The Endless Pool – English Bay Challenge

By PETER SCOTT

Vancouver, BC – On July 27th, I swam in the Bay Challenge, an open water race covering 9km as the crow flies in Vancouver’s main harbour. It was a wonderful experience full of surprises and learning opportunities.

Leading up to this race, I had been quite busy with my TI coaching and freediving business and had little occasion to train. I did manage to race in the Canada Day 4km race in Lake Sasamat, in which I placed fourth in my age group, and I also did a number of 3000 – 4500m swims in Kits pool, one of the most beautiful outdoor pools in the world. The pool is 137m long and affords swimmers plenty of room to focus on long laps of mindful swimming.

Sunday morning at 7am I found myself on the beach at Sandy Cove, contemplating the swim to Kits beach, which is only a few blocks from where I live. I couldn’t actually see the beach. There were fourteen competitors doing the solo race, including Alan Bell, who has won the race several times in years past, and three relay teams. My support boat with my friends Eric, Tyler, Roberta and Matt stood several hundred meters off shore waiting to escort me across the shipping channel and around recreational boat traffic. They were as excited as I was.

“Have a great swim, everybody,” Alan Bell said as the countdown passed “ten, nine, eight” and then we were suddenly in the water. The North Pacific’s familiar deep emerald green water greeted me as I took my first few strokes. So nice to be doing a race in my personal playground. I wondered what sort of marine life and topography was flying by beneath me.

Starting out, everyone met with a fairly stiff current. After fighting it for a while with the others, my crew and I choose an "as the crow flies" route to Kits beach (see photo - our route in red, Alan Bell's in yellow). Most of the other swimmers elected to fight the current head on. Silly decision, I thought, and happily sought the path of least resistance.

Unfortunately for me, it turned out that we encountered current for most of the way! The faster and more experienced swimmers (Alan Bell and Victoria Naess) took a dogleg route that aimed at Stanley Park and then cut across to Kits Beach. We think that by following this route, they got out of the current faster and then swam the rest of the race closer to shore, even if it was a little further, where the current would be almost non-existent. Many boats had GPS - we thought that was a little too modern - so we relied on celestial navigation - unfortunately it was daytime, so that didn't quite work! But with GPS the boat crew could tell how fast their swimmer was actually moving and adjust the course accordingly.

I had hoped for a swim of 2h30min to 3 hours total. By the three hour mark, I was still in the middle of the bay, with no end in sight. I did get a thrill from stopping for water and a small snack of dried dates completely surrounded by water. What a treat!

Throughout the race my stroke count was steady at 50-52 strokes per minute, with an occasional increase to 56 strokes per minute right after refueling. Compared to most swimmers, this would be 10-15 fewer strokes per minute.

Near the end, I was tiring and getting chilled. My left shoulder, after being fine the whole way, started to ache. Why? I realized that given my fatigue, I was breathing primarily to the right and rotating less and less to the left. Despite taking more breaths on the left to compensate, I could feel that my muscles were taking on the extra task of keeping propulsion going.

Another difficulty was my buoyancy. I knew going into the race that my choice of wetsuit bottoms (2 piece) would make my hips and legs too buoyant. But I wanted to be warm and relaxed. However, this meant that I really couldn’t kick at all, not even to help me rotate for the two beat kick. While this meant less body coordination, it did mean that my legs consumed very little energy and never cramped. So given that I had to swim with more of my upper body than I would without a suit, I was happy that I managed to keep weight shifts pronounced right up until the end. I did have some tension in my lower back on my left side, but I think that was due to my reduced rotation to the left, since it came in the last half hour of my swim.

The pleasure of this race was to have such a long time completely focused on swimming. After the first ten minutes when I adjusted my pace to an aerobic one, I knew I could keep it up for as long as I needed. I didn’t expect to swim almost an hour and a half longer than planned!

I swam in the longest official time ever recorded for this race: 4 hours and 22 minutes! And I had never swum that long before with freestyle. The only long swim I'd done that was close was the sea hiking type swim I did with my freediving friend Eric Fattah in which we swam about 11-12 km with monofins while dragging dry bags full of drinking water, diving gear and food (which was a lot more work) several years ago when I was young and full of beans.

If you compare the stroke count and time swum with my Sasamat Lake swim of 4km, which I swam in 1 hour and 2 minutes, it was as if I had swum the equivalent of 16km!

Near the end of my swim, a seal splashed around playfully just ahead of me. I didn't see her, but am glad the others enjoyed the show. Another highlight was having my close friends cheering me on throughout the swim. Looking down I could see the emerald sea below and feel he water coursing over my body. I could hear their cheers faintly at first and then growing more insistent and boisterous in the last hour.

The race organizers had told us that anyone swimming over four hours would be pulled from the water, so my team was cheering me on like crazy to get to shore and out pace the rescue boat. Roberta especially nearly shouted herself hoarse to keep me going. At one point, I stopped briefly to stretch my stiffening back and everyone on the boat yelled at me to keep going (in a nice way). The rescue boat was gaining on us and they were afraid that it would all end!

In the end, with my team vouching for my safety and ability to swim the rest of the course, the officials let me finish. What a great feeling to finally step on shore and stagger up to the beach. Imagine lying down for four hours and then suddenly jumping up and trying to run up the beach in a straight line! Yes, I was a wee bit wobbly. The race organizer put a mic to me and asked, "Did you swim the whole way?" I was a little puzzled by the question. "Yes," I replied, still a bit confused. Didn't he see me SWIM in? I hadn't realized that other swimmers had given up against the current and abandoned the race.

Soon after that, the winners were congratulated and we all gratefully ate the remaining free food provided by a local market. Standing on Kits beach, I looked out at English Bay and was quite in awe at having swum from so far - squinting, I could not see the beach from which I had departed! I reflected on my swim in the moments when the volunteers were cleaning up. I was tired but except for my left shoulder, not out of breath or exhausted, having recharged with some oatmeal cookies. I shivered slightly, still behind in that respect.

What an odd experience! I was aware of each stroke, the finer points of my technique, of seeking ease and flow and letting my body drive me through the water. And this is what I saw: green, green, green, sky, green, wave to my friends, green, green, green. I liken the experience to flying somewhere above the clouds: suddenly, after four hours, you are in a totally different place, as if you hadn't really moved through space. As with the long monofin swim many years ago, I didn't have a sense of distance covered, but the coast got subtly larger and larger even as it still seemed miles away.

A little fun with numbers:

Estimated number of strokes to swim across the bay: 13,509 (avg 52 strokes per minute)
Number of dates eaten along the way: 10

Feeling of having shared this with close friends and laughed the whole way there: Priceless!

I'll be posting some video footage on Youtube soon.

Here is the official result board:

2008 Bay Challenge July 27

SOLO SWIMMERS
2:43:20 Alan Bell
2:51:55 Victoria Naess
3:01:45 Pamela Kalas
3:10:40 Nicole Kolstad
3:58:09 Andrea Reichert
3:59:48 Elaine Van oosten
4:04:26 Debbie Collingwood
4:09:24 Mary Lovelace
4:22:30 Peter Scott
DNF Lynn Langtry-Smith
DNF Wade Repta
DNF Lawrence Vo
DNF Aaron Grain

RELAY TEAMS
2:39:33 TEAM CEASAR:
(Cam Auge, Facundo Chernikoff, Colin Mcarthur, Richard Taylor)

3:59:05 Dos Bouys:
(Ian Fraser, Jose Andino)

4:20:27 Flying Fish:
(Edith Lam, Isabelle Cote)

4:20:55 Ad Hoc Challengers:
(Tim Reeve, Ashley Smith, Kerry Chow, Mina Nozar)

How do I feel today? Left shoulder is a bit stiff. Didn't hurt at all until 3h30min when I realized I didn't have the energy to rotate fully to the left. So that had my arm doing a little extra work. After sleeping for about 12 hours, I feel pretty good! Amazing what the body can handle even after so little training.

Special thanks to my indomitable, enthusiastic and good-looking support team on the boat:

-Boat Captain and Navigation: Tyler
-Sabotage, Date Tossing Expert, and Calculations on the fly: Eric
-"Rum," Stroke Counts, and Cheering: Roberta
-Videography and Species Identification: Matt
-Fellow Endurance Athlete (running 30km on the same morning) and with me in Spirit: Maggie

So will I do it again? Is the ocean wet? Happy swimming!

Peter Scott first picked up the original TI book in 1995 and pursued fishlike swimming ever since. After competing in the Freediving World Championships for Canada in 2001, he has continued his exploration of the ocean through writing, art, photography, freediving, swimming, and travel. Visit his website at www.seahiker.com. Peter is now writing books on freediving and other underwater pursuits and coaching TI swimming in Vancouver, BC.