Do you use other indicators to estimate your efficiency? Have you created Kaizen benchmarks on skill development that help chart your progress to higher levels of efficiency–and enjoyment?

The post How Efficient Is Your Freestyle? appeared first on Total Immersion.

Easy Fly is a specialized way to learn and swim butterfly, refined by Total Immersion over the past 12 years. and designed to allow swimmers of any age or athletic ability to learn a smooth, relaxing and rhythmic butterfly within hours . . . then to progress to swimming butterfly for longer distances (200 yards or meters for many; a mile or more for some) within few weeks or months, by following thoughtful methods of practice oriented to improving and imprinting efficiency.

While Easy Fly is designed to prioritize ease more than speed, it can give competitive swimmers—especially Masters–the potential to set and improve on personal records and perform with distinction in competition. This ‘secret’ to Easy Fly is taking advantage of existing/natural forces to replace work traditionally done by the muscles.

Is Butterfly truly the hardest stroke?

If you’ve read or heard descriptions of butterfly in the press, you know that it’s unfailingly described as grueling. And it’s not just the media that thinks of fly this way: Swimmers often swim the stroke specifically to get a ‘good workout’ from just a single lap. Swim coaches regularly inflict butterfly repeats on wayward swimmers as punishment for some practice transgression. The swimming mainstream considers butterfly the aquatic equivalent of ‘hard labor.’ Thus, it’s no surprise that newer or non-competitive swimmers often view butterfly with a mix of intimidation and fascination.

In June 2010, Wall Street Journal reporter Kevin Helliker, in the article For the Athlete Who Has It All, wrote “Like many fitness swimmers, I can go mile after mile of freestyle without stopping. But a single lap of butterfly leaves me gasping. In an age of ultra-marathons, Ironman triathlons, and crowds chugging up Mount Everest, long-distance butterfly swimming is becoming a new frontier for fitness fanatics. The mere sight of a swimmer doing lap after lap of butterfly garners attention of the sort that merely finishing an Ironman triathlon no longer generates.”

Why is the ability to swim lap after lap of fly so rare that it leaves other swimmers semi-awestruck? According to Helliker, “Fly swimming requires enormous strengthening of every muscle in the body.” One of the distance flyers quoted in the article, Tom Boettcher (the author of a book called Core Training), told Helliker he spends two hours training in the gym for every hour in the pool.

Yet if you closely study Olympic medalists, such as American swimmers Michael Phelps and Dana Vollmer, you’re more likely to be struck by their rhythm and grace. The power in their strokes is more inherent than overt. Indeed, it’s while swimming butterfly that humans most resemble those most graceful of all swimmers–dolphins.

Vollmer, who broke the women’s world record in winning the 100-meter butterfly at the London 2012 Olympics, told the NY Times just days before her record-breaking swim: “I really think about being light in the water and everything moving forward as I swim. The butterfly is really about grace and rhythm.” She added: “People struggle in the last 25 meters; that’s when I really focus on staying as light as I can with my arms, and not punching down with my legs,”

London 2012 Olympic Champion Dana Vollmer

66 y.o. TI Founder Terry Laughlin

So which is the real butterfly—graceful water-dance or energy-sapping, muscle deadening struggle? This series of blog posts will explain the difference between ‘ButterStruggle’—the version the vast majority of us fall into—and ‘Easy Fly’, a revolutionary new way to swim butterfly. Easy Fly is based on the fluent grace of elite swimmers like Dana Vollmer, but anyone can learn it.

Coming Next: Part 2 40 Years of HARD Fly: Why I Almost Gave Up on Swimming Butterfly

Click here to learn more about our newest Self Coaching Course: Butterfly, Backstroke, and Breaststroke Made Easy

The post Can you swim an EASY Butterfly? Part 1 of 3 appeared first on Total Immersion.

Well, the goal was simple . . . I wanted to join the list of swimmers who have swum from Europe to Africa across the Gibraltar Straits, joining the ranks of such renowned swimmers as Colin Hill (founder of Chillswim), Simon Murie (founder of Swimtrek) and, of course, Total Immersion founder, Terry Laughlin, who completed the swim with two TI compadres—Lennart Larsson of Sweden and Tommi Patilla of Finland—in October 2013.

But, as I lay there in my hospital bed on 26 September 2015 only 24 hours after receiving a ceramic replacement left hip (the original had atrophied following a skiing accident in March 2012), the plan was going to be a little more complicated!

By the end of March 2016, I had confirmed my slot for the swim for late June 2017 and had worked with a personal trainer to generally improve my physical well-being including walking without a limp and strengthening my core. I had got back into the pool and could reasonably swim for 60-90 minutes. With 15 months to go, all I had to do now was:

• Jettison the wetsuit in open water;
• Improve my base swim speed and stroke efficiency; and
• Get plenty of sea swimming experience.

During this time, I was also guided by a great piece of advice from Professor Greg White, an elite performance coach, who amongst his many ‘claims to fame’ coached the English comedian, David Walliams, to swim both the English Channel and the length of the River Thames for charity. Greg’s advice was simple: ‘Make sure you enjoy the process, because you cannot predict what will happen on the day’!

Jettisoning the wetsuit was relatively easy; I put two river swim events on the calendar, a 6K/3.7mi swim in late July 2016 and a 10K/6.2mi swim in September. As practice, I swam without a wetsuit both in a local lake and, a couple of times, in Dover Harbour with the (soon to be) Channel swimmers.

Improving my base swim speed and stroke efficiency was the key to completing the swim. This brought me into contact with Tracey Baumann, a very experienced Total Immersion teacher and Master Coach. Tracey has a cadre of excellent open water swimmers who this year alone have done a 20-hour English Channel swim, a 2-person English Channel relay and a Jersey to France solo swim. I found myself in exalted company.

Over a series of one to one lessons, Tracey managed to (i) adjust my head position, (ii) commence my breathing rotation earlier, (iii) shorten and soften my hand entry position, (iv) steepen my arm entry ahead of the catch, (v) correct my over-rotation and (vi) introduce me to the 2-Beat kick! In just four months, she remodelled my stroke, improved my stroke efficiency (as measured by stroke count in a 25m pool) by 15%, and my base swim speed had improved by 10%. This ‘old dog’ had clearly learned new tricks.

Ed displays TI form in mid-swim—streamlined legs and “Front Quadrant” timing.

During this period, my personal trainer continued to work principally on shoulder strength, flexibility, and core development.

The final piece of the jigsaw was to increase my sea swimming experience. With my window booked for the end of June 2017, I would only have six possible opportunities to get into the sea, knowing that, in early May, the temperature would be no more than 53 degrees. So, during the winter, I joined the cold-water enthusiasts/lunatics at Tooting Bec Lido in South London and swam outdoors unheated throughout the winter. The temperature in January dropped as low as 35F. The endorphin buzz and general health benefits from this were enormous and I will continue this practice in future years. Anyway, after sea swims of 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours and 5 hours on successive weekends all in sub-60 degree water, I tapered back down to 2 hours for the weekend before we flew out to Spain.

On the morning of the swim, I could confidently look at myself in the mirror and happily confirm two things:

• I was as well prepared as I could possibly be; and
• Whatever happened, I had enjoyed the process.

I hope that you enjoy the youTube video beautifully compiled by my wife and daughter for me. It was a truly memorable and in many ways life-changing event for me. I had proved to myself that I could make my own wishes come true both by planning properly and, as importantly, executing on that plan.

I cannot thank Jerome Sawyers (personal trainer), Tracey Baumann (Total Immersion teacher) and Emma France (Channel Training co-ordinator) enough for their help in allowing me to realise my goal.

Last but not least, I must mention my good friend and swimming partner, Michael Fabray. We intuitively worked as a team throughout the swim whilst spurring each other on. A little testosterone in the water on the day clearly increased the intensity and enabled us to swim out through the incoming tide for the first hour. Indeed, I am convinced that it was this close partnership that enabled us to complete the swim in a very respectable time. I think for both of us it was a shared experience that neither of us will ever forget.

I am genuinely not sure what is next but . . . I know that there will be a next!

The post Guest Post: A goal without a plan is just a wish! appeared first on Total Immersion.

I have always been a very average swimmer. I learned old-school freestyle technique as a kid at my local YMCA. As an adult, my distance swimming was limited to a handful of short distance triathlons, and the swim was my weakness in these races. I’d become resigned to thinking I could not become a strong distance swimmer without a lot of laps, paddles, and time.

Over the last 10 years my fitness routine has been devoted exclusively to road biking. A back injury kept me from running, and swimming was something I did occasionally at my health club to help break up my biking routine. I usually swam 20 to 40 minutes, mixing freestyle with breaststroke. I could swim only 100 yards  of freestyle before I got winded, then would swim breaststroke to recover from fatigue.

Last November, a friend of mine, who has always been a strong swimmer, suggested we both train for the Nevis to St Kitts Channel Swim. I was not sure I could manage a 2.5-mile swim in open ocean. My open water experience was limited to short (a mile or less) lake swims more than 20 years ago. Nonetheless, I agreed to do the event that was scheduled in late March.

I began pool training for the swim in December. I started adding laps and using paddles in my routine. After a few weeks, I found that I was sore and could only manage an hour of slow freestyle. Then, in late December, I found some TI videos on YouTube and purchased your Effortless Endurance Self Coaching Course and the “Total Immersion” book.

Almost overnight I found myself improving! Using your tips on head position (“release your head”), “stroke thoughts” and “shaping the vessel” dramatically changed how I felt in the water. Quickly, I was swimming freestyle almost effortlessly and found myself able to focus on every stroke as I tried to limit the bubbles around my hand and perfect my 2 beat kick. By early March, I had completed several 4,000 yd training swims in approx 1.5 hours and felt great at the end of each session. I felt ready for the ocean.

The Nevis/St Kitts Channel swim in late March was outstanding! Despite no ocean swimming experience, I was comfortable and relaxed. There was some chop/swell as we crossed the channel, but your tips about how to stabilize myself made all the difference. I enjoyed the entire swim and finished respectably in 1hr 47 minutes.

Jim Nystrom comes ashore on St. Kitts after swimming from Nevis in the background.

TI has made a huge difference in my swimming and fitness and has helped me to balance a very busy life. Thanks again Terry for sharing your experience and knowledge.

Jim Nystrom is an aviation professional and lives with his family in Scottsdale, Arizona.  Swimming is an important part of his life and is a great complement to his road biking. In addition to the physical benefits from his time in the pool, he enjoys the focus, learning, solitude, and rejuvenation that swimming gives him, especially as he maintains a very busy travel schedule for his job. He is now working on mastering bilateral breathing and has also begun to explore the benefits of stretching.

The post Guest Post: Swimming Nevis to St Kitts the TI Way appeared first on Total Immersion.

Our interview begins at the 25:00 mark of this audio file.

Rich and I discuss a blog post I’d written: What prompted me, after 28 years, to begin breathing to both sides?

Twenty-five of those left-side breathing years were pre-TI, so my breathing habits had become mostly unconscious incompetence.

Breathing to the right for the first time (in 1992) felt uncomfortable, but alerted me that my left-breathing was inefficient, because I took two more strokes for 50 meters than when I breathed to the right.

Yet I was initially trying to achieve the same level of comfort when breathing to the right side. So left-side breathing, while less efficient provided the benchmark I tried to match on my new breathing side.

However, because my right-side breathing lacked bad habits that had built up over 28 years of ‘unconscious’ breathing,  it progressed fairly rapidly.

Honestly cannot recall the time when right side displaced left for me in setting the standard for left side breathing technique, but I can remember the specific breathing skill that I recognized I was better at on my new breathing side, I had a noticeably more patient lead (left) hand while breathing right. So my first example of Conscious Incompetence was to try to make my lead (right) hand more patient, while breathing left.

I now keep my head low while breathing to the left.

Next I noticed that I slightly lifted my head while breathing left . . . which caused my lead hand to stroke prematurely. So that became Conscious Incompetence item #2,  And so on.

Just as I do on the right.

Enjoy the podcast.

The post Podcast on Bilateral Breathing appeared first on Total Immersion.

My guesstimate is based on surveys we conduct of participants in our Open Water workshops or camps. Typically, about 75 percent report that they’ve participated in a triathlon or open water swim. But fewer than 50 percent know their time for 100 yards or meters.

To me this is putting the cart before the horse: The most reliable baseline for being able to improve performance through more effective (and personally relevant) training is to know your time for 100 yards or meters. And even if you have no plans to swim in an organized event, this information can be invaluable to personal improvement and mastery aspirations.

The Power of Two Metrics

Now that I’ve made the case for you to begin recording your time for short sets (three to five repeats) of 100 yards, I’ll urge you to track a second metric at the same time—stroke count or SPL; Tempo or stroke rate; and/or RPE, Rate of Perceived Effort. Just as you must know both length and width to calculate the area of a square, knowing time plus a second metric (i) gives you invaluable insight into how you ‘constructed’ that time; and (ii) helps develop critical skills for steady pacing.

100 Metres: Three Ways

Here are the three ways in which I combine 100-yard time with a second metric to gain more complete information about the quality and repeatability of my swims. Each requires you to swim only a short set of 3 x 100 to gain invaluable insight into how efficiently you create more speed.

Time + Tempo: This requires a Tempo Trainer, which I would urge you to make standard training equipment, if it’s not already. Time yourself at a range of tempos within your Tempo Comfort Range (your stroke doesn’t feel rushed.) For this article, I’ll use a starting tempo of 1.25 seconds/stroke (mode 1 on the Tempo Trainer). Use a different tempo if you feel more comfortable.

• Swim 3 x 100 at 1.25 tempo. Your goal is to record the same time on each repeat. Doing so means you have kept both Stroke Length and Stroke Rate consistent. This is the first skill of effective pacing.
• Next, swim 3 x 100 at 1.25, 1.22, 1.19 tempo (tempo increases by .03 sec. each repeat.) Your goal is to swim faster on each repeat. This means you have effectively converted greater stroke rate into more speed.
• If you succeed at that, try the same set at tempos of 1.25, 1.23, 1.21. A smaller increase (.02 sec) in tempo requires more skill to swim faster. If you do not succeed at the second set, repeat it at tempos of 1.25, 1.21, 1.17. A larger increase in tempo requires less skill to swim faster.

Continue experimenting with short sets like these until you find the smallest increase in tempo at which you can descend a set of 3 x 100.

Time + SPL: This requires you to keep track of your stroke count for 100 yards. If you find that difficult, substitute sets of 3 x 50 yards.

For this article, I’ll use a 100-yard total stroke count of 65 as a starting point. You should choose a stroke count that is (a) within your Green Zone and (b) at which you feel highly comfortable.

Find your efficient stroke count range of 25y pools.

• Swim 3 x 100 at 65 strokes. Your goal is to swim the same time on all three. Doing so means you have mastered the first skill of effective pacing—keeping both Stroke Length and Stroke Rate consistent.
• If you succeed at that, swim 3 x 100 at 65-64-63 strokes (reduce SPL by slightly lengthening your stroke. Your goal is to swim the same time on all three repeats.
• If you do not succeed at the first set, try 3 x 100 at 65-66-67 strokes with a goal of repeating the same time on each.

Çontinue experimenting until you can subtract two or more strokes per 100 during the set and maintain the same repeat time.

Time + RPE:  RPE is an acronym for Rate of Perceived Effort–a fairly accurate self-assessment of how hard we’re working. This measure becomes far more accurate with regular practice. In Total Immersion, we employ a 5-point RPE scale.

TI-RPE-Scale

• Swim 3 x 100 at RPE-1, the easiest, most relaxed pace of which you’re capable, with the most impeccable technique. How different is that pace from your normal 100-yard pace? Repeat several times (over a week or two), trying to reduce the difference between your RPE-1 pace and normal. (Hint: Strategies you employed in the Time+Tempo and Time+SPL sets should work here too.)
• Then swim 3 x 100 at RPE-1, RPE-2, and RPE-3. How much faster do you swim by increasing your RPE? Experiment with this set several times over a week or two to see if you can gain more speed with less increase in effort.

May your laps be as happy—and purposeful—as mine.

The post A Simple, Guaranteed Way to Improve: Time Yourself appeared first on Total Immersion.

On a September afternoon in 2005 I was wandering around a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Buffalo, NY, trying partly to kill time, partly to see whether a book about self-teaching for beginning swimmers was available.

Coming from Greece—a land blessed with beautiful, open seas where I swam for as long as I can remember­­—to this country as a fresh, foreign medical graduate, I hoped to find something that would improve my swimming technique.  Most swimming books looked like hard-core training manuals: Full of programs dictating intensity levels and featuring tables depicting target heart rates and lap durations.

It was a revelation when I came across Terry’s “Blue-and-Yellow book.” Everything made sense: the greater importance of the shape of the vessel compared to its engine power, the science-based description of the importance of streamlining and stroke length, the explanation of the role of the chest cavity in determining the body’s center of gravity.  I was hooked.

Then followed the DVDs and endless hours of slow, progressive drills.  Patiently finding my own “sweet spot”, how to breathe better on both sides, front quadrant swimming . . . etc . . . etc.

I started a neurosurgical residency in 2007.  It was a 7-year marathon. Few other professional training courses are so demanding in terms of physical, emotional and mental powers that need to be cultivated and ingrained to the person going through it.

Our days as residents would regularly start around 5 am and end around 8 pm.  We would still work the next day after being up all night when we were on-call.  Most of us would leave the hospital dead tired, wishing to go straight to bed.

I was no different.  But somehow, I elected to keep making a stop at the nearby swimming pool, just 100 yards from the hospital, to practice TI, before going home.

This was one of the smartest things I elected to do.  It was not just that I was getting better at swimming.

After a while I noticed that I was getting out of the pool feeling less tired, needing less sleep, and waking in the morning feeling better overall.

I felt restored as I came out of the pool. I could tolerate longer hours of standing in the operating room without backache, In my work, I could feel my hands and arms coordinate better with the rest of my body and I could sense more fluidity in my surgical technique.

Above all, swimming and the TI technique helped me tremendously in relieving the daily stresses of work, rejuvenating my psychological resources and sustaining my body through very tough times.  Progression in swimming technique generated positive feedback for progress in mind and spirit.

Balance and streamlining in the pool would find a parallel in balancing my acts and thoughts during interpersonal interactions and streamlining my daily work in the hospital.

I often say to my friends that I survived residency because of the support I got from my mentors, family and TI.  To this day, I feel eternally obliged to Terry Laughlin and his commitment to make a change in peoples’ lives.  A change that goes beyond becoming a better swimmer.

TI and its mastery, as George Leonard would no doubt agree, is an endless path. Along the way, we honor the process more than the results, we cherish the journey more than the destination, we acquire wisdom by the epochs and not by the instant.

Ioannis Karampelas is a neurological surgeon practicing is St. Cloud, MN. He continues to enjoy the plateau of focusing in each focal point time and again. He recently experienced first class instruction and feedback in a Twin Cities TI freestyle course from outstanding teacher Tim Walton and decided to share some of his TI experiences. While in the pool, part of his brain is still able to ponder upon the things he values the most: personal health, science, culture, and above all, family and the future of his children.

The post TI Technique and Neurosurgery Training: A Survival Guide… appeared first on Total Immersion.

These days, I exhale from both mouth and nose, depending on circumstances. When I’m super-relaxed, I exhale all or mostly  through my nose, which helps both mental and physical relaxation. As I increase speed, effort and/or tempo, and need to clear a greater volume of air exchange more quickly, I still use both, but the mouth exhale predominates.

(I inhale through my mouth, exhale primarily through the nose, while doing technique-intensive practice.)

The post Do you exhale from mouth or nose? appeared first on Total Immersion.

I chose the 2.5 K (1.55 miles) because it would be the longest distance—by 55 percent—I’d swum this summer. And my daughter Carrie Loveland and I made plans for a road trip and a swim-together. This would be the first time in about 10 years that Carrie and I would swim in the same event.

I probably wouldn’t have entered LGOWS, unless Carrie had agreed to join me . Our plan was to swim the entire way together, synchronizing our strokes. We’d done ‘synch swims’ for 200m in Lake Minnewaska, but had never attempted one in an official event, nor for a distance as great as 2.5K.  Because I’m 7 inches taller than Carrie with a much longer reach—and a highly efficient stroke—she would have to attain great stroke length and efficiency to match strokes with me.

Synch-swimming is my greatest pleasure in open water. I begin practicing it with friends in Lake Minnewaska in 2001 and noticed it made the time and distance fly. It takes considerable practice to make the micro-adjustments in stroke length and rate—and in your course—to not only keep your strokes in synch, but to coordinate your heading to stay closely abreast while minimizing contact. My longest synch swims have been:

• 10 miles in 4h 50m from Lanai to Maui in the Hawaiian Islands with David Barra in 2010. Willie Miller swam with us, but took faster, shorter strokes.
• 11 miles in 5h 10m across Gibraltar Strait in 2013 with Lennart Larsson of Sweden and Tommi Patilla of Finland in 2011.
• 10 miles from Corsica to Sardinia in 4h 30m with Lennart and Tommi in 2015. This time we found it much more challenging to stay in synch, though Tommi and I swam the last 2K at a fairly brisk pace in perfect synch.

Carrie and I had no plans for a brisk pace at Lake George. Rather to swim quite easily and deeply immerse ourselves in the whole experience.

The air temp was a chilly 46F at the 7:45 am start which made the 72F water feel positively balmy.  Carrie and I started at the back of the pack and let the field clear out a bit after the starter’s horn sounded, to give ourselves extra space. We immediately fell into a comfortable mutual rhythm, Carrie to my left.

I breathed bilaterally for the first 400m, then mostly to the left to keep Carrie in view. She breathed to the right to do the same. Each time I looked I could see that our outside arms were stretched forward in parallel and our inside arms recovering in synch. I also saw the bright morning sun and green hills on the lake’s eastern shore.  And on many strokes I recited a mantra of gratitude for the beautiful day and sharing a beautiful experience with my daughter.

As we approached the green turnaround buoy at the course’s southern end, the leaders in the 10K field (the 5K would begin about an hour after the conclusion of the 2.5K) began passing us with impressive speed. We stayed calmly in our ‘bubble of synchronization’ as they passed on both sides.

At the turnaround buoy, we paused  to check in with each other, survey the course and take in our surroundings. As we swam the homeward leg the breeze picked up, making the water slightly more choppy, but it didn’t break our easy rhythm. We came upon two other 2.5K swimmers, swam with each for a while, then gradually pulled away, while still maintaining our very relaxed pace.

We made steady progress past the orange buoys marking the eastern (homeward) leg of the course, until we passed the third and last. With the sun slightly behind us, they were quite easy to see. We  also saw the bottom beneath us at this point.

Soon we  rounded the final green buoy and made a left turn toward the finish chute. With about 100 meters to go, it became too shallow to swim so we got to our feet. The timing clock read 1:13:38. To have our finish be considered official we would have to cross the timing mat (each swimmer wore timing chips on their ankles) by 1:15:00. At 1:14:50, hand in hand, we strolled nonchalantly across the finish line, 77th and 78th in a field of 86 starters.

We stand just beyond the finish line shortly after strolling across it.

Several days after the swim, Carrie admitted she’d been worried–in the days leading up to the swim—about whether I’d be able to finish, but hadn’t shared those worries with me. Instead she recalled that I often said the water is my best teacher and decided—as did I—to trust in the ‘spirit of the water’ which has given us so many good things. And like me, on many strokes, she recited a silent prayer of thanks.  I look forward to more days like this—especially those I can share with family—in the not-too-distant future. Like Chris Zeoli below, I’m contemplating a trip to St Croix with family to swim in the St Croix Coral Reef Swim on Nov 5.

Chris Zeoli, right, of the Middlebury (VT) Muffintops after finishing the 10K in 3:04:52.

The post The Joy of Swimming-in-Synch with my Daughter appeared first on Total Immersion.