by Lynne Cox
Dr. Brownie Schoene, my longtime friend and a pulmonary expert who had climbed Mount Everest, and who had done research on me to help me train to swim across Lake Titicaca, explained that often in the cold the muscles that support breathing become paralyzed, and so a person is only able to take small and rapid breaths. But this time I was breathing deep and fast and I couldn’t get enough air. I was struggling from the moment I hit the water. I might have to get out, I thought. I was working so hard just to breathe. I was taking heaving chest breaths. My arms were turning over as fast as they could go. I tried placing my cheek and then my nose in the water to try to change my body position so my hips would float up and I would reduce the drag, but the water was too cold. I couldn’t put my face into it. I couldn’t hold my breath that long. I couldn’t hold it for one second. This was harder than I thought it would be; so much harder than I ever expected. The water was like liquid ice, and I was fighting from the start, just to move fast enough to create warmth. This was like Lake Titicaca; at 12,500 feet, it had been really difficult to breathe, and I had to make a choice between swimming more slowly and breathing or not being able to swim. It was difficult to breathe in this cold.
I’m wearing the rescue harness, breathing forcefully, and pulling hard through cold, dense 28.8-degree water.
Bob shouted, “Lynne, are you okay?”
I lifted my right foot, to signal that I was okay. But my breathing was becoming faster and more labored, my lips were pursed, and I was not able to catch up on the oxygen my body was demanding. I had never started a swim this way before. Usually I was psyched up and ready to go, and I was nervous, and it took a mile or two to settle into my pace, but this was different.
Swimming backstroke as fast as I can, past a flat iceberg. My arms and legs are red and numb, and I can’t really feel the water.
Unable to see where I am swimming, I trust the crew’s navigation and the directions they give me.
I heard Bill’s deep calming voice. “Lynne, we’re right here.”
I couldn’t take the time to turn and look at him or the crew. All I could do was swim with my head up, focus on the forward path, and breathe, harder than I’d ever breathed before.
We had talked about my adding distance to the swim by flaring to the right and following the curve of the bay if I felt like I wanted to swim a longer distance, but the cold was seeping into my body, invading me. I wasn’t sure I was even going to make it straight across, never mind adding distance. I couldn’t get enough air. I thought maybe I’d have to get out. I tried to slow down my arm strokes, but that didn’t work. I needed to keep up the heat production, or my internal temperature would plummet, and they would have to pull me out of the water. I heard Gretchen say, “You’re looking great.” I raised my foot to salute her.
Bob asked, “Do you want to swim farther—around the bay?” I didn’t raise my foot. And I thought, I just have to keep moving in as straight a line as I can go. I can’t veer off in any direction. I can’t swim any extra. I just have to make it across.
Bob seemed to read my mind. We were in sync. That was good. “Do you want to go straight across?” Bob asked. I lifted my foot, but I thought, I might really need to get out now. I can’t get enough air. It’s hard to maintain this. It’s so hard to keep going. Just keep moving your arms. You’re almost there. But I can’t breathe! I really can’t breathe.
We were only two hundred yards from shore, but suddenly I couldn’t go any farther. I heard the church bells tolling, saw the doors opening and the congregation stepping outside, climbing onto the snowbanks. I was sprinting, but suddenly I couldn’t move. “Backstroke. Swim backstroke,” I said to myself. “Roll over on your back and catch your breath.” I did, and swam for about one hundred yards, and then rolled back over on my stomach. “Fifty yards.”
“Over there, land right there.” I could hear Bob, but I couldn’t see where he was pointing.
I was pulling my hands right under my body so I could get more lift, and I could see above the waterline. My stroke was very short and rapid. Bill immediately noticed the change. We had swum together off and on for years. He knew how I moved through the water, the position of my arms, head, legs, body. He could tell from fifty yards away, from the other end of the pool, how I was doing. And what I was doing at that time was not normal.
Bill was beside me in the Zodiac, and he must have leaned farther over the pontoon, because his voice was right above me and he was speaking rapidly with an edge to his normally calm voice. “Lynne, are you okay?”
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t reply to Bill. I couldn’t catch my breath. And I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t take a moment to get an extra breath and recover. Worse, when I came to the rock where I was supposed to climb out of the water, the rock was too high.
I couldn’t reach high enough and put my hands on the rock and press myself up and out of the water. Suddenly, I felt like a dog swimming in a pool, a dog that suddenly realizes she doesn’t know where the pool steps are. She can’t find her way out. She starts dog-paddling in a tight circle, frantically looking, turning her head from one side to the other, trying to find her way out. It was harder to breathe.
“Lynne.” It was Bob.
Focus on his voice. Only that. Follow his directions.
“The ledge is too high for you here. We have to go farther. Fifty more yards. Do you think you can do it?”
I lifted my foot and dropped it quickly. I needed my foot in the water to give me more lift.
“Okay, Konrad is looking for a landing spot. Swim closer to the Zodiac. Just stay beside us. That’s right.” Bob’s voice was calm, but suddenly it was filled with energy and excitement. “Look to your right side. You’re almost there!”
For the first time since the swim began, I stopped for a moment and treaded water. I just had to see them so I could keep that image in my head. They were all leaning forward, Bob and Bill leaning so far over the pontoon they were just two arm lengths above my head. They were suddenly all pointing toward shore and directing me where to land.
Konrad pointed. “See the ledge? That’s it!”
I nodded. I saw it. I swam for it. But as I got closer, I realized the ledge had grown in height; it was about three feet above my head. I couldn’t get out there. I was too tired. I didn’t have the strength to reach that high up and press myself out of the water. So I just kept swimming. Hoping they would find another option.
Bob said loudly, but in a controlled way, trying to figure out what was wrong, “You’re missing the ledge, Lynne. You’re swimming right past it!”
“Bob, it’s too high for her. She can’t reach that high,” Gretchen said.
I lifted my foot. She understood.
I can’t do this much longer. I need to land. I need to land now. Hurry. Please hurry.
“Lynne, we’ve got it. Just a little farther, just ten more yards. See, over there to your right. There’s a ledge. It’s an inch under the water. You can climb out there,” Bill said.
Bill knew that if I couldn’t get out of the water here, he and Bob would have to use the carabineer attached to the rope, clamp it onto the one on the back of my harness, and drag me out of the water. The swim would be over, and it wouldn’t have much significance because I swim under the English Channel Swimming rules, and that means that I have to completely clear the water to finish. I wanted to complete it, but I really wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it this time.
“Lynne, can you see it?” Bob said. His words ran together.
Konrad pulled the boat within inches of me. The Zodiac’s gray pontoon almost touched my shoulder. I took a stroke and rolled onto my right side, and I looked up. Bob, Gretchen, Bill, and Konrad were pointing.
Yes! Finally. I saw it. The gray-speckled granite slab was at water level extending into the bay like nature’s dive ladder. I swam to the rock and listened for the crew’s directions. All I heard was their cheers. We made it.
I reached out and grabbed the edge o
f the rock and pulled myself onto the Greenland shore. I smiled. The rock felt foreign, hard, cold, and immobile after swimming freely through fluid. My skin was as cold as the bay, but the inside of my body felt warm.
As I pulled myself onto the rock and floated across it on my stomach, my face slid across a great patch of green slime. Globs of it stuck to my cheek and upper lip. I got up onto my knees and tried to figure out how to stand up in the slime without slipping and hitting my head. The green algae was more slippery than black ice.
“Hold on. I’ll be there in a second,” Bob shouted.
“I’m okay, Bob, I’ll be out of here in a minute,” I said. I didn’t want him to try to help me. He could slip on the algae and hurt himself.
I tried to crawl across the rock on my hands and knees and sliced my knee on something sharp. My skin was numb, but somehow I felt the tear. Good thing Greenland sharks couldn’t swim on rocks.
I crawled on the icy rocks. My right hand slid out from under me, and I went headfirst onto the rock. This was not good. I knew that the landing was going to be a challenge, that’s why we had discussed it so much, but I didn’t think I would not be able to stand. And I knew that this was a dangerous part of the swim. I was no longer exercising and creating heat. Being in the water like this was like being in a misty freezer in a bathing suit. I could feel a tremble rip through my body. And then I felt a second tremble. This was not good.
We had planned for Bob to help me up, and Gretchen and Bill would return with Konrad to the harbor with the Zodiac and meet us later. That way they would avoid walking on the rocks or snow and ice. But after I heard Bob’s feet smack against rocks, I heard Bill land with a splash, and I realized Gretchen was talking. She was about to get out of the Zodiac, too.
I was worried about them. They could slip and split their heads open or fall into the water, and it would be difficult to grab ahold of them and pull them out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him, in a glacial blue parka. It was the Iceman! It was the man we had seen a few days before gathering ice from the bay in buckets. He had come down to help. He was holding Gretchen’s hand and helping her off the Zodiac. She would be okay. Bill was standing beside her. He looked like he was going to join Bob.
Bob was carefully working his way over to me. I heard his foot slip and saw him catch his balance. “Lynne, give me your hand,” he said.
Oh no, if I try to stand and slip, I’ll pull him over with me. No. I wouldn’t take his hand there. “Bob, I’m okay. I can crawl out,” I said, and something sharp gashed through the skin on my knee, but it didn’t matter. I just needed to get out of there. “Bob, can you make sure the others don’t try to come here, and they move back on the snowbank where it might be less slippery?” My lips felt like they were cold and swollen, and the words coming from my mouth sounded warped.
I crawled to the edge of the snowbank and tried to stand up on the icy rocks.
“Give me your hand now,” Bob said. I looked up.
“Bob, I’m afraid I’ll pull you over,” I said.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” he said. Bob spread his feet out wide to give himself a solid base and grabbed my hand. I started to slide backward, but suddenly I felt a strong arm loop under mine and stop the slide. I looked over and saw a glacial blue parka. It was the Iceman! “We’ve got you,” I heard him say, and I felt myself lifted by the two of them onto the snowbank.
The Iceman was smiling. His brown eyes held the light and glimmered like the icebergs. He shook his head and smiled.
Bob wrapped a towel over my shoulders. My skin was a little warmer, closer to air temperature, but inside my body, I could feel things starting to cool down.
Bob was calm, but there was an edge of stress to his voice. He knew that this was the time when my body was starting to cool down. And once I stopped moving, I stopped creating heat. He knew that I could get what was called an after drop, where my internal temperature plunged.
My lips felt a little larger than normal, but I wasn’t slurring my speech. That meant I wasn’t cooling down on the inside, but if I didn’t start moving soon, I would.
Bob and the Iceman climbed the snowbank above me. Their legs were longer than mine. The embankment was too steep. I crawled up on my hands and knees.
And then I saw people leaving the church in small groups of twos and threes. They were walking down the church steps, but when they saw us they stopped in midstride and froze in place. They looked astonished.
Church bells were tolling loudly. What a great place in the world to land.
Bill was on my left side steadying me. Bob was on the right, handing me my sweat suit. The snow felt cold on my bare feet. I suppressed a shiver.
Bill was so excited. He hugged me and said, “Do you have any idea what the water temperature was?”
“It felt colder than Antarctica, but I couldn’t tell by how many degrees,” I said.
“It was twenty-eight point eight degrees!” Bill shook his head, and he wiped a tear away.
Gretchen joined the hug. “Bill was so worried, he was praying for you. You know I was, too,” Gretchen said.
“I’m sure it helped. But I’m sorry I stressed you out.”
“Are you kidding, we wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Gretchen said, and Bill nodded.
“I saw it with my own eyes, and I still can’t believe it,” Bill said.
“It was pretty wild. This was the most intense swim I’ve ever done, Bill. How far did I swim? What was my time?”
“You swam a quarter of a mile in five minutes and ten seconds.”
That was all? Five minutes? Really? It seemed like so much longer. How could that be? I thought back. It had been an all-out effort from the moment I entered that freezing-cold water—water that was below the freshwater freezing point. I had never worked that hard in my life or been on the edge from the moment the swim started to the finish. Never had I thought for every moment of the swim that I might have to get out. It was so hard.
Still, it was hard to believe that I’d only swum for five minutes. It had seemed like forever. There had been no escape from the intensity of those moments. No time to let my mind wander. No time to look at the sea or look down below. I couldn’t even put my face in that water. It was so cold. It was an ice-cream headache the instant my forehead touched the water’s surface. It was so cold I couldn’t breathe. Maybe my body was telling me that the vagus nerve was overstimulated and that was affecting the beating of my heart. Maybe if had put my face in the water it would have slowed my heart down too rapidly. Maybe I needed the rapid heart rate to stay up with the speed my body was moving.
Five minutes. Only five minutes. I thought I could do better. But I’d never swum in 28.8-degree water. How could I do better, adjust my workouts, swim farther and for a longer time in the cold? How would it be possible to simulate this kind of energy use in my daily workouts? Where could I find water that was colder, but not so cold that I needed a support team beside me during workouts? What could be done to simulate the lack of oxygen I had experienced during this swim? Train more aerobically. Sprint more. The cold water had made me swim fast. That had enabled me to work harder than ever. That intensity had enabled me to generate more heat than I was losing. How would it be possible to sustain this level of activity?
People are born with different types of muscle fibers, which determine how fast muscles respond. There are people with a majority of fast-twitch muscle fibers—they are the sprinters, like Thoroughbred horses. And there are people who are born with a majority of slow-twitch muscle fibers; they are the distance athletes, like me—Clydesdales.
Everyone has what are called intermediate muscle fibers. These intermediate muscle fibers are trainable. It is possible to train them to become more like fast-twitch muscle fibers—for sprinting—or to train them to become more like slow-twitch muscle fibers to become more of a distance athlete. I was born with a majority of slow-twitch muscle fibers for long-distance swimming, a
nd through the years I had conditioned the intermediate fibers to become more like slow-twitch fibers, but when I trained for the swims in Antarctica and the Arctic, I trained more like a sprinter. It had worked. I got myself to sprint. I would never be a Thoroughbred, though, just a faster Clydesdale. But if I didn’t continue to work the intermediate muscle fibers to be like fast-twitch fibers, I would lose that training. I wondered if there was a way to develop these fibers better and get a better result. If I worked out harder, with more intensity, maybe I could sustain the sprint for a longer distance. Maybe that would be possible.
But at that moment, I needed to see if I had figured out a better way of rewarming after a frigid swim. I had tried the standard rewarming technique after my swim in Antarctica—passively shivering, with the crew huddling around me. It had seemed like a good idea. It worked for penguins, but it wasn’t very effective for me.
Now I could try active rewarming. This might be the solution to rewarming more effectively and efficiently after cold exposure.
Christian, the priest, greeted us with great bear hugs. We talked with him for a few minutes, but I was afraid of letting my core temperature drop. I decided to rewarm by climbing the stair walkway to the top of the town and then walking back to the hotel. There I got into a cold shower and gradually added more warm water. Gretchen stayed close by to make sure that I didn’t rewarm too quickly and pass out in the shower.
After about a twenty-minute shower the exterior of my body was warm, and I felt great. This was so different than what I’d experienced after my swim in Antarctica. My swim in Antarctica had been twenty minutes longer, but the water there had been 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
When I first started swimming in water temperatures around 42 degrees Fahrenheit, I noticed the effects of the water temperature became more and more dramatic for each degree the water temperature dropped. The difference may have been only one degree lower, but it seemed to have an exponential effect on the body, like the logarithmic Richter scale used for measuring earthquakes; for each full degree that the temperature dropped, the effect felt ten times greater. There had only been a 3.5-degree-Fahrenheit difference between Antarctica and Greenland.
