On the afternoon of September 5th, 2023 I became the first Canadian woman to complete Kingdom Games' In Search of Memphre ("The Search"), a 40km/25mile swim crossing Lac Memphremagog from Newport, Vermont to Magog, Quebec. This was my very first solo marathon swim, something I training and worked really hard for, and was thrilled to finish!
Marathon Swim Stories interview click here.
Marathon swimming and neurodivergence: a personal story
The Swim
Can you fall in love with a place, a lake? Yes.
I first started swimming in the Northeast Kingdom (NEK) of Vermont in 2014, and very new to open water. Lac Memphremagog stretches across both sides of the Canada/US border, and it's really fun to move across it on the water. The NEK has become a place for me to learn and grow as a swimmer. I love swimming in this area and the swim community that gathers there, it feels like a second home to me. Makes my heart smile.
Training leading up to the swim
I don't do a ton of mileage from week to week, I live an hour away from pools so it really has to be worth the trip. I work a modified schedule and have every second Friday off, so I do a long swim (8-14km) on those days and a couple of weeknights with a club. I supplemented this with dryland training - weights, rowing, trx straps, etc and tons of technique work with my swim coach Shannon Keegan of Intrepid Water. I was out in open water in all kinds of weather, wind, waves, rain, cold, anything I could get my hands on to challenge my skills. I signed up for progressively longer swim events starting about 2 1/2 months before the swim, 14km, then 25km, then a week at 41km. It was the perfect approach for me, and just the right amount of prep, I felt great in the water. Here are links to posts on my training prep:
Gear planning
I put a lot of effort into planning my gear and getting things ready for the swim, I found that going over packing lists and thinking through all the scenarios that might happen helped me feel calm in the months and weeks leading up to the swim. The gear prep seemed to work really well, the support crew told me things were organized and easy to find, we didn't seem to be missing anything. Here are links to posts on my gear prep:
The day of the swim
Anyone there that day will tell you, I was calm and ready. The year or two leading up to this swim was a really important time for me. I worked on my confidence, getting at the root of many lingering fears and issues that were affecting my personal life, my identity as an athlete, my swimming. I learned a lot from others too, swimmers were willing to talk to me about their own successes and failures, what they would have done differently, what they wished they'd known before the first big one. I struggled to develop habits in my training, there was some stuff going on with me health-wise, so I spent a lot of time exploring why that was and trying to figure out what I needed for this to succeed, and along with that came adaptations, growth and above all - finding my own way, what was right for me.
My swim started at midnight, and I did something that afternoon that really helped me get into the right headspace. After all my organizing and prep was done, I sat quietly on the sofa of our airbnb with a pen, a map of the lake and my phone. I marked up the map at 2hr intervals along the 40km route and wrote down a guestimate of how long it would take me in kms to get to each point. I looked up the weather conditions along the route and wrote those down too - air temp, wind speed and direction. And then I sat back and visualized my swim over and over, starting at the bottom of the lake, thinking through what it would feel like hour by hour, when the wind would pick up or die down, when the sun would be hottest, when I would likely get tired and what I would do to keep focus, what I would see along the way at different points. I'm a very visual learner and an emotional swimmer, and this was a powerful exercise that helped me centre myself. I did it again later on, closer to the start. I laid in my room afterwards to rest, but didn't sleep a wink, body and mind were eager to get going. But I stayed there for hours, relaxing, messaging with friends, family, my husband.
Night swimming
And then it was go time! We had stopped by the start point earlier in the day, and checked out the conditions. There was a large cement block underwater and I knew I'd trip over it in the dark, so I practiced walking out, dropping down, and pushing off. We put glow sticks on the dock to help light my path, it was perfect, and off I went. It's hard to describe how incredible the nighttime part of this swim was for me. I have been working for years to develop and deepen something called 'flow state', I'll write up a post about it later but it's like "getting into the zone" but to the extreme. Try to imagine this: it's very dark and quiet and still, you can feel water moving around your body and over your shoulders, your arm strokes and body rotation become a rhythm, and then at some point you realize you're there in the water but also you're not, your mind kinda shuts out any internal noise and you're just floating along, like moving meditation. I could see the moonlight across the water, the edges of the mountains, the crew on the boat, all glimpses, images, imprints. Time flew by, it felt like we'd barely left the shore and suddenly we were 10km in and at the border. Really?! I asked. Yep. I had been counting feeds too, I knew we were making great time.
It's hard to explain how 'deep' flow state feels, you just find a place of centre and calm in your mind and stay there no matter what else is going on around you. I managed to stay in flow for about 9-10 hours, pretty incredible. A couple of fish bumped my sides, and then something nibbled on my big toe (Memphre!), I stayed calm, my focus work really paid off. But then I swam into a big algae bloom and it was all stringy with weeds and jelly and really yucky gross and I popped my head up and screeched a little. Head down, back into flow.
Feeds
I started having issues with my feeds at 3 1/2 hours, way earlier than I expected, two factors I can figure - our bodies aren't really meant to digest horizontal, and I don't usually eat from midnight onwards. My crew lead Sue pointed out after the swim was over that everything I had in my feed kit was sweet tasting: the drinks, the snacks, even the liquid pain meds, all sweet tasting. It was gross, I need to figure out how to incorporate some savoury stuff.
I was really happy with my feed plan overall though, and I actually consumed very little in the way of sugars. I don't talk much about how I fuel on swims, people get kinda judgy about my approach but here goes. I follow a very specific lower-carb plan from day-to-day (no, not keto), it started as a way to deal with tummy issues on longer swims and then I wanted to explore swimming "fat-adapted" (fuel coming from fat stores), but after a few months of eating this way I felt so much better overall, and it's helped me manage other health issues too. I started with the help of a nutritionist years ago who happened to also be an endurance runner, and then as part of my prep for this swim I spoke with two very accomplished marathon swimmers who also swim fat-adapted and they helped me refine things. I've been doing this now for about 5-6 years but this is my first swim of this distance.
I used SFuels as my carb base and mixed in Biosteel for added electrolytes (both have no sugars but are highly flavoured, hence the sweet). The base product in SFuels is Highly Branched Cyclic Dextrin (HBCD), it sits well in my tummy and I had tons of energy on the swim. I ate a few blackberries, a protein shake. We brought sugars in about 2-3 hours from the finish in the form of chocolate milk, and that felt great too, timing was perfect. But so much sweet flavours...I've bought a bag of unflavoured HBCD and will start experimenting on my own. Say whatever you will about fat-adapted, it's taken me some time to figure it out but it works beautifully for me, I felt great and had energy to spare at the end.
210 cals per hour, 30 carbs per hour, 0 sugar, 0 caffeine
Observer log below, printed on waterproof paper!
Motivation
I knew going in that the last 1/3 of the swim was unknown territory, the sun was going to be hot as a heat wave rolled through, and this would probably be the point at which I might falter and where I would need to focus the most. I asked the crew to keep me busy and give me something to do so that I wouldn't wander into dark spaces. Over the course of my training I got to spend a lot of time in my head, as we do, and came to figure out stuff about myself and how I work best, so I leveraged that to come up with a variety of mindset things and little games that worked for me in my training, I wrote them up and asked my crew to use them on me when the time came. It worked really well, they'd shout something out for me to do from feed to feed, it would keep my head busy or make me laugh, they did a great job of helping me stay in the moment, there was a lot of gratitude on the water that day.
Heat wave into the finish
I chose a September swim date because I wanted colder water, joke was on me, we had a heat wave. That last third of the swim was hard, not because of the swimming but because I was baking under the sun and the top few inches on the surface were uncomfortably warm. I remember trying to sink deeper down under the warmth to find cooler water. I decided at the 2/3rd mark that I would slow my pace down on purpose, so that my internal heater wouldn't turn on (cold water swimmer here).
It gave me time to reflect about my training and my journey to get there...
- every decision I made about when to push or ease off was correct
- every decision I made to adjust my stroke/pace was correct
- my lower back didn't hurt, technique work over the months paid off
- I didn't shy away from hard stuff, I brought all my focus and effort forward
- I am much stronger physically/mentally than I give myself credit for
- I had confidence in and trusted myself
And into the finish I went...
A debt of gratitude
My crew were amazing on the water, they supported me, fed me, made me laugh, celebrate our finish. It meant the world to me to have them on board and help me land in Canada. I wanted to pay it forward to others as thanks, and made a donation to charities in their local communities.
And Phil, well, what can I say. Seeing you there and in flamingo print jammie bottoms when I got out at the end was well worth swimming 40km for. Thanks buddy.
Pre-swim dinner and briefing, nailing my finisher's placard to the clubhouse.
Phil in flamingo jammie bottoms, signing the placard, breakfast at the Brown Cow.
A couple of days after the swim, Kathleene took me to Jasper's Tavern and we started a new tradition - signing the bar! A really nice way to end off my time in the NEK, love you all.
And then she made me work it again - 3 days later we were back in the lake for a 4km cool down. I had a bit of deep fatigue but arms felt pretty good.
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