Water polo at the 2013 Mediterranean Games

Transcription

LYNNE COX: Hi. Good afternoon. I'm Lynne Cox and I'm really happy to be here with you at Google. As a background for the book that I've written and you're reading or finding out about, I'm an open water swimmer. I started my career when I was 14 years old by swimming across the Catalina Channel. When I was 15 years old, I swam across the English Channel and broke all records for men and women. My time was broken by a man named David Hart from Massachusetts. So the following year, I went back and broke his time and swam three miles further than the first time. So the second time I did it, I swam 33 miles. There are many people who swim across the English Channel and they go back again and again. And sometimes, there are swimmers that swim 25, or 30, or 50 times even. And I decided that I didn't want to continue to do the same thing over and over again. So I set the goal of swimming across Cook Straits in a straight line between the North and South Island of New Zealand. The distance is 10 miles. And I figured that I would swim this crossing in five hours and try to be the first woman to do that swim. Well instead of reaching this point after five hours, I realized from my crew that we'd been going backwards for five hours and that was kind of discouraging. But the cool thing is that there was a radio announcer on board the boat who was giving up-to-date weather information and also he was telling the people throughout Christchurch, New Zealand and Wellington about the swim. And so people throughout the country started calling in to the boat and wishing me well. And then Air New Zealand got involved and started relaying weather information to us. And I kept swimming seven hours into the swim, eight hours into the swim. And there was a cross-channel ferry that came out and raised the American flag. And all the people on board the boat came out and cheered me on. And I realized that guilt was a really big motivating factor. And I kept swimming for more hours and had the support of the people from all over New Zealand by the end the swim. And when the swim was completed after 12 hours and 2 and 1/2 minutes, we went back by boat to the North Island and the boat almost sank a couple times because the water was so rough. Finally, the next day, as celebration for the swim, church bells were rung throughout the country. And I realized then that a swim that I did could be more than just an athletic event. That it could be something that might bring people together. So in 1976, I started trying to get permission to swim across the Bering Strait. And it took 11 years. I wrote to Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov. And finally Gorbachev gave approval for this swim basically a day before or a couple days before this swim. But they had moved ships from the South China Sea into the Bering Strait. And they spent pretty much a million dollars on the event and opened the border for the first time in 48 years. And when Reagan and Gorbachev were signing the peace treaty, the INF missile treaty, Gorbachev stood up and toasted the swim and said it showed how close to each other the two countries are. In a straight line, it's only 2.7 miles from Little Diomede in the United States to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union. And it took me two hours and six minutes. And I swam in 42 degree water, that dropped to 38 degree, in a swimsuit, cap, and goggles. And so when Gorbachev made the toast, President Reagan toasted him back. And then they signed the INF missile treaty and basically helped to open the border and diminish tensions between the two countries. After that, I went on to do other really challenging swims and in progressively colder and colder waters. There was a group of scientists at UC Santa Barbara who were studying me when I was there at college, trying to figure out how I acclimated to the cold water. And then there was a professor and a medical doctor named Dr. Liam Keating, who was the world's expert on hypothermia, who started researching me and asking me if I'd come to London to be part of their research study. So from these scientists, I was able to really learn how to push further, and acclimate to the cold, and go into colder and colder waters. In 2002, I swam 1.22 miles in 32 degrees from "Orlova," the ship, to the shores of Antarctica. And at the end of the swim, there were flocks of penguins that jumped into the water and swam out to meet us and then went into shore with us. And you could see them just dolphining through the water. And then you can see them in the water because the water was so clear, it was like looking through the sky. But it was so cold, that it felt like it was like swimming through slush. I swam for 25 minutes in 32 degree water and succeeded on that swim. And then I've written now-- this actually is my fifth book. My first book was called "Swimming to Antarctica." And it was about a lot of those swims and a lot more, about the adventures, about the people, about what you learn on these different journeys. And then I went on to write a book called "Grayson." And that was about a baby gray whale that got lost off the coast of Seal Beach while I was training to swim the Catalina Channel the second time. And that book was a best seller, as was "Swimming to Antarctica." And "Grayson" is now translated into 20 languages. My third book was "South with the Sun." And it's about polar exploration and Amundsen, who was the first man to reach the South Pole. And I wrote about him because I was so inspired by him. But I think that as athletes and as people who read and people who have traveled, we're adventures and we're exploring our limits and we're exploring the possibilities of life. And so I really felt it was so important to be able to incorporate Amundsen's journey with who mentored him, and who he mentored, and then to follow the course of his journey and do certain swims along the way. So I swam off of Greenland. The water temperature there was 28.8 and dropped to 26.6, in a swimsuit, cap, and goggles. I just swam a quarter of mile for five minutes and 10 seconds. But that was as far as I'd ever gone before. And the idea was that I'd go back home to train for another month and then went back to swim in Baffin Island. And it was really wild to go there because when you land there by plane-- I had a crew member with me. We landed in July and we had to wait seven days for the ice to break for me to be able to do the swim. So we swam between the broken ice, and the water was primarily 28.8 degrees, and I swam a mile in swimsuit, cap, and goggles. Part of this was still for the research and to look at how you could acclimate to the cold, but also survival and better ways of rewarming after cold exposure. I did a number of other swims after that. And then decided that I really needed to write a book for open water swimming people, people that were triathletes, or runners, or cyclists, or paddlers, or people who were going into the open water. Because I felt like through all these years, now 40 years of doing these different swims, that there was a wealth of information that had been given to me by people who were elite athletes, from runners, to swimmers, to astronauts. And so I decided that I really needed to write this open water swimming manual to be able to give people access to that information. But in writing the book, I also realized that it was really important to continue to go out and ask experts stuff I didn't know, that would make the book more interesting. And what I also wanted to do is incorporate anecdotes so that the story would be really readable and that you would get lots of information, but you enjoy it as you read it. Recently, I think a couple weeks ago, Michael Bamberger, who's a senior editor for "Sports Illustrated" did a review on the book and basically said it was a great summer read, in addition to being a great book that is like Jim Fixx's book, who wrote about "The Complete Book of Running." So he sort of sees this whole era now as the next running era. The slimming has taken over in terms of people wanting to go into the open water and swim. People who are older athletes, who are sort of beaten up by their sport and now want to try something new or people who have done their sport for a long time and just really want the challenge of swimming in the open water. One of the things that I was really, really, really lucky about doing was the US Navy SEALs offered to let me come to Coronado Island in San Diego area to learn from them and to find out how they were able to risk manage and make the swim safer for the SEAL trainees and for the more elite SEAL officers, who train there to go off on missions into far off places. And so they allowed me to spend off and on two years learning from them and asking questions. And I was able to capture a lot of their anecdotes and put them in the book as a way to say-- for instance, there was one officer who told me about his experience of going into hypothermia, where his temperature dropped severely and he was extremely cold and he was in a bad state. And being able to tell that story, I was able to also explain what hypothermia is, what you look like, or somebody looks like when they go into hypothermia, and what to do if somebody is in a hypothermic state. And I was able to draw on the expertise of Gordon Giesbrecht, who is the expert up in Manitoba, Canada, who can tell you all about the physiology behind hypothermia. In addition, I was able to then talk about what to do to prevent hypothermia and how to condition for colder waters so that you prepare in advance so you don't experience this. The other thing that I was trying to do is explain that when you're in the open water, it's this great adventure where you get to see things you would never see on land. A good friend of mine, her name is Cindy Hunter, and she's a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii. And so she, for instance, gave me her take on what it is like for her to look at coral reefs and their significance. And what happens if, for instance, you knock off an inch piece of that coral. And if you do, and if you get stung by the coral, then there's a whole chapter in there of what to do if you get stung by jellyfish or sting rays or coral, and how to enjoy the water a lot more, and how to swim more safely. And really the reason for the book was to help people have fun in the water and to connect with other people who are really out there and enjoying it. So instead of just talking on and on, I just thought maybe I would open this up to see if you might have some questions about the book, or about open water swimming, or about anything that may pertain to the subject? We'll see. AUDIENCE: How do you prepare to go into such cold water? LYNNE COX: How do I prepare to go into such cold water? Actually, I started preparing for cold water when I was 14 years old. That was the first time I swam across Catalina Channel. The water temperature there was about 70 degrees. And my dad suggested that what we do to prepare for it-- there were three other 14-year-olds and one other 12-year-old that were planning to do the swim. And so what we did is we only swam in the ocean so that our bodies would start to acclimate to the colder water temperature. The pool temperature was 76 degrees. And we found that if we swam in the pool, we'd overheat. We'd start sweating and turn bright red. So by swimming only in the ocean, that started our acclimatization process. But we also did things like during-- it was summer and fall. So I only trained with this group of swimmers for about six weeks. They had been training for a year. But I had been training with Don Gambril, who was the US Olympic coach. So I was sort of trying to acclimate very quickly. And my dad suggested that I sleep with the windows open at night, and that I only sleep with a sheet, and don't wear heavy pajamas, and wear sandals, and try to get my body used to a colder temperature. So that's what I did for the Catalina Channel swim. The English Channel swim was significantly colder. It was 56 degrees. And so all winter long, I'd leave the windows open. I'd wear very light clothes in winter. In Southern California, the air temperature gets down to 48 degrees. So that helped a lot. But I basically, through the years, did colder and longer swims. So the Bering Strait swim was in 38 degree water for two hours and six minutes. The swim in the Antarctic was just 25 minutes and 32 degrees. I really had a hard time training for that because the coldest water I could get into was in Ushuaia, Argentina, at the very tip of Argentina, and the water temperature there was 42 degrees. So what I did is I tried to work out in a way that I swam slower to cool my body down a little bit more. But I also trained putting in my face in the water. So that would cool my body down a little faster too. You lose 80% of heat through your head. So I thought, OK, during training I'll get a little bit colder than I normally would. And then when I went down to Antarctica, when I actually did the swim from the ship to the shores of Antarctica, I swam head up like a water polo player. Because you lose 80% of heat through your head, you lose the heat really, really quickly. So I thought if I swam head up for the majority of the swim, I'd be able to contain more heat in my body. I also did a few weird things, but whatever. Because you're doing things that have never been done and you don't know how it's going to work. So you're going to just try a variety of things. I always look at nature to see what's possible. And when you look at penguins, there like this big, like the Gentoo penguins. And they're like kind of rotund or cylinder shaped. And their body is really amply coated with body fat and it's really well distributed. And then outside the layer of body fat are feathers. So there's this air insulation that exists between the body and the feathers. And that's what really keeps them warm is the air between the two, and their body fat. So I figured what I'll do before I swim in Antarctica is I'll grow my hair really long. And I'll wind it up and pile it on top of my head and put it under my bathing cap. And I won't squish out the air. And when I swim, I'll swim head up and maybe I can contain my body heat better. There were other things that I did to try to help me that again nobody had ever done this before. And I don't think anyone ever really wanted to do it anyway. So it was a really big stretch for me. So I do know that one of the side effects of hypothermia is that you become dehydrated and that also helps to contribute to becoming hypodermic. So before my swim in Antarctica, I decided, OK, you need to make your body like a thermos. Because you've got basically your body, your body fat, and then your skin. And your skin will close down the blood flow really well. That's what it's been trained to do. And it'll close it down and it'll move it from the extremities into the core of your body to protect your brain and vital organs. But I thought maybe if I can warm up my core temperature before I start swimming, maybe that will help me on the swim. So what I did is I drank four 8 ounces of really hot water to put into the thermos before I started the swim. And then because of the research I've been doing, we wound up getting a pre-core temperature before I swam. My body temperature was up to 102 before I started the swim. And then after the swim was over, we couldn't get an immediate core temperature, but it was down to 97. And within an hour, it was back up to 102. So my body has learned how to get back up to my normal temperature very quickly. But the other thing that it learned to do too is that through time, through all these years of training and acclimating to the colder water, the researchers found that my body temperature learned how to lower itself. So that my normal temperature wasn't 98.7, it was more like 97.6. So the way they explained that acclimatization was that I was able to lower my thermostat so my body didn't have to work as hard to stay warm. And then to continue with your question actually, I think that the training that I've done has been really progressive through many, many, many years. And I've had basically lowered the temperature that I've been swimming in very gradually and then tried to go further in it. The swim that I did off Greenland in 28.8, that dropped to 26.6, I really couldn't train for that. That's not a great thing. But I had done the swim in Antarctica. And I really didn't think there'd be a huge difference between 32 degree water and 28. I didn't realize it would drop to 26. And I was really wrong. There was a huge difference between 32 degrees and 26 degrees. And it made me think of a whole bunch of things like when you get below a certain degree temperature water, is the effect of the cold exponential? Does your body lose heat more rapidly than if the water was 56 degrees and it dropped to 50? I don't know. I know though that when you're training for different swims, if you swim in fresh water that's 70 degrees and if you swim in 70 degree salt water, the fresh water will always feel cooler than the salt water. And I don't know what that is. And I've asked physicists and I've asked all sorts of people. But there's just a real difference. And then I thought well maybe here more buoyant in the salt water so you have less of your body exposed, so maybe you don't feel the water temperature as much or maybe the salt in the water blocks your perception of it. And when you swim for so long, you think about a lot of different things. And I think a lot of it too is you're always looking for how can I do this better, how can I reach further, what can I learn from what I've just done, what can I learn from people around me that have had similar experiences, and how can I integrate that and try to do something more? So that's sort of how I acclimate to the cold. Any more questions? Yeah? AUDIENCE: Hi. LYNNE COX: Hi. AUDIENCE: Yeah. I was just wondering like in terms of the whole building awareness and social media didn't exist back then. And like I can't just go to my neighborhood post office and write Gorbachev. Like how do you make these connections, and how do you raise the awareness, and get yourself out there so that people actually know this is what I'm doing, come support me, and get the support from I guess the whole countries from the leadership standpoint? LYNNE COX: What a great question. I mean it was incredible. I didn't have Google back then in 1987 to be able to get the support. Or I didn't know anything about it to do these swims. And so I wound up just starting off with what I knew. And what I knew was first to start off by contacting the local congressman, who actually thought that the swim across the Bering Strait for instance might be possible. So he wound up writing a letter to the Soviet Embassy. And then I realized that it was time to contact the State Department. But I didn't know who to contact. So I started writing letters to George Shultz. And I'm talking about the Bering Strait swim because that was 11 years of trying to figure out how to open the border between the US and the Soviet Union. And the other part of that swim that was so difficult was that nobody believes that the Soviets would open the border. That was number one. Number two, nobody believed that anyone could swim in a bathing suit, cap, and goggles in 38 degree water. So when you're trying to get support for something like that and convince people that this is possible and it can happen, it's really difficult to convince them. So I wrote letters to people every single day. And I just kept trying. As I was swimming and working out, I was thinking about who else can I contact? Who else do I know who might know somebody? And I had friends who were mountain climbers, who knew Armand Hammer. So I went to Armand Hammer, who was the huge Occidental Oil guy. And his assistant wound up writing to the Soviet consul general to the US, based in San Francisco. So I went up to see him and met with him. And he really took this project on and believed it might be possible. But what initially happened was I wrote to Brezhnev and never heard back. He died. And I wrote to Andropov and he died. And I wrote to Chernenko and he died. And I wrote to Brezhnev and I think that he decided to answer me. The other part was I had written to Bob Walsh, who was hired by Ted Turner to put on the Goodwill Games. And so through that channel, I was able to reach Gorbachev's assistant. And through that communication channel, that's how we got Gorbachev's-- his attention. In the meantime, the press started picking up on that I was going to go do the swim and I didn't know if the commission would come through. So my goal was to go halfway, to reach as far as I could. And with the press getting behind it, and then ABC covered it, and then the "LA Times" covered it, and the media made this big deal of it, we were able to take a video and send it through our contacts to the Kremlin. But that was the other thing. It's like what's the address for the Kremlin? How do I get a video to Gorbachev? I mean I don't know any of this stuff. And I contacted a former Russian history professor from college, who told me who to talk to at the State Department. And then I found that there was something called the Russian desk. So I contacted the Russian desk person, who was really engaged in this whole thing. His name was Ed Salazar. He was like this is the best idea. After 10 years of working at it, somebody going this is fantastic. So he jumped on board. And then because of him, then the Assistant Secretary of State. And then US Ambassador to Russia, the Russian Ambassador to the US-- oh, Soviet Ambassador to the US. And I eventually started building this team. And then got Senator Frank McCloskey from Alaska. I mean it just continued. It snowballed. And basically the day before the swim happened, we got a call from Senator McCloskey's office saying that the clearance had come through for the swim and we could do it. And it was so exciting to have worked for 11 years and have this huge dream, and this huge hope that the border could be opened between the two countries, and to have the phone call saying yes, it's possible. But in my head, I had been thinking all this time that I'm only going to be able to go halfway. And suddenly I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I got to go all the way now. And so it sort of like shifted everything. And the other part that was really exciting was that we had supporters from Little Diomede Island who were Inuit, who had had family on Big Diomede Island. But they had all been moved by the Soviets to mainland Siberia. So they had lost contact with their family for 48 years. So we were allowed two cruise boats to go across the Bering Strait. And they didn't have to have visas. It was agreed in advance by telex, there weren't faxes then, by telex that we'd have these two umiak boats, which were two walrus skin boats that were 30 feet long. And they would accompany me along the swim, along with AP, and "Los Angeles Times," and ABC, and a bunch of media that would be there to document the swim and to document the border opening. And the hard thing that happened was that suddenly all of the people in the community wanted to go across with us. So they're pulling out all these umiaks. And many of them that hadn't been used for a couple years and their skins were stretched out. And the gut that they used to sew the skins to the frame weren't really tight. So I'm thinking, oh my gosh, we don't have enough life jackets in the boat for them. And what happens if something goes wrong? And there's a point where I just go, you know, I can't take care of all this. I just have to do the swim and hope that everything will work out. And I thought well, if something goes wrong maybe the Soviets will come in and rescue our crew. So it was a really wild and crazy, but that was the swim. And it really took forever, but it opened the border. And that was in August of '87. In December, President Gorbachev and President Reagan were meeting at the White House to sign the IMF missile treaty. And it was their first summit. And President Gorbachev and President Reagan stood up. And President Gorbachev raised his glass and said, it took a daring American girl by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim between our two countries. And it said it showed how close to each other the two countries are and how the relations between the two countries were improving. And it made me feel like wow, you can have a huge dream. And you can go to a lot of people who will help you and you can make it happen. And after that, the border between the two countries was opened. And the people that have lived on Little Diomede Island that hadn't seen their families for 48 years, were able to go back and forth freely. And they created an international park up further in the Bering Strait that was co-administered between the US and the Soviet Union. And then commercial stuff opened up, where Alaska Airlines started to fly from Alaska directly to the Siberian and the Far East. And fishing stuff changed. And there were big changes that resulted in that tiny, little effort. But it was really fantastic. It was really so cool Any-- you had, yes? AUDIENCE: It's on. OK. You said the longest swim, how long was it? It was seven hours? LYNNE COX: The longest swim I swam was when I was 14 years old. And I swam 12 hours and 36 minutes across Catalina Channel. When I swam the English Channel the first time, I swam 30 miles. The second time I swam 33 miles. AUDIENCE: So my question is what do you do for nutrition and hydration to keep fueled throughout that whole time? LYNNE COX: Actually, I'm still learning how to do that better. Initially when I swam the English Channel, water bottles hadn't been invented yet. So my mom came up with the idea of using old shampoo bottles and using that for our feeding. And we would try all sorts of things like hot tea with honey or hot orange juice, which is absolutely disgusting. We tried hot cocoa. But that was not good with the salt that you would get in your mouth for hours. You'd have like salt in. So you had to figure out a fluid that could warm you up, that would taste good, and that would give you energy. And I finally came up with warm apple cider, warm apple juice. Because it was something that would coat my throat. It with something that was a simple sugar that moms give their kids, babies, as their first drink. You know the first fruit drink that they get usually is apple juice. It's easy to digest. So I figured I would use that for my swam. So I periodically, on the English Channel I'd feed every hour. And I'd have a small, half glass, or-- yeah, have a cup of apple juice or maybe a cup. And then the other thing I would have would be oatmeal cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies. Because when you swim for long periods of time, you get really hungry. And I've always wanted solid food. I haven't enjoyed drinking whatever it is that you're supposed to drink. So it's really interesting though because my roommate in college was Sandy Nielsen. And she was the gold medalist in the '72 games in the 100-meter freestyle. And we were talking about our training. And we were talking about what we ate one day. And I said, Sandy, what did you eat before you got your gold medal in the 100 freestyle? She said I had big bowl of oatmeal with raisins. I'm like amazing, that you find the same things coming from different sports. The other thing that I've done through the years is I've really gone to other athletes to learn from them. And a good friend does ultra-marathon runs. She's Kathy Kusner. She was a gold medalist in the '76 games in horse jumping. And she went on to become a marathon runner and an ultra-marathon runner. And she's 73 now. But she was doing 100-mile runs until she was 70. And now, she just does marathons. That's all she does now, a real slacker. But she also eats very simply. And she eats oatmeal. And she doesn't do the high-tech, high-power, high-fuel stuff. Because a lot of that stuff causes gastric dumping. It causes gas and makes you really comfortable. And so she goes more with water and fruit juice. And her friend though, and I haven't tried this out yet, who does ultra-marathon runs, she's probably in her 50s. She is now trying to eat avocados during the runs because you want a high fat or she wants a high-fat, energy substance to eat. And she says avocados are really easy to eat. And I'm thinking, wow, with all the salt in your throat, that would be like guacamole. But I mean the other thing that I learned from her and her friends are that on their long-distance marathon runs, they cut up peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and eat pieces of them during their runs. And I thought wow, that's so wild. Because before my swim across the Beagle Channel at the very tip of South America, I decided that I needed to try something new. And I wound up eating bagels with peanut butter and jelly. And that gave me energy and sustained me. It sort of just sat there for the whole swim. So I think though there's no answer for anyone to say this is what you need to drink and this is how you need to feed. I think it's really about trying out what will work for you and what you're happy with. Just like you might like a certain food or you might be allergic to a certain food, what works for you might not work for somebody else. I think now that open water swimmers who are doing five and 10 miles swims are feeding more frequently. They're feeding every 20 minutes or so. And they're short feedings. Because every time you stop to feed, you start to get cold. And I learned that when you do that, you sort of never get back to where you were before you stopped. You always feel that cold moving a little bit deeper into your body. So I don't really like to stop and feed. And when I do those really cool swims, I don't stop for anything because your body temperature gets lowered so quickly. And that's the other thing that happens. On these swims, and you might experience it if you're doing some of these open water swims or during triathlons during the swimming phase, your temperature can drop because you've been swimming in cooler water and your skin's exposed to the colder water. And then you get out and you vasodilate. You start to open the blood flow from the peripheral area and it goes into your core. And then you notice that you're cold. That's called "afterdrop." What I've learned from the swim in Greenland was that in the past I had sort of stopped, and put warm clothes on, and drank warm fluids. Not hot foods because your lips are cooled down to the water temperature. So the last thing you want to start drinking is hot fluids because you'll just scorch your lips and mouth. So you wanted to start off with warm fluids. But what I learned after the swim in Greenland, or what I thought about, was instead of just stopping in shivering, and then warming my body up that way, and then drinking warm fluids, what I'll do instead is I'll walk through the town of Illulissat, which is very, very, very hilly. I'll make sure I have my sweatsuit on. And I'll go back to the hotel that way. So after half an hour walk, my core temperature had warmed up significantly. And I'd get into a shower that was just cool. And then within 20 minutes, I warmed it up to warmer, then hot. And it was back to normal. Whereas in Antarctica, I shivered for an hour straight and felt really uncomfortable and exhausted by shivering for an hour straight. And then after that took a warm shower. One of the things that I wrote about in this book that's so important, that I learned from the Gordon Giesbrecht, the world's expert on hypothermia, is that if somebody is ever hypothermic, never put them in a hot shower. Because if you put them in a hot shower, it causes them to vasodilate, dilate open the blood flow along the surface of the body, and it will throw the cold blood into the core. And it can cause their whole system to collapse and they can die. So there are people that do these cold swims that say we go right into the sauna afterwards. And I also hear about those who go into the sauna afterwards often pass out. And it's because of that shift in blood moving in and out. So just one of those things that's really important, that I sort of noted in a big way in the book. Yeah? AUDIENCE: So for people who are just getting started with open water swimming, what are the key dangers, watch-outs, and key skills that you need in order to be safe doing it? LYNNE COX: Well, that's the big part of the book. Maybe I'll just give it from my experience. Before I do any swim anywhere, I spend-- it depends on the swim-- but if I was to go swimming off Brighton Beach right now, I would be asking-- first, I'd try to find out if there's someplace around here where they measure water quality and find out is the water clean? Because I'm swimming because I want to be healthy. I don't want to go swimming and get sick. That's the last thing I want to do. So I'd find out about the water quality in the area. Then I would contact the captain of the lifeguards and find are there problems with sting rays, jellyfish, sharks? Are there certain times of the year where it's better to swim and where there aren't better times to swim? What's the prevailing current? Is there a big temperature change from cold to hot? And then I would continue through friends who are swimmers to gather information. And then I compare that information. Because one person might tell you one thing and somebody might tell you something else. And one might be right and the other might not be. So I usually sort of triangulated every answer that I got to see if I could get that same answer repetitively. And then I would use that as OK, that's what I'm going to do now. Actually, I think that it's a really methodical and progressive way of doing the research. Now, I have Google. And you won't believe how much I use it to be able to ask questions. And Google Scholar, it's like oh, my gosh, this is so fantastic. And then to access people and to be able to track them down and ask individuals who know stuff about the environment or the water. And I do all that first. And then I will go to the beach and I'll talk to the lifeguard or a number of lifeguards on the beach. And ask them about the current, how fast it flows, which way it goes, are their rip tides? Are there things that I need to be concerned about in the water? I remember training for Cook Strait in an area called Island Bay, New Zealand. And it was this beautiful bay that was really well protected. It was just like lapis blue water, so clear. And I get in there and started swimming. And I was doing a really good work out. And I decided I need to pick up my pace. And I hadn't even thought, I mean this was when I was 17 years old, so I hadn't even thought of asking is there anything I should know about this waterway before I get in it? And I had worked with the local lifeguards. But I still didn't ask that question. So I was swimming along and I ran head first into a piling. And I came out afterwards and said did you guys know there was a piling over there? It's like, oh yeah, that used to be part of the old pier. I'm like, ah. So honestly, you don't want to get injured while you're doing your swim. So that was the other thing is are there other questions that I haven't asked you, but that I should know about? Because I really am not from this area and I'm just trying to learn before I get in. And so that sort of endears you to the local people too. And they can't help you enough. And that's what's so cool about this open water, triathlon, athlete community. People will really help you out. But that's really what makes it fun too, to be able to swim with somebody and share that experience afterwards. I think though I spent a lot of time, maybe an hour. And then the other thing that I do, because of doing the research for this book, I met a man named Shawn Collins, who started Surfline.com. And it's the premier place for surfers to go online to find out what's going on with the surf around the world. And he was so cool because he could look at weather systems around the world and figure out where a storm was being generated off Fiji, and the speed of the storm, and the height of the waves that would occur from that storm. And he could do that looking at all the charts and find-- I mean the weather information and weather maps. And he could also do that with the Pacific Northwest or whatever. And I was at his home one day in Seal Beach, California. And we were sitting there, looking out at the water. And he was watching the waves coming in and breaking on shore. And he says oh, that's from the storm off Hawaii. That's from the storm off Washington state. That's from the storm off Fiji. And he could tell by looking at the waves. He said each one has a fingerprint. And I'm like wow. I spent my life in the ocean and I didn't know that. And he gave me this new, beautiful way and awareness of looking at the waves. But I would also check Surfline.com to find out about what the wave situations are before I go. Yeah? AUDIENCE: I'm wondering if you ever had any close encounters with marine life-- LYNNE COX: Oh, I've had-- AUDIENCE: --or interesting stories? LYNNE COX: I've had lots of close encounters with marine life. Sometimes its been really wonderful and exciting. And sometimes it's been really not so great. The wonderful one was my second book, where I had a baby gray whale, who was swimming underneath me in the early morning. I was training. I would never train this way now. But when I was 17 years old, I was training just outside the wave break before the Sun has risen. And I felt something very big swimming underneath me. And I kept swimming the half mile to the jetty and turned around. And I started swimming back faster. And I kept thinking, is it's a seal? It's like no, it's big for a seal. Is it a dolphin? No, it's not a dolphin. And I couldn't see what was below me. So I just swam faster. And then got to the pier and decided to get out of the water and saw an old fishermen, named Steve, who I knew. And he was waving to me to come out to the end of the pair. So I did. And he explained that I had a baby great whale, who had lost his mom, who had been following me. And that I needed to stay in the water and help him find his mom. So if was like how do you do that? But I just thought OK, I'll do that. And so for the next five hours, we swam all over that area. And eventually mom showed up. So that was like one of the most wonderful experiences in swimming. There was a swim that I did, that I wrote in the book "Swimming to Antarctica. And I was trying to become the first person to swim around the Cape of Good Hope from the Indian Ocean-- I mean, sorry-- from the Atlantic Ocean around into the Indian Ocean. And where those two oceans meet, there is huge current and lots of upwelling. And it's very difficult to swim there. But because of the upwelling and the current, there's a lot to fish. And because there's lots of fish, there's lots of sea lions. And because there's lots of sea lions, there's mega sharks. And so in preparation for that swim, there were four guys who were from the Special Forces team, South African Special Forces team, who agreed to be in the water spotting for me. So they were taking turns. Every 20 minutes, one guy would jump in and hold onto a rope and have a spear gun in his hand, with a mask and snorkel on, and watch for sharks. And then after 20 minutes, the other guy would jump in. Well, I was about 400 meters from finishing the swim and Doug, the diver who was next to me, suddenly disappeared. And I had a Zodiac boat off to my right for additional support. So I was yelling at the crew. They were saying, where's Doug? And they were looking and they couldn't see anything because the water was so rough. So I yelled to the people in the other boat where Doug was supposed to be attached to, the 40-foot boat. And they couldn't see him either. So the crew started yelling at me just to swim faster. And two South Africa swimmers, who were on board the boat, jumped in the water to swim with me, to make me go faster. And I'm thinking, I don't need anyone to make me go faster. I know that there's something going on here. And wow, you're swimming with me. So we sprinted to shore. And then when we landed on shore, Doug came ashore in the Zodiac boat. And he was stretching out the spear from a spear gun, which is about that long and it was about half a inch in diameter. And he said that he shot a bronze Whaler shark, which is a migratory shark that only comes there in December and January. He shot the shark in the dorsal fin. And the shark just turned and bit the spear, and bent it in half, and pulled it out of its fin, and swam away. So he said that he was concerned that the blood in the water would attract more sharks. And I said I was too. And that there was no problem because we sprinted to shore. But we had prepared for it. The other option for that swim would have been to swim in a shark cage. The problem with swimming in a shark cage is that you get 30% drag. So you're not making it under your own power. But the other thing about the Cape of Good Hope is because it's at the tip of Africa, it encounters lots of storms by just sitting there the way it is. And so there are waves that come up from Antarctica, that in the winter, are between 80 and 90 feet, that break on shore there. In summer time, they're a lot smaller. They're between 20 and 30 feet. There are rogue waves that just suddenly appear out of nowhere. So we figured out though that if I was swimming in a cage, the wave could take the cage down with me in it and the boat too. So we figured that in setting up that swim, the idea to have the Special Forces guys with me was much better than to swim in a cage. And I didn't want to swim in the cage because I felt like that was cheating. AUDIENCE: You shared a lot about the external elements, like physical endurance. I'm very curious about the inner element. And has this transformed you as a person, and have you looked at other aspects outside of swimming differently because of your journey, and if you could share a few anecdotes on that? LYNNE COX: I hope I can remember all your questions. There is a real inner journey when you're doing these swims because you're in your own little world. It's your think tank. And so you do spend a lot of time talking to yourself and convincing yourself. Like the Cook Strait swim, when you've gone backwards for five hours and you expected to have finished after five hours, it's a big letdown, a huge letdown. So I learned through that swim that you just keep going until you get there. And I think that I learned that to apply that to life. With my first book, "Swimming to Antarctica," it took 21 years to get it published. But it became a best seller on the "New York Times" bestseller list. And then "Grayson" took a year to write and then I think a year to get published. And that was another best seller. So I realize that there's this transference that you can make from what you do in your time that you just are spending and enjoying life to what you take in to the bigger part of your life. I think that for me-- actually I was invited to speak in India. And I brought to Mumbai to speak to 700 eminent people. And one family had brought two of their sons. And there was one boy there who was maybe 9 or 10 years old. And he said to me, what you do must be 90% mental. That so much of it must be just in your mind, of your ability or nonability to do it. And I thought about that for a minute. And I said actually you know I could think that I could do it. And that's a great way to help prepare. But if I don't physically train to do it, then mentally I'm not prepared to do it and physically and mentally I can't do it. So it involves all of that. And I think the other part too is there is a spiritual part of it where that whole sense of extending yourself, of seeing what you can do, of trying to create more challenges and then realize them and be able to grow through that challenge, that's part of what drives me to do these things. I think that life would be really boring and not as fulfilling as-- I mean just right now, going across the country and doing the book tour, the people that I meet, the questions that they have, the exchanges we have, are really rich and enriching. And I feel so fortunate to have written books and to be able to communicate ideas. And then to have people come back with better ideas than what I've had or embellish them and come up with something more. And I think that's one of the most rewarding parts of this journey. Did I get all the questions? AUDIENCE: Thank you. LYNNE COX: OK. Thank you. Any more? Yeah? AUDIENCE: So I've been lucky enough to jump into the Hudson River two years in a row as part of the New York City triathlon. The first year, I didn't know what to expect so I sort of had that moment of panic and said OK, pull it together. This year I'm like well, you know what's ahead of you. But do you have any tips or advice for like that moment of jumping in and keeping yourself together and completing what your goal is? LYNNE COX: I totally understand that. I was just talking to a friend of mine who played on the national team and who was an amazing water polo player. And he said he did his first triathlon with 1,200 people, maybe five years ago. And he said he had that moment where 1,200 people were being released all at once. And he said, I was so anxious. And he played water polo and that's a really physical sport. So we discussed that. And I think that for me the way to not be as anxious-- because like when I was going to jump into 32 degree water off Antarctica there was a moment I'm walking down the steps and they feel like ice cube trays. And then I'm sitting on it, waiting to sort of slide into the water. And I'm thinking, wow, this is going to be really difficult, and it's going to be cold, and am I going to be OK? So I go back to I train for it. I'm prepared for it. I've done what I needed to do and now this is the moment I get to do it. And that's really a great way to start off, like finally I get to do it. Instead of like, oh, my gosh, what's going to go wrong? It's like what's going to go right? And all the stuff I've learned through all this time, how can I now apply it for this moment? Because no matter how hard you train, there will be stuff that comes up and it will be something new. It was so cool, the last of couple years I got a chance to work with the SEALs, Navy SEALs. And what I learned from them was that they prepare, and prepare, and train, and train, and train, and train. And they do things so that it becomes part of muscle memory. And so that when something weird happens, they've already covered all those other bases and then they can deal with whatever is new. And I thought that was so helpful to be able to have that mindset of you've done everything you can. But now, you're the athlete and you can find the balance you need to do what you need to do and shift the thinking from oh, my god, now what, to oh, I get to go now. I hope that helps. AUDIENCE: Did you ever flatline? LYNNE COX: Did I ever flatline, what a great question? Yeah, actually I-- ugh. OK. I once was invited to swim in a race in Nile River. And we were supposed to swim around two islands in the Nile. And one of my mentors was a man named Fami Attala, who had attempted the English Channel five times and never made it. But he had done an 80-mile swim in the Mediterranean. He grew up in Egypt. And he told me that you'll have like the best swim. It'll be the best thing. It'll be the best experience. Because in Egypt, open water swimming there is such a big thing that they name streets after their heroes. Abouheif was one of their swimmers that swam the English Channel. So he has a street named after him in Cairo. And it's part of their mythology. It's bigger than being an NFL quarterback is in the United States. So Fami got me all excited and set up to do the swim. And I got dysentery the week before I swam, but decided I was the only American there representing the United States. So I had to do my best. So I jumped into the water and swam 15 of the 20 miles and pretty much passed out in the water. And wound up in the ER room in Egypt, in Cairo, Egypt. Which was really kind of fortunate because the doctor who was attending to me had studied in Britain and spoke English fluently. And I was so upset because I had failed. I mean I had really failed. And he couldn't understand why I was so upset. And I kept saying well, but I didn't complete the swim. And he saying, but you don't get it. You could have died. You were severely dehydrated. Your muscles were cramping. And you could have died. Like, yeah, but I didn't finish the swim. I mean I was 17 years old. I'm like aah. And so it took me years to figure out oh, I pushed it too far. I was really dehydrated. I really could have died. And no swim is ever worth that. So it put everything from then on in perspective. But for a while, that failure haunted me. Because with the Cook Strait swim that came after that, I almost quit on that swim after swimming for five hours and not getting anywhere. But then the support crew continued to say you can do it. You can keep going. And so I just thought OK, I can keep going. So 12 hours later, I made it. But that swim in the Nile was really awful. Because it was also extremely polluted. And I was swimming through areas of dead rats that were floating around and dead dogs. And it was really bad. Yeah. I wouldn't recommend it. Don't swim in the Nile? A happier question? AUDIENCE: I was curious. Whenever I hit a certain mileage, my foot always cramps. So what do you do? What do you do when you have cramps? LYNNE COX: Actually, I just grab my foot and stretch it out. And that helps to ease the cramp. AUDIENCE: So are you always just treading water? You have your support crew. Do you hold onto your-- LYNNE COX: You never hold onto the boat. But I don't know if this is in training or if this is during an actual race. If it's during training, I would just hold on to whatever and do that. But usually what happens with cramps is that somebody has either their electrolytes are out of balance and so maybe you're aren't having enough calcium, or sodium chloride, or anything. Maybe you need to talk to your doctor or whatever and find out if you should have something more, more electrolyte replacement. The other thing that happens though is your muscles fatigue at a certain point. And so maybe you're not training hard enough, those muscles in your feet, to prepare you for the swim. Maybe they're fatiguing and that's causing the cramping. Or the other thing is you may be kicking too hard. A lot of swimmers don't realize that 80% of their propulsion comes from their arms. And their legs are more for balance. And so if you're kicking really hard, you're using all the energy that could be pulling you forward with your arms. So if you look at me swim, and I did the long distance stuff, you'll see my stoke is really arms. And my legs are just balance. So you might try backing off on you kick a little bit. So then you can use your oxygen for your arms and pull more strongly with your arms and see if that increases your speed. And then you don't get the cramps in your feet. You know, like a variety of things you might try. AUDIENCE: I have a question. LYNNE COX: Oh, sure. AUDIENCE: So swimming for such a long distance, how do you keep straight? LYNNE COX: When I'm swimming for such a long distance, how do I keep straight? I always have boats with me that are supporting me during the actual swim. So on board the boat will be usually a doctor. And there will be lifeguards and sometimes a paramedic. But on the big, really cold swims, I've actually had three doctors there just in case something goes wrong. Because again, I'm going to places nobody's been and I've never been. So I want to make sure there's back up. And they also go through this rehearsal ahead of the swim to make sure they can take care of me. When I'm training offshore, I swim just outside the wave break. And I swim usually in an area, either it's roped off, so I know I can follow the rope along the way. Or I swim outside the wave break. And there's a pier in Seal Beach where put-- there's a tower and I put it on my back. And then in the distance, there are three Oil Islands, White, Chaffee, and Grissom, that were named after the Apollo 11 astronauts that were killed in the Apollo mission. And they have lights on them. So if it's late afternoon or early evening, I can use those lights as my guide. So I'll swim along and I'll look up. But the other thing that I do that really helps you swim in the open water is to be able to breathe on both sides. Because if you can breathe on both sides, then you can see on both sides. And you can swim in a more balanced way. But you also can see what's around you for safety. And so there might be a jet skier coming off this side. And if you don't breathe on that side, you might not see him. Or a wind surfer on this side-- and if you only breath on this side, then you won't see the wind surfer and you might not hear him. So it's just really important to be able to see, and look, and use your eyes. That will help your body balance. AUDIENCE: And a quick question. Did you wear the thermal suit or the normal bathing suit? LYNNE COX: Normal bathing suit. Usually it's a TYR bathing suit. It's just a Lycra swimsuit, like the Lycra shorts that cyclists wear. So I'll wear the Lycra swimsuit because it doesn't chafe as much. If you wear a nylon or a polyester swim suit, that, if you're swimming a long way, even if it's a short way, it can start chaffing. So I wrote all about that. So it's all in there about how to prepare. AUDIENCE: Thank you. LYNNE COX: Thank you very much. FEMALE SPEAKER: That's all we have time for. Thank you for joining us today. LYNNE COX: Thank you very much. It was great. Thank you. Thank you.