Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1177: Open Water Marathon Swimming with Rob Hutchins

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Ep. 1177: Open Water Marathon Swimming with Rob Hutchins · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: your listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventures from around the globe to give you the inspiration you need to get started in the outdoors or keep moving if you're already there.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Lindville.
0:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello friends, welcome to another episode of the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I have Rob Hutchings with us today.
0:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a different sort of
0:30
[SPEAKER_01]: then we have covered very much.
0:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We have had long distance swimming before, but Rob does amazing long distance swims and in New Zealand, in Newfoundland, different places.
0:44
[SPEAKER_01]: He calls it Marathon swimming and it's just super cool.
0:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're gonna dive right into that.
0:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Rob, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for having me hurt.
0:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Rob, first of all, where are you today?
0:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm in Christchurch, New Zealand.
1:01
[SPEAKER_03]: That's where I've lived for the last just over seven years, but I'm from Newfoundland in Canada.
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of the funny thing, because I could hear just a touch of New Zealand in your voice, but I knew it wasn't home home.
1:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess, definitely not.
1:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and I do hear like that Eastern North Eastern Canada in your voice, too.
1:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I've lived around the world from Newfoundland, I've lived in England that's where I did my education.
1:30
[SPEAKER_03]: My wife is Australian.
1:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I lived there for 15 years and now we both have funny accents over on this side of the ditch as we call it the attachment.
1:39
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, we've lived in New Zealand for just over seven years.
1:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a friend from Scotland who had been in the U.S. for so long that he said he goes back to Scotland and people make fun of them because of his U.S. accent.
1:50
[SPEAKER_01]: He's in the United States people make fun of them because it was Scottish accent.
1:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, you don't have a home anymore.
1:56
[SPEAKER_03]: My language is a bit messed up because I have slang language from several countries and sometimes I don't know where it comes from, so that's great.
2:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what got you into swimming first of all, just in the very beginning, why swimming?
2:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, well, when I was really young, um, I was always really, really athletic, uh, you know, active and, you know, hyper active and that sort of thing.
2:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, but I wasn't any good at the conventional sports, like, you know, we had baseball, hockey, basketball and particular.
2:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, that sort of stuff I tried, but if you put a ball in my hands or put a ball at my feet, nothing good is going to happen.
2:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It took me a number of years to figure that out.
2:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So after failing miserably with basketball and baseball and the other sports, I got into swimming.
2:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I started swimming just before I turned 13 and very quickly realized how much I loved it.
2:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't a natural swimmer like, I mean, I was never became one of the top swimmers or anything like that.
3:03
[SPEAKER_03]: After getting the coordination for learning how to do the stroke, I quickly realized I really loved long distance stuff.
3:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And there was a triathlete who trained with the swim team.
3:14
[SPEAKER_03]: He was about nearly five years older than me.
3:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I was 13.
3:17
[SPEAKER_03]: He was 18.
3:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And I went up to him on the pool deck and told him I wanted to be a triathlete like him.
3:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And he took me under his wing.
3:25
[SPEAKER_03]: His name was Jamie American.
3:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're still friends.
3:31
[SPEAKER_03]: helped me learn how to train for a long distance swimming in triathlon and in triathlon swimming was always my strength.
3:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I was a better swimmer than I was cyclists certainly and running, even though I've got better at those things as well.
3:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've
3:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The only natural athletic talent I seem to have is swimming in a straight line in the open water.
3:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Shortly after.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to do, by the way.
4:02
[SPEAKER_03]: After practicing that for a while, a very short amount of time.
4:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually discovered I'm actually good at swimming in a straight line.
4:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And my swimming coach saw that I both loved open water swimming in, and triathlon.
4:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And she basically introduced marathon swimming to me.
4:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And she said, you can do both sports.
4:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's get you into marathon swimming too.
4:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And well, he went from there.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: less so cool and by the way I love swimming and people that listen to the adventurous sports podcast are probably tired of me saying oh I love this I love that I love this I did I do I'm no good at any of it I just dabble in everything but when I was in high school I got a stress fractured running cross country track
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And so to train when I couldn't run, I went to the pool and started swimming laps.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And then after that, I found that I really preferred open water.
4:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So we lived somewhat close to tinciller reservoir in northeastern Oklahoma.
4:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And my thing was to go out on the open water and just go.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just found that so fun.
5:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I understand where you're coming from.
5:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a unique
5:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, like open water swimming for me, I mean, it evolved into, I mean, first I was mostly competitive and for quite a long time, both in triathlon and marathon swimming, but probably shortly before I moved to New Zealand, I realized I was, you know,
5:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Not necessarily done with competition, but as realizing I was like in the adventure stuff more.
5:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's something very unique about adventure marathon swimming, like if I find a quite meditative.
5:40
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I love the scenery and everything else, especially here in New Zealand.
5:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can't really beat it.
5:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's always been something I've been able to get into like a meditative state that I do yoga as well as part of my,
5:55
[SPEAKER_03]: training, and I'm quite a yoga enthusiast as well, but I've never been able to learn how to meditate, like I imagine a Buddhist monk would be doing.
6:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So the closest I've ever gotten to what I imagine a monk would be doing when they're meditating is when I'm long distance marathon swimming.
6:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, you've got the controlled breathing.
6:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got the rhythmic nature of it, the smoothness, the floating.
6:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not even walking on ground, you're floating.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get there whenever I do long swims.
6:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I come out the other side.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel different.
6:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, it's an incredible feeling and it's in the long smooth swims I get there and then of course I do the rough water swimming, it's not quite the same meditative state when you're either in a river or in the surf swim but in the long distance the lakes and the when the oceans come I can really get into the meditative state there.
6:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's cool.
6:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to tell one quick story because I think you'll find it hilarious.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got a story about a cow that we're going to get to.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
6:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got a story about some dogs.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
7:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So I went out to tin killer to do one of my swims.
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I decided to swim across a bay.
7:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And two laboratories were following me.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why.
7:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But I jumped in the water to do just when across this bay.
7:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't a long swim.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe a quarter mile, something like that.
7:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But I get out in the middle, I look behind me in both of these laboratories are in the water with me.
7:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of them is like a nine month old pup.
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And the other one is its mom.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The pup starts to panic, it starts to get tired and starts climbing on top of its mom.
7:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, he's drowning his mother, right, and I'm like, oh no.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have to swim back to these dogs, and I grab the pup off of its mom, and I throw the pup as far as I can so that it'll have to swim back to us.
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'd swim a few strokes, she's right behind me, and then the pup catches up and starts drowning its mom again.
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how many laps I went back and forth, throwing this puppy off of its mother.
8:01
[SPEAKER_01]: because the puppy was strong enough to make it and it was going to be fine it just didn't need to be climb on top anyway long story short all three of us completed the swim and i felt really glad that nobody you know so come to the scenario but man that was exhausting and completely different than what i expect it was not meditative rub no not not not every swimming meditative and you know there's always something weird that happens but uh...
8:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I've had other wildlife experiences in the water as well, and some of them end up being very hilarious like that, yeah.
8:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I tell you, so one thing I want to point out here, I grew up in Oklahoma, it is hot in the summer time there, it is killer hot.
8:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the only way I could survive the heat, because I'm just not genetically predisposed for it, was to be in the water.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was in the water all the time.
8:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the water, you know, but you didn't grow up in a place like that.
9:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's cold, buddy.
9:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
9:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it helps being genetically about 50 or 60% polar bear.
9:11
[SPEAKER_03]: That's certainly me.
9:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I do well in the cold and in cooler temperatures.
9:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I mean, I lived in Australia for a long time in my wife's Australian, but
9:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, if she's never been able to understand what mine is 30 degrees means.
9:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And, uh, right, uh, but, you know, I think it's getting hot when it's above seven or eight degrees.
9:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Celcius.
9:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and what is that in Fahrenheit?
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Seven?
9:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't see 15.
9:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't speak Fahrenheit language.
9:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm afraid.
9:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But, uh, I'm going to say it's roughly 50-ish.
9:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I could do the conversion, but I'm not going to take the time.
9:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
9:48
[SPEAKER_01]: big swims and at first of all we're in New Zealand.
9:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I want people to know this because I think it's funny For me, it's December the 23rd, but it's tomorrow where you are which means it is Christmas Eve in New Zealand and you're on the adventure sports podcast Well, thank you for doing this interview even though it's such a I think Christmas Eve is such a special day
10:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I really love you.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have a question about New Zealand now.
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: How far south are you in New Zealand and how cold is it there?
10:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm in Christchurch, which is about roughly midway down the south island on the east coast.
10:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you can go about, I think, in the cargo, the southern tip is maybe a six-hour drive south from here, that's the most southern tip of South Island.
10:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
10:41
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah.
10:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you're in the cooler part of New Zealand.
10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean we have the mountain range here and I mean Christchurch can get warm in the summer.
10:49
[SPEAKER_03]: The weather's extremely variable because you know we're it's a relatively small narrow strip of land with a mountain range and you know we got a syphic on one side we got the tasm on the other side and we have the southern ocean down bottom so whenever the wind changes direction I mean you know several days back it was pushing 30 degrees and I mean that by you know
11:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But the other day, it was about 12 degrees, because when the wind changes, it can be quite cool.
11:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So the weather does change quite unpredictably.
11:25
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't get snow on the ground that much in Christchurch in the winter, which is in July and August, and the incanation that always will seem weird to me, but...
11:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, so it does get cooled like I mean you'll wear your puffer jacket and things like that and, you know, up and up in the mountains so you can ski and, you know, you got, there's lots of snow up in the mountains but it's sea level in Christchurch.
11:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It's rare to get snow.
11:49
[SPEAKER_03]: It does happen but it doesn't last very long.
11:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So, what about that?
11:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned a bit your, your twin though.
11:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I, you know, what right now it's pleasant enough like it's probably around 15, 16 degrees and it will be for most of the summer and I do some cold water swimming through the cooler months as well and so, you know, the water temperatures not a problem in the ocean.
12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: this time of year.
12:16
[SPEAKER_03]: The glyceo lakes, they're always going to be cold, like a lot of the lakes that I swim across or glyceo fed, and like I did a short swim, maybe about it, I think it was 9K, I did a double crossing of a 4.5K lake last year.
12:31
[SPEAKER_03]: last week of October, and there was snow on the mountains directly next to it.
12:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I wore my thermal wet suit, it was very cold.
12:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It was about, I'm going to say, six, maybe seven degrees water temperature, five or six degrees above freezing.
12:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was, that was cold.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's funny that
12:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, on the podcast, I was talking about doing snorkeling in rivers and a friend of mine said, okay, you do that.
13:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's do that.
13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So I got a wetsuit, but it's just, it's very, very thin.
13:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like two mills or three mills depending on the, but anyway, it's,
13:14
[SPEAKER_01]: We went into snow-fed mountain lake at 10,000 feet in snorkeled there, and the wet suit was just not enough.
13:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What you imagine your thermal wet suit, how thick is it?
13:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's about four mills, but it's got a thermal lining.
13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I wear a wet suit all the time, not for cold protection, like I don't need the cold protection, but I'm a freckled breadhead from Canada.
13:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just not designed to live on the world's surface, we read heads, and swimming is normally a sport where you're not wearing very much, but when I was competitive in Marathon swimming, I wasn't wearing wet suits, but I mean, I couldn't deal with the sunburn.
14:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I won't use the word controversial, but, you know, when you're doing competitive things and when you're looking to set records on the, on the recognized groups, I mean, Wetsuits do offer a modest advantage.
14:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I'm 50 years old, I'm not going to set any world records or anything like that, and, you know, I've had cancer once, so I don't want skin cancer, so I wear a thin
14:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, along swim, I've got to reapply sunscreen to my face and hands, you know, depending on how long it is, often two, three times for, yeah, because I am a red head.
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: So, let's talk about some of these swims.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So people know, you know, these are not sure it swims.
14:51
[SPEAKER_01]: These are big swims.
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, first of all, you swim two different UNESCO world heritage sites.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and share with us what that is so that people have some context.
15:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the Inesco World Heritage Site, I mean basically it's geological and aquatic.
15:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean basically you very, very unique fjords and in Millford Sound, New Zealand is one of the iconic landmarks and waterways in New Zealand.
15:32
[SPEAKER_03]: the fjordland down on the south west corner of south island is I'm not sure how many fjords are but there's dozens and dozens and dozens of fjords and millford sound is basically considered the icon and it's a world heritage it's a world heritage and that's a world heritage site and I swam down on the fjords before and normally there's a fair amount of boat traffic and millford sound I mean you can you can do long distance swim there and people have swam there
16:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But there is a fair amount of boat traffic because it's a popular tourist site, but I did it just a handful of days before the borders reopened after the COVID lockdowns.
16:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to do it at a really unique time because while I'm always happy to swim and you know whenever I've done some long swims and tour boats go past I mean you get a little bit of cheering squad but it was even more peaceful than the normal because I believe there were only two tour boats past me the whole time I was swimming which took about six hours so that was
16:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, there's this iconic peak called Miter Peak that is just the most stunning looking mountain, you know, with the backdrop of the water.
17:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And on a clear day like I had for Milford Sound, that was really been lucky.
17:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And the viewer can get drenched with rain.
17:17
[SPEAKER_03]: But I had the most beautiful day.
17:19
[SPEAKER_03]: You could possibly imagine where the water was just like a mirror.
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: and the other the other thing that was special about millford sound is because it does get so much rain it's a salt water for your but there's so much rain draining off the mountains you've actually got about a meter and a half of a layer of fresh water on there so like it mildly tastes the salt who is almost as if we were swimming through fresh water but you're in the ocean.
17:46
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy so it's really kind of brackish mixed
17:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that was one of the most, it had to be like one of the most incredible, beautiful swims I've done to that point and yeah, I got out of the water having successfully done that and I immediately thought I wanted to go back to Newfoundland which I hadn't been to the wild to swim Western Brook pond which I'm sure we'll get to because that's almost exactly the same size as millford sound and it's the largest fresh, I'm told it's the largest freshwater fjord in North America.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll we'll come back to that because I do want to talk about it, but you just said 16 kilometers.
18:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
18:31
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's a long distance.
18:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're in millford sound.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I'm ready for the why question.
18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
18:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, why why do you do it?
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the driver?
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, it does come to having this
18:50
[SPEAKER_03]: love of the open water and, you know, very shortly after becoming a pool swimmer when I was 13 I realized I liked the long distance stuff and that started out as triathlon and kept up that but then got into marathon swimming and part of it's the feeling of freedom that I get in the open water.
19:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I really love just being out there where, you know, you can switch off the business of the
19:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I really, really love just that meditative feeling that I often get to in the open water.
19:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's just the unique way of seeing, you know, different parts of the environment that's, you know, it's not many other people get to see it that way.
19:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, like I'm told, I'm the only person who swam the full length of the Wilbur Sound.
19:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I know other people who swam there, like, done, you know, having backswims, a certain amount of distance.
19:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But, um,
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was just this very, very unique way of seeing such a beautiful part to the world.
19:54
[SPEAKER_03]: and you know you get interactions with the wildlife like dolphins came up three dolphins flanked me for uh... for several minutes uh... they must have thought i was a funny looking seal i guess and uh... you know that they were playing around with me for several minutes uh... while i was swimming millford and you know that that's happened in a few other spots uh... you know had some interactions with dolphins and uh... you know it's just this um...
20:20
[SPEAKER_03]: really unique way of challenging yourself in different environments.
20:24
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'll always love the feeling of pushing myself.
20:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, I love being in the water and one of the ways I often have adventures.
20:34
[SPEAKER_03]: There were big marathons when one day and next day go up a mountain, either hiking or trail running or something like that.
20:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So you get to both see the the beautiful waterways and then get up and see it from the top on the mountains.
20:50
[SPEAKER_01]: you know i interviewed epic bill Bradley a few weeks ago and his episode just came out actually fairly recently but he's been working i'm gonna say it this way working on the English channel project and then we call it at that because he's he has multiple attempts and he's trying to begin but he described something and i want to know a few
21:09
[SPEAKER_01]: He was in some really bad high seas.
21:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It was not a good time to be trained to swim.
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But he swam until he could no longer keep his feet at the surface.
21:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They started sinking deeper and deeper until he was fighting to keep his head above water, just because of exhaustion.
21:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever been to that point in your swams?
21:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I've had a few, the longest I swam was 33 kilometers, which took me a bit over 11 hours.
21:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I've definitely been completely exhausted several times.
21:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Most of the times where I've reached that absolute don't have another stroke or another step in me.
21:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It was in some triathlons.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: When I swam like Pukekki in April, that was 28 kilometers, that took me eight and a half hours.
21:58
[SPEAKER_03]: I was definitely cooked when I finished that.
22:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't reached the point where my legs were sinking.
22:10
[SPEAKER_03]: rather chunky heavy legs that seemed to float quite well.
22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, yeah.
22:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So, yeah, I mean, I've experienced some pretty incredible states of fatigue in the open water.
22:23
[SPEAKER_03]: But I haven't got to the point where anyone's needed to pull me out for safety reasons.
22:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Generally, being able, the only few times I've had to force to abandon this women's mostly due to weather.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but, um, you know, I have gotten to those, you know, absolutely finished fatigue states in, uh, you know, long distance, uh, triathlon and, uh, a few of the other, uh, back country expeditions are done for sure.
22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so for the sake of the, the listening audience here, how do you do it safely?
22:56
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're doing a swim and you get to the point of exhaustion.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be dangerous.
23:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:02
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do for safety?
23:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, with Millford Sound, I was with the Water Taxi.
23:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's a Millford Sound track.
23:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a famous trail that starts next to the fjord and goes into the back country and the water taxi takes you to the beginning of the trail.
23:17
[SPEAKER_03]: But since it weren't that many tourists around, I had the Water Taxi company and I had two friends kayaking with me.
23:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So what I often do because I moved to New Zealand in my forties and I didn't know anybody I just started using the Facebook group saying hey, I want to do this swim.
23:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm looking for kayaks support and You know, they I've always been managed to find some kayakers and sometimes there's a support boat depending on the size of the swim with me So Basically if there's any trouble the kayakers will pull me ashore
23:51
[SPEAKER_03]: We have the little beacons, you know, if we're somewhere really remote, you know, the helicopter can come rescue if necessary, but that's never happened with me yet.
24:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I've always got someone with me.
24:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And so usually I'm with two or three kayakers, and sometimes with a support boat as well.
24:16
[SPEAKER_01]: well i'm glad to hear you say that i was i was just thinking about you know someone thinking you know that sounds like fun and they jump in a body of water that's more than they've really should take on and they get you know three quarters away across and i mean i've i've been in some swims where i didn't have any support and i thought boy if if i over did this that could have a really that
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, the closest I've come to, you know, I wouldn't say it was dangerous.
24:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Like when I started Millford Sound, there was some point where it meets the open ocean, and I was just looking at the map.
24:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, right, I'll start from there.
24:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll make sure I'm summing with the tide because you can't go against the tide.
24:57
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, Michael Phillips couldn't go against the tide and he's faster than me.
25:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But, um, but, um,
25:04
[SPEAKER_03]: basically there's a there's a current that I didn't know about now I asked the water tax guy who basically lives down there and he was a pretty introverted guy and he didn't tell me about this current and basically millford sound was actually about a little over 16k and I jumped in the water right where the water meets the open ocean.
25:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And I realized, you know, maybe half hour into this whim that I wasn't going anywhere and I think it tasted I, you know, I triple checked the tide and I thought I must be going against the tide.
25:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I must have got this wrong somehow.
25:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Even though I checked and checked and checked again and checked again.
25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And anyway, I was like, I'm not going anywhere.
25:50
[SPEAKER_03]: There's just no way this is ever going to happen to my kayakers.
25:53
[SPEAKER_03]: We're having trouble moving as well.
25:55
[SPEAKER_03]: we went back to the boat and I got back on the boat and I was frustrated because you know as long way to get there and I thought over half hour or 40 minutes in and the support go a guy who's he was a pretty quiet guy and he just said oh yeah there's this big out going current um if we go 1k in or so the current's not there and it should be pretty calm and I was like any even clarified he said there were two elite level kayakers I don't know if
26:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But two guys who were former champions of the coast to coast a couple of weeks prior They tried to kayak out doubtful sound, which is, you know, if you're not too far from Milford and out around in the ocean and then come back into Milford and two elite level co-actors couldn't beat this current.
26:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They had to turn around and go back into doubtful and of course Any company co-actors going to be much faster than the swimmer and they couldn't beat it
26:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, why didn't you just tell me that?
26:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I would have just started, you know, and anywhere we got in the boat and we went in.
26:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think it was about 800 meters into the field and I jumped in and the water was smooth.
27:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And this wind went fine from there.
27:06
[SPEAKER_03]: But I was like, wow, I'd very specifically asked them.
27:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, is there anything I should know that I don't know?
27:12
[SPEAKER_03]: and he didn't tell me and he goes, oh yeah, there's a big current there, no way you're going to be that and I was like, oh okay, thanks for telling me, but it's a great place to train.
27:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You could just stay in one place like a train car.
27:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
27:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it was great.
27:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It was very, very fortunate that you know, I had the support though of there because I mean, if he just left me out there with co-actors, we would have been finished.
27:33
[SPEAKER_03]: That's crazy.
27:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but that was that was it was not good in the moment, but it ended up being a funny part of the story, but the rest of the swim was very, very smooth and we didn't have any problems and
27:46
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... but because i spent about half hour or so uh... fighting current that i was never going to be uh... just as i was finishing the swim maybe twenty minutes uh... you know the tide shifted to the last seven or eight hundred meters of the swim actually had to fight the tide just as it shifted uh... so normally i get through seven or eight hundred meters in you know less than ten minutes uh... but that took almost half an hour to get that last
28:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's there's always something unexpected and weird that happens almost always in my marathon swims It never quite goes according to plan We've probably said this a hundred times on this show, but the adventure begins when the unexpected thing does happen It's when when when the plans don't turn out the way you know what you plan doesn't the reality doesn't turn out the way you plan And yeah, that's what makes the story interesting too
28:41
[SPEAKER_03]: yep that's exactly right and uh i'm writing about it i'm i'm gonna have a swing at writing another book and i wrote about millford sound and that was just one of those things that life just doesn't go according to plan i mean it's important to make the plans and the safety plans and all that sort of thing when it in any kind of adventure but right
28:59
[SPEAKER_03]: You got to be able to be able to keep going when things don't go according to plan.
29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to talk about some of these other big swims that you've done, but first, you're a health care professional.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I am.
29:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What is swimming do for people as far as health is concerned?
29:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there's a lot of things that can do, and there's been a lot of relatively recent research on cold water immersion, both just simple immersion and also swimming in relatively cool water.
29:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's the found that's really, really calming effects on the nerve system and really an immune system boost.
29:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, purely for joints.
29:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, swimming, you know, can be really, really good for, you know, most of your joints and that sort of thing.
29:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Obviously there's
29:51
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, impact or anything like that, so swimming is one of the things that can be really really good for injury rehab, like if you're not a swimmer, but you've injured yourself in some other way.
30:03
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, swimming can be incredible for rehab, both just the action of
30:09
[SPEAKER_03]: being in the water with some resistance but not very much and really helps improve range motion things like that.
30:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So for injuries to you know any leg injury spinal injury and you know once you get a shoulder injury rehab to the point where you can start doing the stroke properly again swimming is one of the better things you can do for for many many types of injuries and of course as I said you know good for the immune system and good for the nerve system as well.
30:37
[SPEAKER_01]: What about lung capacity and cardio?
30:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I've always found like, I mean, it's like obviously there's no real hills and swimming, so I've always been able to get my heart rate up a little higher, you know, going up mountains and hills on either on foot or on my bike.
30:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So in, you know, it's swimming fitness doesn't really translate into cycling fitness or running fitness that well.
31:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It's just a different way of working your cardio system, because I mean, obviously your horizontal, you know, we're on your bike or when you're on foot, you're upright, and most of it comes from your arms.
31:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So even the best one, you're just not gonna quite get the same, it's a different feeling.
31:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can work exceptionally hard, you know,
31:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Get your heart rate up exceptionally high, but it's just a little different when you're aiming for speedwork or racing and that sort of thing in swimming.
31:42
[SPEAKER_03]: My competitive days are mostly in the past, but most of my swimming now is, I do speedwork in the pool and I do speedwork around boy lines, but most of the time I'm working hard,
31:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, really hammering unless I'm in a 10k race or something like that, because most of my adventure marathon swims on A, aiming to challenge myself, but also making sure I'm taking the time to really, you know, soak up the scenery, so to speak, like two or three times in no-fords sound that just had to stop mine my back and just look around.
32:18
[SPEAKER_03]: and just appreciate what nature had in front of me.
32:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We're in a race, in a race you're not going to do that, but in these sorts of long distance swims that I do, I mean, it's still obviously an endurance challenge.
32:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, working hard, but generally speaking, not hammering in these big ones.
32:38
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, I do that in training sometimes, but when I go on these ventures,
32:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I would meet me personally.
32:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd definitely find climbing up a mountain harder than marathon swimming, you know, a charter cardio, at least for me, but it's still extremely challenging in a different way.
33:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, you must have a very efficient, smooth stroke.
33:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah, I mean, I like to think so, um, it, you know, it's one of, I mean, I wasn't natural at it.
33:13
[SPEAKER_03]: It took me along, uh, I would say a good four or five, six months, uh, when I first started swimming to be able to do it well.
33:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't come naturally to me, but because I got into long distance things pretty early in my sporting endeavors, you learn to be smooth and efficient, and it is one of those things you can only become more efficient by doing this.
33:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, it's very efficient tonight.
33:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd breathe to both sides, like I'll either breathe every third stroke or fifth stroke, so it's symmetrical.
33:46
[SPEAKER_03]: because if you only breathe the one side, you know, you can develop an imbalance which often can lead to injury.
33:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah.
33:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have to choose an odd number of strokes for your breath so you alternate.
33:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, if you're going hard, you'll have to probably breathe every three strokes, but when I'm in a rhythm, I'll often breathe every five except for when you look up to make sure you're swimming in a straight line.
34:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So that happens every 23 strokes.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Well swimming in a straight line is tough, I think water is disorienting to start with limited visibility, you have the water pushing you around and in a pool at least you have the line on the bottom to help you keep you in your lane so to speak, but how do you navigate so you're in a straight line?
34:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, well, it's, I mean, if there's not much, if there's no wind or no current going on, it's, it is easier, and you pick a point, you know, you know, you know, if you can see the other side of the lake or something like that, you just pick a point and you say, right, I'm summing towards that.
34:48
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, you basically every 20 or 30 strokes, or maybe a bit less than that sometimes depending on what the weather's doing, you look up and make sure you're still heading towards it.
34:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, if you got tides to deal with, or if you have, you know, winds like whether it's a headwind, it's harder when it's across wind.
35:06
[SPEAKER_03]: But it takes a lot of experience, and I just, like I said, the only natural athletic ability I seem to have is to be able to swim in a straight line and navigating and knowing being able to judge, you know, so I've got to cross win, for example, and you've got to swim.
35:24
[SPEAKER_03]: you know just say to your right somewhat in order to go straight that's the one of the very few things that came naturally to me ethically I just figured out how to navigate this is how far I need to push to the right in order to keep going straight when the wind's coming to the
35:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And of course, in the ocean, when you got when it's surf conditions, it's harder, but yeah, I seem to be able to navigate the surf reasonably well.
35:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, sometimes when the waves hit you are going to be pushed to the side, but you quickly self-correct.
35:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, of course, there's rivers where, you know, when you have to switch directions and you have to dodge rocks and you have to, you know, dodge swim around islands, that sort of thing
36:11
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... that's a different beast all together man and the name of your first book by the way it's it's down river no mad so i want to talk about swimming rivers uh... let's let's get through a few more of the big swim events that you've done um... western brook pond
36:31
[SPEAKER_03]: in Canada and you were saying that they call it upon but it's actually the biggest freshwater fjord yeah we're from a newfound land we we we call the the big lakes the ponds it doesn't make much sense but that's what we call them so western Brookfield western Brook pond or you know make it easier western Brook the Lord
36:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost exactly, I measured it's actually about 200 meters longer than Millford sounds.
37:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I finished Millford, I hadn't been home for a fair while.
37:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I finished Millford, I thought to myself, there's a few more, you know, 90 minutes from where I grew up, that when I was swimming and being competitive there, I never thought of swimming.
37:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I was more of a competitor when I was a teenager and 20-year-old growing up in Newfoundland.
37:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't doing as much adventure stuff.
37:20
[SPEAKER_03]: you know so you know long distance travel on for the most part as well as marathon swimming but my god out of millford and within several minutes I thought I got to get back to new from land and and swim western repont and this was 2022 when I swam millford sound and
37:42
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... just several months later i found a lump on my foot which turned out to be cancerous uh... so my plan of summing western repon twenty twenty three one out the window because i was recovering from the pretty horrific foot surgery and they uh... it was right on the bottom of my my left arch
38:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and I thought initially that would be a relatively simple thing to remove, but because it was attached to my skin, they actually had to take skin off my form, if you don't know if you can see that funny looking scar right there.
38:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
38:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
38:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Basically, they had to dig right down, take all the flesh off my left forearm and slap it on the bottom of my foot.
38:21
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I have hair on my forearms, and so now I actually have hair on the bottom of my left foot.
38:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And some of my North American friends, you know, they said, oh, you're a hobbit now, because you know, I live in New Zealand.
38:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I had to correct them.
38:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, no, no, Hobbits have hair on the top of both the I had hair on the bottom of one.
38:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically it took me about to several months to recover from that surgery, had to learn to walk again in yoga, and then when the wounds healed, swimming was important rehab, but because they more or less had to take this
39:06
[SPEAKER_03]: skin off my arm.
39:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought that I might be able to swim both Western Burpond and my other big goal was Lake Perquetti several months before I swim Milford Sound 28K Lake about halfway down the center of South Island.
39:23
[SPEAKER_03]: about three hour drive from here.
39:24
[SPEAKER_03]: I tried to swim that a few months before millford, but I got 21 of 28k across, but the weather turned on me.
39:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So I said, right, we'll try again next year.
39:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I was laid up with cancer.
39:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I missed the 2023 summer season because the summer is, you know, basically December through to April here.
39:46
[SPEAKER_03]: and I had my surgery in January so I didn't do anything swimming was in 2023 during the summer season and then in 2024 I wanted to swim like through Kecki and I thought I'd go to Millford, sorry, Western Brook Pond.
40:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But I realized after I swam another lake called Lake Colouridge, which takes me about four or five hours this when that was my limit.
40:12
[SPEAKER_03]: I because my arm was still too damaged.
40:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I had my arm taped up and I had neoprene wrist braces.
40:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, on my, on my arm and I realized if I slam another stroke after that, my, my arm would get badly injured.
40:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so 24, I did swim and I did do a lot of things, but the longest I swam there was this particular lake called Lake Colour, which took me about four and a half, I think was four hours 45, I remember correctly.
40:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And so finally, this year, 2025, in April, I swam the 28 kilometer lake per Kecki.
40:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I caught the best possible day.
40:53
[SPEAKER_03]: You could possibly imagine where this ice blue glacier lake was like a mirror.
40:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I look at that as a universal apologizing to me for the delay or something like that.
41:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, where I, I mean, Lake Boocacke can get pretty rough.
41:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a big lake and when the winds pick up as they often do in New Zealand, you know, it can look like a mirror in the morning, but two, three hours into the day.
41:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It's often pretty rough.
41:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But I had the the best possible imaginable day, April 5th of this year.
41:26
[SPEAKER_03]: where the lake was like an absolute blue mirror and that took me eight and a half hours eight hours 24 and I finally finished it and there were some people milling about I'm on the there's a lookout point where I finished and my kayakers you know they paddled in and I had a support car driver because there's a road next to one side of the lake and they told the few people milling about it this lookout point when I was up to because I also
41:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was sitting down on this rock, I was finished, like I was absolutely cooked.
42:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And I sat down on this rock and this old lady who looked to be about 90 years old and she was nearly as big as a puppy.
42:10
[SPEAKER_03]: she came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder and she said, my goodness, swimming from the other side of the lake, that must have taken almost an hour.
42:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Despite being absolutely fatigued, I just burst out laughing, because it did take more than an hour.
42:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It took eight and a half of them.
42:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, so I finally achieved that goal in April.
42:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I moved on in August, I went home to Newfoundland.
42:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Just as I was turning 50, I turned 50 a few days after I've successfully swam Western Group Pond.
42:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's this isolated theory about not even a dry from where I grew up.
42:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So as I said, I never thought assuming it when I was young and in my athletic prime, so my master genius plan was to wait till I turn 50 and then travel to the other side of the world, then go to then go swim.
43:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't the most efficient way of doing it when you think about it.
43:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's a pretty isolated theory.
43:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And we pulled the kayaks in the night before on a quad bike, but yeah, there's a tourboat that goes in there.
43:29
[SPEAKER_03]: uh... and it was it was quite a difficult task to uh... to get permission to swim uh... the field like when i when i asked permission from what's called the department of conference uh... conservation dock in New Zealand i sent to got a email with my plan and my safety plan and my pledges i wouldn't do it in bad weather and he called me back about three hours later we discussed for a couple of minutes ago yep you got your permission he sent me to let her go for your life
43:57
[SPEAKER_03]: It wasn't quite as efficient in Canada.
44:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It was back and forth, back and forth, and literally right up until they were thrown roadblocks there.
44:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd sent a few days before I flew there to Canada from New Zealand.
44:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd sent a post out on the Newfoundland kayaking Facebook page saying, I've got a couple of kayakers,
44:26
[SPEAKER_03]: wants to kayak with me.
44:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'd welcome more support and all that sort of stuff.
44:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And someone from Park's Canada got wind of that post.
44:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I landed in San Francisco, I just happened to open my email, you know, I'm halfway to Canada.
44:43
[SPEAKER_03]: and uh... they sent me an email saying uh... you've now made this a public event by asking for help publicly you need a five dollar insurance policy and i was like what uh... you know i i i i i thought it blew it and anyway this two page letter that
45:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It sounded pretty threatening and I thought to myself, man, if I'd posted saying something like I want to sell drugs or something in the national park, I would have been just as threatened by Perks County.
45:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And anyway, the last two lines are saying, if you remove the post and publicly say we don't need extra help, then you can go ahead and swim.
45:22
[SPEAKER_03]: I was like, who of you?
45:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And I did that and anyway.
45:27
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was going to stop is so perplexing.
45:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah, for a novice like me, I would think you just go jump in the water and swim.
45:35
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
45:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, this is a said, it's an international park called Grossmore National Park in Newfoundland.
45:42
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really really beautiful place.
45:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And anyway, the day before my swim.
45:48
[SPEAKER_03]: They sent me a letter saying, because we were going into the field, which was the direction the wind was forecast to be blowing, and I was going to get the shuttle boat which drops hikers off at the end of the field.
46:06
[SPEAKER_03]: They sent me a message saying, no, you can't do it because by putting the kayaks on the shuttleboat, you might damage the shuttleboat.
46:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And this was at five o'clock in the afternoon the day before my swim.
46:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And I've got a friend who's a very successful businessman.
46:23
[SPEAKER_03]: He was one of the great guys.
46:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So he really helped with the local triathlon in cross country ski trails there.
46:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I called him and I said, do you know anyone up there
46:36
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, get them to back off and he said, give me 10 minutes.
46:39
[SPEAKER_03]: He called me back in eight minutes.
46:40
[SPEAKER_03]: He said, you're good to go.
46:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I solved this problem.
46:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, and this way.
46:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, he basically was the one, his name is Bill Barry.
46:50
[SPEAKER_03]: He was the one who got me over the line to be able to finally swim Western Brook.
46:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, 16 kilometers plus 200 meters and had two friends
47:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And the tourboat passed me two or three times.
47:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And just as I finished the tourboat came up another time, right at the end of the few.
47:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is a really, really isolated place.
47:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was on this small jetty where they drop off hikers.
47:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And the tourboat, I heard the tourboat operator.
47:20
[SPEAKER_03]: with his newfound land accent, wait thicker than mine, he was talking to the tourists and he said, see that guy on the war over there fellas?
47:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Not one word of a lie, he swam all the way in here, first person to ever do that.
47:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess he thought the tour boat was too expensive.
47:50
[SPEAKER_03]: that rivaled Milford sound beauty.
47:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was really, and that's in the MESCO World Heritage site as well.
47:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was really, really stoked to finally get that one done.
48:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I want to rewind just a little bit.
48:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I, you said you had the cancer and you all the time and energy and work it took to come back from that.
48:11
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think a lot of people would just get knocked down and say, okay, I guess I'm not doing this anymore.
48:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But you came back.
48:20
[SPEAKER_01]: How did it feel when you when you did finish the swim?
48:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're like, okay, I'm back.
48:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, I don't remember this because I was coming out of anesthesia.
48:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But my wife told me that when I was kind of when I was being wheeled to the recovery room, and I was, yeah, I was talking to the people who were, I have no memory of this because I was, you know,
48:48
[SPEAKER_03]: to apparently the people who were wheeling me back, I was talking incessantly about triathlon and marathon swimming, and I said, right, give me a year, I'm going to swim like Pukekki, and I'm going to get up avalanche peak again.
48:59
[SPEAKER_03]: An avalanche peak is one of the iconic mountains about a two-hour drive from here in a place called Earth.
49:04
[SPEAKER_03]: There's past National Park, and it was four days shy of a year.
49:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I made it up avalanche peak.
49:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And it took longer to swim like Pukekki because, as I said, my arm was so badly damaged with skin transplant.
49:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I did make it across Lake Colourage that season, but it took me well basically a year and a half.
49:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And I got Lake Pukekki done.
49:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And when I finished this fjord swimming in Canada in August, it was just like...
49:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow, yeah, I'm gonna write another book about this and you know, I took a swing at writing a book after I swam what's called the Clothe River and that was documenting my marathon swimming adventures and triathlon adventures around the world culminating with the 256 kilometer Clothe River Swim which took four and a half days and that was my lockdown project because I decided on the second day of lockdown when I realized they weren't kidding.
50:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, though I was wanting to write a book, my mom's an English teacher, I love writing, I love reading, I love reading adventure biographies, and my barrier to doing that before was, you know, well, I'm not a super adventurer and, you know, the only people who know me or people who've met me, who would read about me, but I realized with marathon swimming and triathlon, you know, I was never the best one in the world or anything.
50:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing this because I love to and I want to, and I always wanted to write a book so why not?
50:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, so I thought about another one and what I'm hoping to capture in the book coming back to your question is, you know, how it felt to, you know, have that, you know, it was a life threatening cancer.
50:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it had its spread.
50:50
[SPEAKER_03]: They said, that would have been it.
50:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but I just had the attitude is is best I could.
50:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That, um,
51:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, one of the first things I did when I recovered from when I got out of the hospital was, you know, basically saying, right, this sucks.
51:09
[SPEAKER_03]: What can I do to make this worse?
51:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And I made a list of things that I could do to make it incredibly worse and harder for my wife and harder for everyone around me.
51:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And I decided very clearly not to do all those things.
51:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, basically it was, you know, I was doing all the, you know, I had my left arm and my left leg and my left foot torn up.
51:30
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was doing all the movements that I could as early as possible.
51:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And then, you know, there's mostly yoga first, because I mean, the wounds I couldn't get in the water, because I was, you know, had the wounds and stitches and everything.
51:45
[SPEAKER_03]: There's mostly yoga that I was doing.
51:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And when possible, I got on my wind trainer.
51:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember the first time I got on my wind trainer.
51:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a 10 minute ride before my foot swelled up too much, so I couldn't ride anymore.
52:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, you know, that was, that felt amazing, even though it was 10 minutes and I put her at so much, I, you know, I could manage 10 minutes.
52:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when I finished Kruecki and you know, you know, I was sitting there exhausted that little old lady came up to me and I laughed and then I thought about it some more and I thought, you know, wow, um, you know, I'm not going to send any marathon swimming world records or triathlon world records or anything like that and there's certainly
52:31
[SPEAKER_03]: tougher than faster than me.
52:34
[SPEAKER_03]: But what I'm hoping to capture and writing about my thing is capture what I've come to phrase is like a motive being where you have a challenge, you have a, I guess you can use the word catastrophe and what you do in the face of that and you know and sure there's appropriate amounts of, you know, times of frustration and all that sort of thing,
53:01
[SPEAKER_03]: get the better of you and and keep going no matter what and that's what I'm holding the capture in this book that I'm you know it's probably going to take me all this coming year to finish writing and that's sort of thing I've started but I don't have a lockdown to do a lot of the work and I work full time and I do a lot of adventuring so you know it's not as many hours per week
53:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, congratulations and I love the the example getting after it saying okay.
53:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to figure out how to get back on the horse again
53:39
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, I believe that that really is the way that it's the right attitude to get through life because everybody gets hit with unexpected things.
53:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It may not be cancer.
53:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be any number of things, but we always end up with challenges and things we have to overcome that we wouldn't choose.
53:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
54:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Your example's fantastic.
54:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's like, okay, I'm back at it.
54:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to make this happen and you did.
54:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So congratulations on that you know we've almost burned up all of our time, but I want to hear about the bullet river gorge and the cow
54:16
[SPEAKER_01]: The cow that out did you.
54:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we talking about?
54:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, there's in the lead-up to swimming the Clotha.
54:24
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a handful of rivers in New Zealand that are deep enough for swimming.
54:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And the Boulder River is one of them.
54:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Most of the rivers in New Zealand are just too shallow for swimming.
54:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it's not a swimming place, but the Boulder River.
54:37
[SPEAKER_03]: which the first time I saw it was just after finishing a backcountry mountain bike ride called the Old Ghost Road, which is incredible.
54:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And the shuttle getting bringing me back to the end of the Ghost Road back to where my car was, he go through the Boulder River Gorge.
54:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And that was the first time I saw the Boulder River and I said, okay, I'm going to swim there.
54:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And
55:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Basically, the first time I swam it, I didn't know all the kayakers that I know now and I had the kayaking tour company in a small town called Merchinson, which is on the Boulder River.
55:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I said, right, what I want to do is I want to have a kayak tour guide come with me, but I don't want to use a kayak and they're like, yeah sure, okay.
55:28
[SPEAKER_03]: told him when I was up to and basically what we determined was just around merchants and there's a few waterfalls and that's sort of things he can't swim there and the end of the river where it meets the open ocean and a town called Westport there's there's a bunch of farms and I was advised that the water was with the farm runoff probably you get sick.
55:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So the Bullard River Gorge is very coincidentally 42 kilometers long, the marathon and so I said right and I'll swim that section from you know beginning to the end of the gorge
56:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And I did that successfully the first time when the water level was reasonably low and that took about seven hours.
56:15
[SPEAKER_03]: The second time I did it, the water level was quite high, and I took me about five and a half hours.
56:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
56:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And the second time I did it, a local journalist in Westport.
56:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is a population that believes it's around 4,000, it might be 5,000 people living in Westport, so relatively small town.
56:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And a local journalist in Westport got wind of what I'd done and she called me and said, you know, kind of write a little story about this.
56:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, yes, and, you know, I told her all the things, you know, I didn't swim above Merchinson because there's too many rocks and there's waterfalls.
56:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, I declared that unswimmable.
56:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And I said, no, I wouldn't swim below the gorge because of the farm runoff and didn't want to get sick.
56:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, she wrote a little story about me swimming the Boulder River Gorge twice and at that time, the friend of mine has since slam it, but at that time I was the only person who'd done it.
57:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And less than two weeks later, I just came up on my Facebook feed a funny other algorithm works, but the same journalist wrote an article, they found a cow.
57:19
[SPEAKER_03]: at the in the mouth of the river and they fished the cow out of it and by its tags that they had on you know the brand or whatever it is they worked out that the cow had fallen in the river from a field about to 80 kilometers above Merchinson.
57:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So the cow basically drifted down the whole river right to the mouth and went over waterfalls and a vet had examined the cow and said it was fine, so a cow did what I said couldn't be done.
57:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And so at the time I was the only marathon swimmer in the world to have swam the
58:07
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if the cow had to do it again, it may not turn out so well for it.
58:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's hilarious, though.
58:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I tell you, animals will do things that seem ridiculous and get away with it somehow.
58:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I think.
58:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just tough.
58:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, some of them.
58:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just tough.
58:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I imagine a lot of cattle have died not trying, but died in similar circumstances.
58:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure they have.
58:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was literally the same journal as less than two weeks later after I'd said to this period specifically that what the cow did couldn't be done.
58:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah.
58:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's a fun place to wrap this up.
58:46
[SPEAKER_01]: What's on the horizon for you?
58:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you looking forward to now?
58:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, well, I've, um, after, um, my, uh, Western Brook Ponds, when my four days later I swam the Humber River, which is roughly the size of the upper clue, though, it's about close to 40 kilometers long.
59:03
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the river that swam dead that goes through my home town.
59:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I swam that four days after, and, um, very shortly after finishing those swims.
59:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I, um, figured out how to
59:19
[SPEAKER_03]: literally tripped on a very, very small piece of wood on the jetty.
59:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And I injured my shoulder so September of this year was rehabbing.
59:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't injured my shoulder during this winter.
59:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I figured I'd have to do it five minutes after.
59:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So October was not the greatest training.
59:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I was just had a lot of trouble getting back in shape, but there's what I'm going to do
59:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing some big bike rides as well as backcountry swims.
59:53
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to swim that lake haulerage again, and my main thing that I've gotten in mind, there's a funny looking peninsula just near a Christchurch called the Bank
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_03]: and there's several little bass along that.
1:00:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm going to swim from what's called Okens Bay through to LeBon's Bay.
1:00:12
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically swim out to the open ocean through a harbor out around this peninsula which is basically a bunch of cliffs.
1:00:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And then swim back down into LeBon's Bay.
1:00:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And that crudely measured on Google Matt looks to be 16 or 17k.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to do another river swim, and really locally, I haven't done this yet, where the Y-Mac river, that's the river they use in the coast to coast for the kayaking section, I have swam that gorgeous well, big sections that river are too shallow for swimming, but near the end several kilometers, where it goes into the ocean just a little bit of north of Christchurch,
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to swim the end of that river and then enter the ocean and then swim down to the end of the beach in a little section of Christchurch called Sumner and that looks to be about 25 K including a few K in the river.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So transfer from river down into ocean so that's one of the goals I have as well and I'm cooking up some backcountry stuff like
1:01:21
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, combining, pulling a raft with all my hiking gear, going into the backcountry, and things like that, I did one of those adventures in Merch as well.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I swam a lake, 12k, hiked up a big mountain, and hiked back down over four days, and then swam the seven and a half k lake.
1:01:45
[SPEAKER_03]: and that was in Nelson Lake's National Park, and Mount Angeles was the Mount and I hiked up so I called that the Marathon Swimming Mount Angela Sandwich, so I'm interested in combining Marathon Swimming with the mountains because I love swimming but I also love the mountains so combining the two is some of the other adventures that I've got in mind like that.
1:02:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Rob, that is so fun.
1:02:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's fantastic when people kind of come up with their own thing.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_01]: They know they love it and they do it and there aren't a lot of people doing what you're doing, you know?
1:02:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:02:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they're swimmers.
1:02:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But, throwing a wrap behind you so you can camp and climb a mountain and swim back out.
1:02:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's unique.
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very, very cool.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you for your time today Rob.
1:02:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It was fun to hear what you're up to.
1:02:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations again on beating the cancer and coming back and continuing to live an adventurous life.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much and I really appreciate to have me on.
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, it's been fun.
1:02:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So all you listeners out there is always make sure you get out there and have your own fun.