Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1115: Swimming for Perspective - Alexandra Heminsley Revisited.

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Ep. 1115: Swimming for Perspective - Alexandra Heminsley Revisited. · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just about exercise, it was about nature and endurance and exploring parts of myself, but maybe I didn't know about four but also exploring nature to see, like it was that you don't ever really truly know what's swimming underneath you in the sea.
0:28
[SPEAKER_03]: you're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:30
[SPEAKER_03]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
0:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindill.
0:42
[SPEAKER_02]: My friends, this is episode 1-1-1-5.
0:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Alexander Himminsley re-visited.
0:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I did this interview with Alexandra.
0:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, goodness, it's been over seven years ago.
0:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And for some reason, this is one that stuck with me.
1:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Often,
1:01
[SPEAKER_02]: When I would be like drifting off to sleep and sometimes you have a memory, this episode would pop back into my mind.
1:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't even really know why except that it was just so amazing to me, all that Alexander learned by doing her unique style of adventure sports and challenging herself in significant ways.
1:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Matter of fact, she ended up writing at least two books at the time it was two books about her experiences.
1:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that this is going to be a fantastic lesson because this is one of those episodes that from seven years ago still sticks with me as being unique and challenging and thought provoking.
1:41
[SPEAKER_02]: If you enjoy this episode, please do share it with a friend.
1:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell someone about it.
1:45
[SPEAKER_02]: The think might benefit a little bit from this episode and what it has to share.
1:51
[SPEAKER_02]: That is the number one thing you can do to help support the Adventure Sports podcast.
1:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you in advance and enjoy this episode.
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, friends.
2:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you again for listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Today we have a wonderful lady from the United Kingdom here.
2:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Alexandra Himminsley, who is going to be sharing with us, how she spent her 20s being non-sporty.
2:16
[SPEAKER_02]: She said that she discovered running and that was her gateway drug into Adventure Sports.
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: She's written two books on her favorite sports, her most recent being on swimming and
2:30
[SPEAKER_02]: do the swimming events that she does.
2:32
[SPEAKER_02]: She grew up in the UK.
2:34
[SPEAKER_02]: She was in London for about 10 years and more recently moved to Brighton, where she has found her love living near the coast, and I am excited Alex to visit with you today about running and swimming and learning how to do these things a little bit later in life.
2:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, definitely I was the person that did nothing and I thought
2:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a gene or something that we were given at birth.
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really understand for a really long time that being spoiled to you just really only necessitated doing some sport.
3:14
[SPEAKER_02]: The penny has finally dropped right well, you know, with the Olympic is going on I've mentioned this in a recent show as well.
3:21
[SPEAKER_02]: We see the giants of the sports and I think it can be intimidating, you know, we think, oh, that I'm not that I can't do that, you know, but no, we can do what we can do right in our own way and that's what makes us sporty.
3:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't have to be a world champion necessarily.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: No, and also I think a lot of places that sells sports, wear and sports kit and equipment, they tend to use the elites or the people that look as if they're extremely comfortable playing sport already, and so that if you haven't grown up with a family that was doing things and been in relationships when you had a sporty boyfriend that was patient with you,
4:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be really intimidating because you're going into a shop that, you know, covered all the outside of those big brands is people who already look as if they've got all of the gleaming benefits of sport from them.
4:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It can feel like a world that's perfectly happily going on without you and you are not invited.
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But you are getting it.
4:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I get it, absolutely.
4:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've written two books on the subject and these are books that help people through humor and sharing your own story.
4:38
[SPEAKER_02]: They help people to realize that this is an inclusive thing.
4:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody can do this.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, exactly.
4:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And that what you get out of it.
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: doesn't have to be your salary or gold medals or global acclaim.
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be as much as, you know, half an hour headspace to yourself going around the park three times a week.
5:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That will enrich your life enormously.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't mean that it's not what I'm doing because you won't win a marathon and you know, feel the tape across your chest first when you
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still worthwhile and enriching and sort of a little magic bit of space in otherwise busy lives.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.
5:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Well now that we know what we're going to be talking about today, let's rewind a little bit and talk about Alex, give us your back story, a little bit about how you grew up and how you transitioned into being a sporty person.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
5:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, um,
5:40
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was in the military and I was the oldest, so I have a brother and a sister, so there was three of us and we were all running around all the time causing chaos and we weren't a family that sort of did sporty stuff in it wasn't like we were sort of team players, it wasn't one of those families whose weekends were arranged round sports matches the way that some people are.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But my dad was a really big runner when we were little.
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just sort of thought, you know, we were kids, we were wearing shorts and t-shirts.
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And my dad was wearing shorts and t-shirts a lot of the time.
6:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't, I was quite young.
6:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think I realized that he was doing a lot of running.
6:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I grew up, I left home.
6:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And my dad's quite a taciturn man.
6:28
[SPEAKER_00]: He's quite a kind of, if you were to imagine an English man in the army,
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: you would not be far wrong if you just went for a stereotype with my dad.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas my mum grew up in the West Indie, she's very Latin, she's very chatty and so with me and my sister.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I grew up, I moved to London, I was working in publishing all of this time past.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my sister got married and she's younger than me and I was a bit glam and this was 10 years ago.
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went to go and stay at with my folks in the countryside.
7:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And my brother was saying, he, I'd got a place he wanted to do the London marathon.
7:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, oh, I'd, I'd love to be able to run.
7:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can remember it like it was yesterday.
7:16
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad was getting a cup from a pitching cupboard.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So his head was sort of slightly in the cupboard and his voice came back quite magnified.
7:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, oh, it's not that you can't run.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that you don't.
7:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly I felt like,
7:30
[SPEAKER_00]: in your whole... I had someone that opened a door and there was a whole room in the house that I'd never noticed before or something and I realised he was right.
7:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got a place and I did the London marathon and I really found myself in running.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It was sort of the bit of a lonely time for me and it taught me so much about self-esteem and grit and positivity and
7:56
[SPEAKER_00]: self-reliance and community because obviously so many marathons that to do with fundraising and it really was one of the most important relationships I suppose of my life and it also taught me a lot more about my dad who I realised had been while he had three young children being he'd run 50 marathons.
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It was sort of barely mentioning it.
8:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just his little escape
8:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I carried on running in the end, I did five marathons, and I wrote about them in running like a girl, which I wrote particularly because at that point, and it has changed now a lot.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: This, I wrote running like a girl in 2012, and it was published at the instead of middle of 2013.
8:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But at that point, it was a bit of a boy's club running.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the way that women were sold running
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: to await us.
8:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It was to get a bikini body.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you wanted to buy a book about running, they were very hardcore narrative endurance stories.
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, you know, kind of day five in the desert and my feet were worn away to stop.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
9:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you just kind of want to get around the park and five k feels like a really big deal to you.
9:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this is like you just think, well, what's the point?
9:19
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to the desert, getting to get through the school run at this point is exhausting to me, so obviously this is not a book for me, but obviously it was also quite uncomfortable for a lot of women for this feeling that running should be to achieve something else, but it wasn't of worth or joyful in itself.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is absolutely true, but this idea that it was some sort of penance you have to do to look better for everyone else to say or to weigh a bit less or to fit into the running clothes that were available to you.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted to write a book that was about somebody who was was not the woman that looked like she would be photographed on the outside of a sports store.
10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: and it turned out I wasn't the only woman like that and it sold in 15 different countries now and it's just you know I still hear from people every day who have kind of realized it's not just then that thought that that was that running wasn't that they weren't invited into the world of running oh yeah and so the the book you're talking about there is running like a girl correct yes
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it really, it did, it running changed my life and running like a girl changed my life.
10:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so consequently, I was very confident that you know, just all you need is the can do attitude and a little bit of cardio, vascular strength, and you'll be fine.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So then I've done all this marathon training at home in Brighton, going up and down the sea front.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lovely flat.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: see front for miles in Brighton.
11:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can really run and see the horizon for the whole time and it was absolutely mesmerizing.
11:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But I've never gone in the sea and then I did on the morning of my wedding and it was absolutely beautiful.
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like once in a lifetime beautiful when the sea is all sort of milky and opaque it's so still.
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was sort of, oh brilliant I'm just going to get into swimming now.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And then got back in, I decided to, I have to, oh, maybe I'm sure I can swim when I was little on holiday.
11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll do like a one day taste, of course, it'll be fine.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I got in and that see was very different the second time and it was really choppy and I had a massive panic attack.
11:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I just felt completely out of control.
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the next time I went in, we just got back from honeymoon and my husband's wedding ring just washed off and went away, never to be seen again.
11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: and then our house flooded and I just thought this is it I have to kind of conquer the scene now like I was becoming more and more afraid.
12:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went right back to the beginning and I realised I couldn't swim front crawl at all.
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd confidently thought that I could.
12:11
[SPEAKER_00]: There's had this vague memory of swimming on some of the day, but you never really swim properly.
12:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just cooling down and I'll let it go.
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Great.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So I learned to swim
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: to Ethica.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be my own Odysseus and reach the island of Ethica in Greece.
12:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So how far is that?
12:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a five-case whim, which isn't the longest.
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's sort of the equivalent of doing maybe a half-nourathon.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like about three.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It was two two to three hours depending on conditions.
12:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So a five-case whim, so that's 3.2 miles
12:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it was about quite close to Kefalonia and if it could, but it was sort of swim, making my way to if it could, because I, I studied classics when I was at university and I was obsessed by the Odyssey and Odysseus and he's, you know, the whole of the Odyssey is his journey trying to get back to his home island of if it could, and I had it in my head.
13:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be part of an event or did you just set up your own goal.
13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to do this.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you did it was it was like a swimming holiday that had a series of swims in the Greek island that culminated in this one.
13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had never, there's something very satisfying about swimming between two islands.
13:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it is only an hour long swim, there's a sense of accomplishment.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But then obviously, there's more to see if you're swimming around an island, because you're in shallow water and in Greece, there's also beautiful fish and starfish and rocks and things to see.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So the trip was a combination, a variety of different
14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: the culmination of the week was the Ifakus-Wim, the heroic swim.
14:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's beautiful.
14:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's fun when you have something that kind of becomes a goal, something you've dreamed about, and maybe you relate it to, like you did, the Odyssey, right?
14:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And that becomes bigger than life almost, and it pulls you along, and then eventually you accomplish that.
14:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got to be so exciting.
14:36
[SPEAKER_00]: going from Dova to Calle, which is really interesting at the moment politically, because loads of this is of iconic swim of the sort of archetypal, sturdy Victorian kind of doing valiant
14:57
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't care.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the same swim, same distance.
15:00
[SPEAKER_00]: No French people are struggling and dreaming of swimming.
15:03
[SPEAKER_00]: To be like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
15:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you're going to suspect who's going to swim the channel then.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're in France, they go great, enjoy your sort of investments.
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
15:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, why do you think that is?
15:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I think that the UK is like an island nation we're separated from the rest of Europe, physically.
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So the idea of being able to get there to the mainland, does it where under your own steam, is a huge sense of achievement.
15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But to the French, it's like, well, what we're doing?
15:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you go that way?
15:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a whole of Europe over here.
15:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's brilliant.
15:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you want to go to the little bit that's sort of dang it?
16:00
[SPEAKER_00]: What the end of the continent?
16:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's been that friendly and not so friendly rivalry between Britain and France for hundreds and hundreds of years.
16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, exactly.
16:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a bit embarrassing, you know,
16:19
[SPEAKER_00]: People are still going, oh, I'm going to swim to France.
16:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, what are you doing?
16:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Go up, you're not going to be able to get a train there soon.
16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You better walks this way.
16:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm sure that some people say, don't you know that there's a tunnel?
16:33
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Guys.
16:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, that's what when I was researching the book, and I realized that the French just weren't swimming back.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized I looked at my Ithaca swim again, and I saw how,
16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: everyone's goal is so personal to where they are and that's why sometimes all the sort of clock watching and entering events that we do can be counterproductive to the actual enjoyment of using our bodies.
17:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, it was interesting, a moment of clarity about the perception of gold.
17:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, yeah, you know, you mentioned that when you started running, it gave you this sense of self-esteem and self-reliance, and you several other adjectives there that were beautiful about how it impacted you as a person away from running, will you explain that for us a little bit?
17:26
[SPEAKER_02]: How is it that starting being active, doing something as simple as running, did all of that for you?
17:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, on the absolutely most basic level, it just opens your mind to the possibilities that you have for yourself when you've perceived yourself to not be able to do something and then you try it.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can at whatever level, I thought I was not sporty and I was not a runner.
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fact that it took me a couple of months to be able to comfortably run 5K,
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: because I realised that a lot of the barriers that I had had about myself and then the process of writing the book taught me that it was the barriers that we so many of us have about ourselves are not actually there, they're entirely self perceived.
18:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously some people have problems with their ankles or gate or cardiovascular issues but on the whole the people that aren't running
18:28
[SPEAKER_00]: aren't those ones, they're the ones that are saying, I can't because I can't, or I can't because I wouldn't be very good at it.
18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter if you're not very good at it, it matters if you enjoy it, matters if it enriches your life.
18:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was the most basic realisation was this understanding that those barriers were self-received, absolutely self-received.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's something really intoxicating about following a marathon training program
18:58
[SPEAKER_00]: it is quite sort of systematic, it's quite, you know, you do your long runs to improve your distance and you do some interval training to improve your cardiovascular and you do some other bait more basic runs to get used to time on your feet and keep your fitness up.
19:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And you do for months on end every week, you're just a little bit better than you were the week before, and life
19:26
[SPEAKER_00]: that much of a straight line.
19:27
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, so random and you come across so many sort of unexpected bumps in the road as it were.
19:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But with marathon training, obviously you have a weak wave got terrible flu or whatever.
19:40
[SPEAKER_00]: But that process, when you take it sensibly over six months, is so rewarding to
19:49
[SPEAKER_00]: You're sort of sense of self, slowly improve and change, and it taught me a lot about my physical self-esteem that my legs could take me places.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned, when I just moved to Brighton, I started to really, really run, running.
20:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned all about my city, what it's like when you've got a run and you've got to do 14 cane, you realize you've done 13.2.
20:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you just have to loop round a couple of streets that you would never normally walk down.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: They're totally out of your way for anything practical and then you just run down them and realize there's a really beautiful building at the end of one of them or something like that and I learned about my city I learned about my body of just about you know when you exercise more you do almost instinctively eat better So that changed and my relationship was closed if I if I couldn't fit into skinny jeans before I felt bad about myself and then I started to think
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Well actually, I've got kind of mushy legs now.
20:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to fit in to skinny jeans and you'd hold them up in the shop and think, where would I end up with legs that could fit in those?
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was sort of self-realization and also sort of self-acceptance that was extremely rewarding.
21:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
21:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a beautiful story.
21:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I love what it did for you and it it's like it gave you a new direction in life and a new, a new avenue to enjoy.
21:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really important to say at this point but all of this running out is doing and all of this in a healthy eating and stuff.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I still do not and never have run fast marathons and this is not the story of how I became someone who's
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: knocking out a three hour 20 marathon and going home and, you know, just having a light rice cake or something.
21:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I am profoundly average at running and, you know, it's not, but I've got really, really good at it.
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this, it made me really, really happy.
21:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what's funny about it is you're kind of saying that you're not doing it to win, but you're winning in a bigger way anyway.
22:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes quite a long time to go to a running club or take part in a half marathon and not mind that for a long time I was quite caught up in the sort of, oh if I did this much training I could maybe get myself down to under two hour half marathon or something.
22:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I realized that actually the thing that I enjoyed about going on these runs wasn't just looking at my watch and seeing if I could, you know, it's a lot of hours that you spend
22:32
[SPEAKER_00]: 15 minutes of the time or something.
22:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I really enjoyed looking around and seeing the sky and feeling my heart beat raised and not having to look at a watch and do the sort of giant maths project that sometimes long distance running and you end up dividing things by dividing amounts by amounts.
22:52
[SPEAKER_00]: You're so long that you sort of sometimes the numbers are all spinning in your
23:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's sometimes it felt like a bad dream.
23:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, you've got to read just your minutes per act per mile and all of that kind of thing.
23:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so hard.
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: For me, it's hard.
23:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't terribly well with mental arithmetic on the, on the flight that say, yeah, it was that kind of challenge.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It held no appeal to me.
23:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's neat, and so people can learn more about that with running like a girl in this book.
23:25
[SPEAKER_02]: You tell your story of discovering to run, right?
23:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, tell us a little bit, is this a how-to guide for other people to learn how to run?
23:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Or is it more of a memoir about your experiences?
23:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little bit of both, it's mostly memoir because I felt like the most effective way to persuade people to run, or was not to write a book going, you should go for a run, you should run, enjoy running.
23:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got actually, I don't, I don't need to persuade people who don't want to go for a run.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: What I need to do is to show the people who were like me that felt like they wanted to go for a run, but probably couldn't, but it was doable and that the most effective way to do that was to tell my story.
24:05
[SPEAKER_00]: At the back, I would say probably the last quarter is got the sort of everything you wanted to ask, but we're too afraid to section.
24:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's got things like what put in your kit bag that no one will tell you when you're doing your first event or everything you want to know about injury, but you worry about in the middle of the night kind of a section.
24:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's mostly memoir.
24:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's talk about the second book.
24:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited about this swimming thing.
24:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the running as well, but the idea of swimming in the Mediterranean to islands, Greek islands, that's sounds so exciting to me.
24:45
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is called leap in.
24:47
[SPEAKER_02]: a woman, some waves, and the will to swim, right?
24:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a subtitle, and this is your more recent book.
24:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been in hardback here, available in the United States for, oh boy, it sounds like about nine months or so, but the paperback is coming out very soon.
25:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So we should tell people what this is.
25:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So what about leap in?
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, leap in is the continuation of the story.
25:11
[SPEAKER_00]: After I returned running like a girl, I was writing what turned out to be a terrible book.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: which is now in the bin, file deleted.
25:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about boxing and ballet and gender in sport and I was taking kickboxing lessons and I was doing ballet lessons at the Royal Academy of Ballet in London.
25:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And while I was doing this, I was taking swimming lessons because it was really just like a hobby thing.
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I had done a lot of running up and down in Brighton, along the sea front, looking at the sea
25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: until the morning of my wedding.
25:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I had this big build-up of rage with the sea, with the flooding my house, and stealing my husband's wedding ring.
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So I thought I'm going to just learn from scratch.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took this fantastic course that's down here in Brighton called Pool to Pier, because we have
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So the idea was that you learned to swim in the pool during the winter with a view to be able to swim out to the pier in the summer.
26:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it started off taught me front crawl from scratch and then by the summer was in the sea.
26:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Reunited with my analysis.
26:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And what happened was I took the course and I loved the course and I really learnt that not only did I love swimming but I loved the sea.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like the next round-top next stage of the enjoying nature and the elements that running had given me.
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The sea was just this huge big next step.
26:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what happened was I did this swim to Ithaca and I had other dramatic swims plans.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point I was still thinking that the only sort of endeavours worth doing were
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I needed to have a lot of IVF treatment, fertility treatment and it made me feel terrible and I couldn't really run during it and I had problems getting pregnant and I had a miscarriage and it was a really, really emotionally challenging time for me and for the previous five or six years when I was having any kind of
27:34
[SPEAKER_00]: emotional difficulties or stresses or whatever I had had running to fall back on but my body was quite weakened by this and just I didn't feel very comfortable the processes of IVF meant that running was not at all comfortable for me and what happened was that instead of doing bigger longer, more dramatic swims I ended up swimming through the winter and it became I completely
28:04
[SPEAKER_00]: total visceral thrill of continuing to get in the water as the temperature drops and drops and drops and drops.
28:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, as with that marathon journey, it was this process of every day just being
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: demanding a tiny bit more of yourself than the day before and it being okay, you know it's obviously it would feel horrendous and would be very bad for you especially bad for your heart don't ever do it if you'd never got in the scene before and you've got into a freezing cold sea in January but it's that thing of I didn't at any point go oh this is a nightmare I'm going to take up cold water swimming to help me get over it I just didn't stop and every
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the clocks have changed, you know, October and I carried on.
28:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can remember a swam around the pier on Halloween in the dark with a group of friends.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could see kids on the pier and they thought that they were like monsters in the sea.
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That was us, didn't we?
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I stopped swimming with my wetsuit and I carried on and then it got to serve Christmas nice.
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe I'll stop on Christmas Day and then it got to New Year and maybe I'll stop for New Year's Day.
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just carried on and on this sort of feeling of,
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I can take it, I can still take it.
29:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got a little bit more gritting me.
29:23
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's still a little bit more.
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still getting, and then before I knew its spring was coming back round, and it was really like a thread that kept me going was this, I mean, this isn't gonna be the week I'm gonna give up.
29:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got this tiny little bit more, and it was something that emotionally psychologically absolutely kept me going and what then felt like
29:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I want to make sure that the listeners got a hold of that.
29:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You're talking about this swimming through the winter time without even a wet suit.
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
29:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so it wasn't just about exercise.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It was about nature and endurance and exploring parts of myself that maybe I didn't know about before, but also exploring nature.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: The sea, like it was
30:12
[SPEAKER_00]: that you don't ever really truly know what's swimming underneath you in the sea.
30:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
30:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the same as you don't ever really know what's coming next in life.
30:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't know, but you can't not ever do anything fun.
30:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to do both.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we.
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I love it.
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a beautiful story.
30:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And the whole idea of, well, I didn't set out to swim around the year, but I just kept going and next thing you know, I said.
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
30:41
[SPEAKER_02]: the finding out what you're made of.
30:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was, it really, really was.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And now it's something almost, you know, these days, you say you've run a marathon and people practically shrug everyone runs all the time.
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you say, oh, no, I saw him through the year, people really are surprised.
31:00
[SPEAKER_00]: They think it's some sort of self-flagellation.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, no, no, I love it.
31:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't be without it now.
31:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I did get pregnant and I have a baby now,
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And this time last year, I was quite heavily pregnant and was still swimming.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I swam until two weeks before he was born, and that was only because the weather was bad, but I stopped.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, it was a real source of solace during, we know quite difficult pregnancy.
31:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And it never felt like a kind of matcho thing to do, but the immersion in the sea and the immersion in cold water
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: sense of freedom and sort of self pride almost that you can still go out there and do it.
31:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's exhilarating, isn't it?
31:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
31:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, especially with salt water, swimming is a very kind form of exercise.
32:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I've swam all over now and you really see people, especially in cold water, you see
32:11
[SPEAKER_00]: scars and illness and people who get in looking really, you know, hunched over and comfortable with themselves.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can never tell who's going to be the one, but then you see these people and they hit the water and they have the most beautiful, confident, calm, streamlined, swimming stroke.
32:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And you just think this is, this is where you're free, this is where you're, you're where you're you.
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And all these people who are otherwise finding getting around difficult
32:41
[SPEAKER_00]: their best selves out of the water, then we'll get in the water and transform it's such a beautiful thing to see.
32:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And it really taught me a lot about how kind exercise can be when you're having a tough time as well.
32:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
32:57
[SPEAKER_02]: That's beautiful.
32:58
[SPEAKER_02]: I think so many people want to give up when life gets hard where they think why can't do it now because of XY or Z. But what you're saying is that the water welcomes people supports them and allows them to continue on.
33:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Even when they have some some hardship, they're difficult to deal with.
33:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely.
33:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people don't swim.
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's especially something that happens with women now because of this idea of
33:24
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, being judged in a certain costume or getting to the water and the most important thing I would want people to know about swimming is that if you can, it does fit, I really know, I know what they mean.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's awful when you're not used to it and you're kind of walking in your bare feet and you can feel your thighs juddering behind you and it can feel like a
33:50
[SPEAKER_00]: marathon in itself, getting to the water's edge, whether it's a pool or the sea or ever.
33:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But the time that you spend in the water is so wonderful and so good and happy making and exhilarating compared to the potential grimness of that walk.
34:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And the time that you spend is so much longer than that walk is that if you can just do
34:16
[SPEAKER_00]: the walk of doom, a handful of times, you'll realize how massively the equation is tipped in your favor, a matter of seconds to get into the water for even just 20 minutes or half an hour in the water is still hugely in your favor in terms of time spent.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And people will be people
34:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But once you've done it, a handful of times you realise you don't even notice you're too busy thinking about the swim or the water or what's the tide doing or how many lengths can I fit in while I've got childcare this lunchtime or whatever.
34:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly this world is opened up to you and also a world of self not love is closed down to you because it ceases to be important if the if something you love is just within reach them.
35:11
[SPEAKER_00]: a bit that's difficult, seem so much more bearable.
35:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you are talking about the little something that you overcome to do the big something that you love.
35:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
35:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure that you had that experience with running as well.
35:24
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a matter of getting yourself up and putting on the gear and making yourself to take the first two or three steps.
35:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, definitely.
35:32
[SPEAKER_02]: With every adventure sport or every activity that's worth doing, they're obstacles.
35:39
[SPEAKER_02]: things that we have to overcome, right?
35:40
[SPEAKER_02]: So that we can get out and do what we love to do.
35:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what our show is all about.
35:44
[SPEAKER_02]: The adventure sports podcast.
35:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about saying, hey, just try it.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Overcome those obstacles.
35:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, just go out and do something and see how rewarding it can be.
35:53
[SPEAKER_02]: What the way you're talking about swimming is amazing to me.
35:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you have found an amazing passion in your life.
36:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, and the reason that these things
36:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Swimming or anything feels exhilarating is because there is an element of risk that you've chosen to overcome.
36:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, obviously it's a bigger risk if you jump off the end of a pair and having never swam before, that's a ridiculous risk.
36:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But I recently interviewed a really amazing author called Neil Ansel.
36:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if he would have heard of him.
36:25
[SPEAKER_00]: He's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's he's
36:33
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote, but there was published about five years ago in the UK about how he went and lived in completely isolation for five years in a cottage in the middle of the countryside in Wales.
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had no electricity, no water, nothing.
36:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And this the book that I was speaking to him about was about.
36:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He went on five trips over the course of the year while his health was failing to the West Highlands of Scotland.
36:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was asking him about risk, because I mean he does, he takes really big risks.
37:02
[SPEAKER_00]: he fell down like a ravine head first and his hearing was failing so he was much less aware of his surroundings but he was still wanted to hear several of the his favourite bird calls for the last time.
37:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I asked him, I said, you know, pretty risky business going on here.
37:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What did your family think?
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And he put it really beautifully but it's the risk that is the assessment
37:32
[SPEAKER_00]: that reminds you that you're alive, that you have something worth protecting and living to its best.
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't ever think about risk, you don't think about what it is you want to preserve and keep and do well.
37:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not just like the kind of high of jumping off a bridge that people think, oh, you just love risky sports because they're risky.
37:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Was not that bit of the risk?
37:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Is the thinking about, no, I love my life.
37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to come home to my family,
38:01
[SPEAKER_00]: but considering risk forces you to be mindful of, and I never thought of it that way before, and it was a really, it was a really kind of beautiful way.
38:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you could, by the end of the interview, I was ready to do anything.
38:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh my god, you can't read through your team, whatever it is, I'm just gonna consider risk.
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't, I went home and fed my baby.
38:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, I don't know.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Some people would say that swimming in the sea in the winter time is pretty risky.
38:29
[SPEAKER_02]: You're doing that.
38:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but that's the thing.
38:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I do do it, but I do it safely and I check the tides and I make sure there's no, you know, bad currents.
38:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew a few times I've got to the edge of the water and even when the forecast wasn't that bad, I thought, no, it's not worth the risk.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you go home and you think, well, I got to the water's edge and I made a choice and I choose to preserve me and preserve a bubble for my son and all the rest of it.
38:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is, I think,
38:59
[SPEAKER_00]: that that is a really intrinsic part of doing adventure of things is making a decision every time to what your life is worth and and it's worth a lot so you want to fill it with good things but also make an assessment every time of what you don't want to do.
39:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, absolutely.
39:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't always think about the times that you think absolutely not to
39:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's very valuable in reminding you of yourself, what value you hold.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned that at the end of running like a girl you had a section on, you know, all the answers to the questions that people don't even know that they need to ask or maybe they're afraid to ask.
39:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do the same thing for swimming a little bit.
39:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So what are the risks that you encounter when you're going out cold water swimming?
39:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's just go there.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what it does is it constricts the blood vessels quite quickly that's what is good in some ways that's why you see pictures of Olympians is standing in their bathful of ice cubes is it that promotes recovery but they generally just put their legs in.
40:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously when you're in water your vital organs are in the water too so it can put pressure on the
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm there obviously sort of common sense things to be considered like don't go into a river where there's an obvious tree trunk that you could do in pale yourself on and keep an iron tied and make sure that you're not going for a swim somewhere that you're not going to be able to get back out of and that sort of stuff.
40:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But the primary thing with cold water swimming is
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the effect on your heart that the cold water has, and then also with, and because obviously the equation is simple, you're either going to warm the water up or the water's going to cool you down, and you are a lot smaller than the sea.
41:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Not much of a chance there.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: In the bath you stand a chance, but in the sea you don't.
41:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, if you are suffering from hypothermia, unfairly, I think,
41:13
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the first symptoms is that you feel incredibly worn.
41:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of your body kind of shutting down.
41:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Is you going, oh, actually I'm starting to feel okay.
41:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have to build up an awareness of how much time you can spend in the water.
41:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You should never go in in November and try and swim for an hour and see if you can do it.
41:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You should try and swim for eight minutes and see if you can do it.
41:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the next time trying to do 10 minutes and build up.
41:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it is really, really different.
41:42
[SPEAKER_00]: that's what's good about it is that it's understood that the reason it is good for our immune systems is that it takes, it gives them a mild stressor if the term that they use.
41:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives your immune system a mild stressor frequently.
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's effectively keeping your immune system on its toes.
42:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's reminding it to keep working rather than, you know, just lying on the
42:12
[SPEAKER_00]: you can see why.
42:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not busy.
42:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas if you just give it a nudge a few times a week, it kind of, it's mindful to do more for you.
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's increasing research being, there's a lot being done at the moment and there's some research that cold water, whether it's in the sea or bathing.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's German research of people just literally
42:42
[SPEAKER_00]: very, they're great.
42:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the invigorating thing, but also they're starting to study more about with swimming because you have to have regulated breathing when you're swimming.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It calms you down.
42:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I always say that running calms me down and swimming requires that I'm calm to be able to do it.
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't swim stress because your body is natural,
43:11
[SPEAKER_00]: instinct to go when you're anxious.
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're filled up with a kind of bag basically of carbon dioxide, which means that you're dragging air behind a long with you, which slows you down, which means you won't be able to do it.
43:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So in order to get anywhere with swimming, especially with cold water swimming, you have to become incredibly good, giving really big deep exhales.
43:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Learning to swim
43:41
[SPEAKER_00]: has huge mental health benefits and, you know, even an apple watch is always telling you to breathe better.
43:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And swimming is the ultimate version of that.
43:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So you mentioned two benefits for swimming.
43:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Cold water swimming even.
43:56
[SPEAKER_02]: One was stimulating your immune system to stay awake and keep working.
44:01
[SPEAKER_02]: The other was the mental health benefits.
44:03
[SPEAKER_02]: What other benefits do you think that people get from swimming in general, warm or cold,
44:11
[SPEAKER_00]: um well it's it's very kind on your joint it's brilliant if you're training for something else or you're you know doing mountain climbing or cycling or whatever something that's putting a you know pressure and tension on your muscles swimming is great for you're so supported when you're swimming so it enables you to exercise without putting pressure on your body in other ways
44:41
[SPEAKER_00]: for your muscles from muscular recovery.
44:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why you see the athlete doing it.
44:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I found personally that swimming helps so much with a cardiovascular.
44:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's probably the controlled breed.
44:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, but you can't lose control of your breathing because otherwise you just have to stop.
45:00
[SPEAKER_00]: At the moment I'm trying, at the moment I breathe every third breath and I'm trying to build up so I can breathe every fifth breath, which is massively increased lung capacity, but you get
45:10
[SPEAKER_00]: you feel like you're doing so much more swimming because there's kind of a lot of admin to keep breathing while you're in the water, especially if it's turbulent water and you get so much more of the sensation of swimming if you're breathing less, but obviously you do get quite tired so it's a bit of a challenge there.
45:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think that holding your breath between strokes can harm you in any way?
45:40
[SPEAKER_00]: you need to be exhaling while you're swimming.
45:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you hold your breath, then you'll need to have your head out of the water for much longer because you have to let out a huge exhale and then inhale in that small second worth of time.
45:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And also if you're holding your breath while swimming, you're holding the carbon dioxide.
46:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The waste is a waste product effectively.
46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You're holding it in your body and in your muscles.
46:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So you want to be getting it out as soon as possible.
46:08
[SPEAKER_00]: ready to just snatch in some oxygen quickly as you can when you raise your head.
46:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, here's an interesting question for you with your book, Lee Finn.
46:17
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think people will get from the book besides swimming?
46:23
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the lessons that they'll learn about life from your accounts of swimming?
46:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that they will learn that the unexpected is a given
46:35
[SPEAKER_00]: in this life.
46:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Just as you can never truly know if a wave is going to smack you in the face or that there's a scary big pike swimming underneath you, you can never truly know what's coming next.
46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But that most importantly, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do anything.
46:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You should keep doing the things you love and do them mindfully and to the best that you can, you shouldn't
47:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
47:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So, share a couple of experiences with us if you would about surprising things that happen to you on your swims.
47:14
[SPEAKER_02]: You mentioned a scary fish that could come up underneath that kind of thing.
47:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you seen these sorts of things?
47:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What's happened?
47:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I was swimming in the late district and I was swimming in a beautiful lake and just to that point when I was too far enough,
47:33
[SPEAKER_00]: from the edge that I knew I couldn't kind of back out.
47:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I was properly in the deep water.
47:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I did see a big pike, a real ugly, creepy, almost sort of primeval dinosaur-looking fish, swim underneath me.
47:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if you swim with goggles, but they can kind of sometimes distort distance, especially in the water.
47:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had no idea I was doing my armstroke and as I brought my arm down into the water and front of me,
48:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If it was a fish that was three meters beneath me and there was no way I was going to touch it or whether I was going to disturb it.
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the thing about swimming is that the only thing that would have definitely meant that I would have created a whole load of ripples and disturbance and potentially danger would have been to stop and panic.
48:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just had to keep going, keep my breath steady, keep going forward, keep calm, keep smooth in the water,
48:32
[SPEAKER_00]: and I just went over him and never saw him again.
48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he's living his best life up there.
48:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Alex, I have to tell you a story that it's similar.
48:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I was swimming in a river in Florida and the river was spring fed, but it was also swamp fed.
48:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was a mixing.
48:52
[SPEAKER_02]: of the tannic waters that are browned out, you can't see anything mixed with a clear water, you know, from the springs.
48:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had a mask on.
49:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And as I was swimming along, I couldn't see anything because I was in the brown water.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as I swam through a spring fed section, there was a alligator gars, swimming next to me.
49:12
[SPEAKER_02]: and alligator garrer have needle sharp teeth.
49:15
[SPEAKER_02]: They have big eyes and they're six, seven feet long.
49:19
[SPEAKER_02]: There were right next to me swimming right along with me and I never knew they were there and then you of course the water gets gets kind of browned out again and you can't see and then the next time you pass by a little bit of that fresh water there they are again.
49:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I tell you what it's an amazing experience when you see something like that.
49:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Really can I give you a jolt.
49:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly but you
49:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't ever know, but would you, would you have not gone on that so if he'd known?
49:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I didn't get out when I did know.
49:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe that's the way I could answer that.
49:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought, wow, that was amazing to see.
49:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if it'll happen again, you know, but it kind of makes you, I'm not a little nervous.
49:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You hope that they don't try to put those teeth to good use on you.
50:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But feeling a little nervous is sometimes just reminding you how precious your life is.
50:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, I can't see how that could ever be a negative thing.
50:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
50:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So, hey, oh, I have it.
50:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I had the worst time on the swim to Ithaca.
50:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a crazy experience.
50:18
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no, there was no kind of monster in the water, but we were swimming in, you know, there's really strong currents in that bit of water.
50:31
[SPEAKER_00]: the island that we were aiming for and we were passing the side of a tiny island, like you know, big enough to have a shepherd's hut and not much more on it.
50:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew that at some point we would see the underside beneath the water of the island and we're swimming along and we're into the four of us in a formation and I could feel that the currents are getting stronger and stronger and then I saw the sort of slope of the bottom part of the island, the pair beneath me and I was swimming in swimming into
51:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I could see, my view beneath me was just completely static.
51:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like I was in a training room.
51:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I run up so strong.
51:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was swimming at my hardest.
51:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was a fittest I'd been, I'd done two years of swimming and lessons.
51:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was literally going nowhere.
51:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like an anxiety dream where you're just trying your hardest.
51:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, everyone's had kind of a Monday morning like that.
51:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And that again, there was nothing to do.
51:28
[SPEAKER_00]: keep going because to stop and panic would have just been to be taken back with the currents and to have the previous 45 minutes worth of swimming gone in minutes.
51:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just kept going and looking at the others and sort of trying to communicate with them while we were swimming.
51:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It was four of us together and eventually suddenly the current just sort of shifted and it felt like the island was just on a travelator just moving away because I was swimming
51:55
[SPEAKER_00]: and suddenly that island just ended away from me.
51:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was like, it felt like such a physical visible manifestation of anxiety that you have when you know, one of those days were no more call you back and you get splashed by a bus by going through a puddle and you're going nowhere and you're getting nowhere.
52:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly it's okay because you just have go right.
52:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, there's a good lesson for life right there.
52:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Just keep going, there's two-shill pass.
52:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the rewards come later, right?
52:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what is it like swimming around the Greek islands in the Mediterranean?
52:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Is the water warm?
52:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I know it.
52:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be very clean and beautiful, but it's really beautiful.
52:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is so salty, like proper, almost like a vendetta level of salt, like your eyes.
52:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And we had to kind of put Vaseline all around the edges of all of our swimming costumes and
52:53
[SPEAKER_00]: or just everywhere that we could really because it's a brace if you could almost feel the crystals in the salt.
53:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so, so salty.
53:04
[SPEAKER_00]: So we had like a little dinghy going along the side of that had bottles of mouth washing it and so much water.
53:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It made me really, you know, you're literally
53:18
[SPEAKER_00]: pirates and shipwrecks and stuff and it made me really understand that sort of panic of being surrounded by water but it but it not being burst quenching right.
53:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see how the sea could be a real menace when all you wanted was a glass of water.
53:34
[SPEAKER_02]: How did it feel when you finally reached your goal?
53:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was amazing and I cried and it just meant so
53:48
[SPEAKER_00]: all my life and I'm actually just to even just see if the kind of felt really magical to me.
53:54
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that someone could spend 10 years.
53:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the end, he's literally spending 10 years trying to get home from work.
54:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've all done a journey like that in our time.
54:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's an extraordinarily beautiful part of the world and it was such a great moment.
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I was there in July, so it was exceptionally sunny and gorgeous and always in that
54:18
[SPEAKER_00]: the Greek always translates as referring to the sea as wine dark and I can kind of understand why it does almost look like a kind of like a clarinet rather than blue.
54:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so dark sometimes is absolutely gorgeous.
54:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Sounds delightful.
54:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
54:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this has been so much fun visiting with you about these books and about your pursuit of sports that brought new enthusiasm and meaning to life.
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just think it's wonderful.
54:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's real quickly talk about these two books running like a girl's the first book, second book, leap in a woman, some waves and the will to swim.
54:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Are both of these
55:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think they're both audio books as well now too, I know I get a lot of feedback from people who listen to the audio, either running or swimming, so yeah.
55:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Now is it recorded in your voice or someone else's?
55:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The UK one is recorded both of them, but I think there is also US edition, but I don't know if you can get both in the US, I'm not sure.
55:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I think I might like your accent better.
55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
55:32
[SPEAKER_02]: It would make it fun to listen to.
55:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That's very cool.
55:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So leap in.
55:37
[SPEAKER_02]: This one is coming out in paperback.
55:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You said March 8th.
55:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
55:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're expecting to hear this show on March 5th.
55:46
[SPEAKER_02]: So it is just like three days away for the listeners.
55:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, Alex, thank you so much for your time today.
55:53
[SPEAKER_02]: It's been a delight to hear your stories.
55:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I really enjoy your passion for these sports.
56:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And thank you also for writing the books, so that you can share your story and your passion with others.
56:05
[SPEAKER_02]: We appreciate that.
56:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thank you so much for having me in electing me share my stories.
56:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you bet.
56:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's your way.
56:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's always our pleasure, our pleasure.
56:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So keep swimming, keep running, keep doing the things you love, and for the listeners out there, remember like I always say until the next show, make sure that you too.
56:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Get out there, have some fun.
56:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.