A belated Happy Passover and Easter
A belated Happy Passover and Easter to all of those of you who celebrate either…or both.
An inside joke between me and my oldest and dearest friend Candace……she of the pink ears here.
When we were first in New York City, in our mid-20′s, I was walking on the sidewalk in front of Grand Central Station one day. It was October.
A homeless woman, small but mighty, was ranting some crazy stuff up and down the block.
When we came near each other, she grabbed me and picked me up with incredible strength…lifted my entire body, even though I outweighed her by a good 20 lbs, and threw me into the street, where I landed on the hood of a yellow cab. I wasn’t hurt. The cab was barely moving. But I did hear the woman yell as she tossed me: Happy Easter!! Happy Easter!!
So Candace and I have been running the joke these nearly 40 years now, saying to each other at all times of year, other than Easter: Happy Easter!! Happy Easter!!. But today, I echo that tiny but powerful woman’s cry on the DAY itself: Happy Easter!! Happy Easter!!
Mark & Fred Pass the Time
I know it’s an awful long, tedious day for me, these training swims that start at dawn, finish at twilight….and are about to get even longer than that.
And I feel for Bonnie and Mark and Fred and anybody who’s on the boat during these slow-going hours all day long, too. I wonder how they pass their time, aside from guiding and taking care of me….. well now I know.
The Core Team
It’s been a HIGHLY productive week with the Core Team all here in St Maarten with me.
We will grow to an expedition of perhaps 35 individuals by the time we reach Cuba this summer (Shark Team, Medical Team, et al) but there are four of us who are tackling all the myriad of issues to be addressed.
Mark Sollinger is our Ops Chief, head of developing and deploying all Operations, from A to Z.
John Bartlett is our Navigator. To swim 103 miles is daunting enough. But this particular body of water, between Cuba and Florida, has a huge obstacle in that the powerful Gulf Stream is tugging hard to the East, while we are trying to swim basically North.
Bonnie Stoll is my Head Handler, basically responsible for my safety and athletic success, but weighs in on all Operations.
(And the Head of our Kayak Shark Team, Elke Thuerling, joined us in brainstorming all week, too.)
Swimmer-Handler Dynamic
The swimmer/handler dynamic is intimate. Perhaps it’s akin to a boxer and his/her corner man/woman.
When I come to the side of the boat every 90 mins for skin treatment, drink & food, whatever I need, we also discuss every micro and macro issue that needs to be solved. This day Bonnie and I are talking about the new stroke I’ve developed to take pressure off the shoulders yet now switches that pressure onto the biceps.
Bonnie has tremendous instincts, being an athlete herself (one of the best professional racquetball players on the circuit of the 1980′s), as to what I’m needing, both physically and mentally.
We are a very closely-bound team.
2nd Graders Visit Training
2nd Graders on a field trip stop by our 10-hour session. They swooped in on their catamaran just as I was stopping for a feeding so Bonnie and I told them a few things about how we go about eating and drinking. They were very curious and wished me hearty good luck as they resumed their outing.
Then Bonnie dabbed me with some non-chafing lanolin and off we went for the rest of the afternoon. I stop every 90 minutes or so for some hydration and energy boost nutrition. I can’t tell you how much I look forward to talking to Bonnie and Mark and Fred, sharing some ideas, some fun stories. We were joking about Bonnie’s mother’s Brooklyn accent this day. So the kids coming by for a couple of minutes was a welcome diversion.
Bonnie’s Back: Xtreme Dream 2012 Training
Bonnie Stoll, my best friend and Head Handler, is back in the groove. I’ve already done a few long ocean hauls down in St Maarten but Bonnie’s here now as the hours escalate.
photo by Christi Barli
Such a comfort and a motivator to me…..she empathizes when I’m in pain and helps me through it with kid gloves (tough love never works on me) and she somehow thinks of psychological tactics she knows will work for me to make it to the end.
This particular sunrise we are heading out for 12 tough hours.
Connecting with the folks at Lifespan
The folks at the Rochester Lifespan event couple of days ago gave me a kind and rousing Standing Ovation. The reason, in my opinion and in my experience of public speaking since mid 1970′s, an audience erupts is that they connect.
It’s not a one-way street. Yes, some incredible, life-changing individuals, such as Nelson Mandela, deserve us springing to our feet, just to be in his presence. But to hear most speakers, as much as we can be admiring of their accomplishments or moved by their efforts or in awe of their world-views, we wind up rising to our feet because we are telling them that we can relate to their message, their energy in our own lives.
I like to think that groups such as this, when they shower me with this kind of “adulation”, it’s because they’re thinking of just what they’re thirsting to do with their days, their lives, when they walk out that door.
What a privilege to share my life, my stories, and then see in these peoples’ eyes their stories reverberating right back to me.
30 Mins to Go
Here we are 30 mins before end of the first 10-hour swim of the season.
If the series of 8-hour swims seemed short…ALMOST easy…..this day was LONG, LONG, LONG!
Storms came through, making for a lot of bothersome surface chop. Somehow 10 hours seem exponentially longer than 8, not just the measured 2 hours longer. Tougher mentally.
Mark mentions in this video that I tried some pasta. It was both Mark’s wife Angie and a sports med doc from South Africa who strongly suggested I mix in some real food….when all the electrolyte drinks and compressed goos start to bring nausea along. I ate several forkfuls of Angie’s shrimp in a pasta cream sauce at the 6 1/2 hour stop yesterday and, HALLELUJAH, my upset stomach felt instantly better. And it was obvious to Mark and Fred on the boat that I was much stronger the next 90 mins.
I’ve also changed my stroke a bit this year, to protect the shoulders and the heavy burden of work they go through. Back in the ’70′s, I was like a metronone at 60 strokes a minute. The last two years, after not swimming for 30 years and experiencing some minor shoulder tissue tears, I created a new stroke that was about 56 stroked per minute. This year I’m even going what I call “longer and stronger”, pressing harder under water throughout the stroke and keeping the hands in the water longer on each stroke. So now the cadence is about 53 strokes per minute. Yet I’m swimming just a tad faster than last year. Seems right.
The Camelback & Chafing
The rules of the sport are that you cannot get out onto the boat. Nor can you hold on, nor hold other flotation aids such as ropes or rafts or kayaks or the like.
But you need fuel for these long hours. So you come close to the boat so your handlers can help you with whatever you need. Here’s another thing we didn’t have back in my first go-round in this sport, the 1970′s. The camelback.
Rather than try to hold a cup up over the surface, making sure salt water doesn’t contaminate your drink, taking all that muscular energy for the leverage it takes to keep one arm high up, we now use the sipper system of the Camelback. I can simply bite on this hose and take in as many fluids as possible on each stop.
The Camelback hose flows only one way so I can let it go and when floating in the ocean, it won’t allow any intake of salt water through the mouthpiece. My handler holds the bag up higher for a faster flow, down low to slow it down.
You’ll see me here also presenting my underarms, for the handlers to see how the chafing’s going. I suffered some extreme burns from a torn suit edge a couple of weeks ago and we’ve been working ’round the clock to heal those so that I can get in this week’s series of training swims.
Mark has been vigilant about observing me both while I’m swimming and when I stop for feeding. If there is a trace of red, showing thin skin and blood close to the surface he takes a rubber glove, smears it with Anhydrous Lanolin and coats the area liberally. Made it through the first if the 10-hour swims with no further chafing to these injured areas. A relief.
Diana's Tweets
- RT @teresafritschi: FREE! Ltd time. http://t.co/FTdm1wpl ebook #happiness #gratitude #swimming #baseball #chocolate #intention #mindfulness
- @teresafritschi Thanks for sharing! I'll be sure to download. But I will be honest, I won't have time to read until after the swim.
- @starducks24 I'm feeling great and training is really going well. Still need more training but I'm definitely ready.
- @brilliantbodies Looking forward to the story!
- Unfortunately not every battle we fight is won. May the tunes of Donna Summer live on past her too short life. http://t.co/3xDyTxFg
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