I collect my swim cap and secure a time chip around one ankle. A race organizer draws number 19 on my shoulder with a marker. Dance music pumps from loudspeakers at Port Forum Beach, Barcelona, and the conditions look okay, except for the breakers crashing against the shore. Of the 320 registered swimmers, 53 are women.
Swimmers are warming up behind the surf, loosening arms and legs like responsible athletes. I sit on a towel and buy water from a peddler selling pop and chips out of a plastic bag. I have not adequately prepared for this 2.5-kilometre race due to health interference – but here I am, in Spain, at the right time – so I’m doing this, because I told myself I would.
The pre-race briefing is completely in Spanish. I understand nothing except the countdown. A countdown sounds the same in any language, and then you run into the ocean and try to stay close to at least one other swimmer. Diez. Nueve. Ocho. Siete. Seis. Cinco. Cuatro. Tres. Dos. Uno!
I approach the first buoy, overjoyed to notice that a swimmer has taken up residence to my left. We stroke in unison around a giant orange bobble. Underwater, I can see her swimsuit has a comic-book pattern. We take turns sighting and keeping each other on track toward the next buoy. She has smaller arms than I do.
Why have I promised myself to swim this race despite my lack of training?
When you swim long distances, you are reminded that the best way to respond to unexpected currents, rip tides, rogue waves (and bad news) is to relax in the turbulence as much as possible.
We round the third orange buoy at 1,300 metres and raise our heads simultaneously, unable to see the next marker. We bob in the swells, and Comic-print says something in rapid Spanish. “No comprendo,” I say. “Sorry?” Together we sink into a trough and catch sight of another buoy. “Over there,” I wave. She points, “Alla, alla!”
We swim toward the 1,500-metre buoy. She is not 12, she is definitely an adult. After 1,500 metres, we don’t realize that we’ve started to zigzag. The swells push us around. We stop and look for the next buoy, see nothing but ocean, and put our faces back down to keep swimming, so close together that our arms occasionally graze. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Sight. Back down. Swim.
A yellow blur slides across our horizon. We bob like seals. Lifeguards on a paddleboard. A fit of Spanish breaks out between my pacer and the guards. The guards motion for us to bear left. Comic-print turns to me, points, nods, “Okay?” “Okay!” I say.
The final buoy comes into view. We pick up the pace. How had I forgotten the adrenalin of the finish, when the bottomless dark brightens to a sandy glow, lighter and lighter until you can grab the sand in your fists and crawl onto your feet?
Comic-print runs up the beach and finishes four seconds ahead of me. On the other side of the finish line, where officials retrieve our chips, we release our goggles and grin at one another. “Thanks,” I say, delivering a weak punch to her shoulder. “Good job,” she says. There are still 20-odd women behind us, and I sit on the beach to watch.
I close my eyes and replay the seafloor coming into focus after the chaos of deep rolling water.
Samantha Warwick lives in Calgary.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/the-quiet-determination-of-long-distance-swimming-in-the-open-seas/article25990090/
Swimmers are warming up behind the surf, loosening arms and legs like responsible athletes. I sit on a towel and buy water from a peddler selling pop and chips out of a plastic bag. I have not adequately prepared for this 2.5-kilometre race due to health interference – but here I am, in Spain, at the right time – so I’m doing this, because I told myself I would.
The pre-race briefing is completely in Spanish. I understand nothing except the countdown. A countdown sounds the same in any language, and then you run into the ocean and try to stay close to at least one other swimmer. Diez. Nueve. Ocho. Siete. Seis. Cinco. Cuatro. Tres. Dos. Uno!
We all dash to the ocean and dive. The fastest swimmers take off in a drove. I swim steadily with competitors to either side. The pack thins out and I know there are swimmers ahead of and behind me.
I approach the first buoy, overjoyed to notice that a swimmer has taken up residence to my left. We stroke in unison around a giant orange bobble. Underwater, I can see her swimsuit has a comic-book pattern. We take turns sighting and keeping each other on track toward the next buoy. She has smaller arms than I do.
Actually, she appears small in general, and for the first half of the race I have two predominant thoughts: “You can swim 2,500 metres,” I tell myself; and “Please, don’t be 12.” I don’t want to pace this course alongside a child, as endearing a thought as this may be.
Were children even allowed to register? I’m not sure. “You can swim 2,500 metres.” Stroke, stroke, breathe. “Please don’t be 12. You can swim 2,500 metres. Please don’t be 12.”
Why have I promised myself to swim this race despite my lack of training?
Despite the fact I don’t feel well and my last open-water race was 13 years ago?
Because I am losing touch with the truths this sport taught me in my early 20s about life and perseverance – about calm, quiet determination.
When you swim long distances, you are reminded that the best way to respond to unexpected currents, rip tides, rogue waves (and bad news) is to relax in the turbulence as much as possible.
Breathe. Stay calm. Do not make decisions based on fear.
You must try not to project, overthink, panic or punch relentlessly against a current.
This wastes precious energy.
Above all, you learn to recognize (and reject) the insidious voice that says: “Stop. You’re not good enough;” “What are you doing? You'll never get through this;” and “Who do you think you are, anyway? Loser!”
Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten parts of this. I’ve developed a burgeoning sense of trepidation. Instead of tucking my dreadlocks into the back of a cheap wetsuit and declaring, “What’s the worst that can happen?” as I did when I was 19, now I ask that question with my brow furrowed, one eyebrow lifted: “No, really,” I lean into a scenario, “What is the worst that can happen?”
We round the third orange buoy at 1,300 metres and raise our heads simultaneously, unable to see the next marker. We bob in the swells, and Comic-print says something in rapid Spanish. “No comprendo,” I say. “Sorry?” Together we sink into a trough and catch sight of another buoy. “Over there,” I wave. She points, “Alla, alla!”
We swim toward the 1,500-metre buoy. She is not 12, she is definitely an adult. After 1,500 metres, we don’t realize that we’ve started to zigzag. The swells push us around. We stop and look for the next buoy, see nothing but ocean, and put our faces back down to keep swimming, so close together that our arms occasionally graze. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Sight. Back down. Swim.
A yellow blur slides across our horizon. We bob like seals. Lifeguards on a paddleboard. A fit of Spanish breaks out between my pacer and the guards. The guards motion for us to bear left. Comic-print turns to me, points, nods, “Okay?” “Okay!” I say.
The final buoy comes into view. We pick up the pace. How had I forgotten the adrenalin of the finish, when the bottomless dark brightens to a sandy glow, lighter and lighter until you can grab the sand in your fists and crawl onto your feet?
Comic-print runs up the beach and finishes four seconds ahead of me. On the other side of the finish line, where officials retrieve our chips, we release our goggles and grin at one another. “Thanks,” I say, delivering a weak punch to her shoulder. “Good job,” she says. There are still 20-odd women behind us, and I sit on the beach to watch.
I close my eyes and replay the seafloor coming into focus after the chaos of deep rolling water.
There is always a finish line, one way or another.
It’s a matter of trusting this when we are exhausted, frustrated and impatient; when we don’t know where we are and clarity is obscured by troughs and debris.
Ocean racing taught me how to rally, gather confidence and keep going, putting one arm in front of the other.
Samantha Warwick lives in Calgary.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/the-quiet-determination-of-long-distance-swimming-in-the-open-seas/article25990090/
Aug. 3, 2017 "The journey to a good night's sleep": Today I found this life essay by Sarah Bauer in the Globe and Mail:
On the first day of September in 2012, I stopped sleeping. My body gave me no warning for this abrupt and rude physiological change. I went to bed exhausted from a day of moving with my best friend Charlie across Vancouver, from our basement suite off Cambie Street to a renovated apartment above my favourite bookstore on Commercial Drive. When Charlie and some friends went out for the night, I crawled into bed early, anticipating a deep and restful sleep.
I like the picture.
On the first day of September in 2012, I stopped sleeping. My body gave me no warning for this abrupt and rude physiological change. I went to bed exhausted from a day of moving with my best friend Charlie across Vancouver, from our basement suite off Cambie Street to a renovated apartment above my favourite bookstore on Commercial Drive. When Charlie and some friends went out for the night, I crawled into bed early, anticipating a deep and restful sleep.
It never came.
I laid all night waiting. The next day, punchy and bleary-eyed, I muscled through unpacking, visiting with family and hiking the Grouse Grind. That evening, I thought, I surely deserved a long rest for my efforts.
Instead, Night 2 saddled me with panic. If I didn’t sleep at all tonight, what would happen to me tomorrow? The terror of what could come hurled my body into a state of flight-or-fight. With my heart throbbing fast and terrible adrenaline zipping through my veins, everything was on fire. Sleep was beyond grasp.
By the fourth morning, with less than an hour of shut-eye banked on either side, I was a brittle leaf in the wind; unhinged beyond measure and chipped on all corners. I didn’t recognize myself.
But I had resources. Charlie was in medical school and he bore witness to my disintegration.
By day five, I was in the walk-in clinic with him and a doctor, crying wildly like a distressed animal. Between the three of us, we came up with some options for tackling the beast.
Over the next six months, I waded through solutions. Some came from the doctor, while other came from my faulty, exhausted logic.
They almost all cost me money, but at the end of the day, what saved me was the most simple – and free – change in thinking.
On my path to rest, I learned more about myself than any other life event has provided.
It altered me in a pointed and meaningful way. If you are struggling with insomnia, read this story. Save yourself some bucks.
Alcohol: $230
Passing out drunk works until it doesn’t. Once I was home from the bar, the night’s five whisky drinks would direct me into sudden and blank sleep. The mean tang of the next day would remind me why it wasn’t worth it.
Meditation app: $2.99
I bought the app based on user reviews and desperation. Both times I tried using it were during the day (nap time?) with the sounds of the Number 20 bus hissing to a stop outside my building.
Yoga pass: $45
When the doctor rambled off a list of possible solutions, yoga and meditation was at the top of her list. This I could do. Yoga is cool and good for you. My hamstring strength improved somewhat, but my sleep did not.
Sleeping pills: $13
The most concrete result of my dramatic doctor’s appointment with Charlie was my first prescription for sleeping pills. The quality of sleep on this stuff is brutal. You wake up feeling as if your head is a fishbowl. But it did permit me sleep. And that wretched, drug-induced sleep fortified the bridge of strength I needed to cross over to recovery.
Hypnotherapy: $300
Near the beginning of my bout of insomnia, I clung to hypnotherapy with a spiritual fervour. But at $150 a session, I had no choice but to urge my chosen healer to please expedite the miracle. He believed somewhere in my old memories lay the trauma that had suddenly kept me from sleeping.
So we searched in visions of my childhood self for more than two hours. I went back to a couple of times in my life where I was small and felt abandoned. I held her in my mind and told her it was going to be okay. After two sessions, I left feeling alive. But I never got to sleep.
Luxury leggings: $180
My first hypnotherapy session was exhilarating and motivating.
I wanted to grasp the world by the face and kiss it all over.
So I skipped right into Club Monaco on Robson Street and dropped some cash on cashmere blend leggings. Two pairs, in black and blue.
Cognitive therapy: $0
My medical plan covered four sessions. It took several failures in sleep remedy before I finally picked up the phone on my lunch break one day in December to make an appointment with a therapist.
Within our time together, my therapist had me face a terrifying suggestion: What if I never slept?
I confronted it on paper, writing out a long and melodramatic worst-case scenario which ended in me being committed to a mental institution, gone insane from not sleeping.
I would read it out to myself night after night, looking at it and letting the shudders of fear turn into mild tension in my bones.
Then, one day, I looked at it and didn’t care. So what if that happened? I would make it through, if I had to. I would live.
My therapist and I only met for four sessions, but she taught me how to abandon the desire to sleep.
She made me question why it mattered so much and reminded me how young mothers and leaders of great countries function remarkably on limited amounts of sleep.
Oddly and so beautifully, it was a book my mother recommended that ultimately rocked me back to sleep. With its sweetness, The Help became the book I didn’t want to put down to go to bed.
I would read through the night, nodding off naturally around two or three in the morning, book on my chest.
Bless that book. Bless all books for the worlds they allows us to sink into when we need them.
Sarah Bauer lives in Kelowna, B.C.
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