My first ultra marathon swim! Ever since I did my first marathon 10K in 2021, I knew I wanted to go longer and Tahoe seemed like the perfect intro to it. It's cold water but not too cold; it's freshwater without the crazy ocean currents; it's at night (like many ultra swim are) but starts in the evening so still some light at the start; and at 21 miles it's on the scale of the big channels that one day want to try. A perfect taste test of ultra swimming.
Lake Tahoe!
I'm not going to lie, it was a tough year of training. I was not only getting ready for this swim but also a massive 4-day bike event (which is a whole other crazy fun adventure). Training for two ultras in two different sports I learned takes a lot of time but I had a solid plan that I’d made at the very beginning of my training to balance it all and if I stuck to it, I knew I would be successful. Well…a training plan is just that - a plan. And things sorta fell apart during the last big swim block partially due to poor planning on my part and a some shoulder pain that manifested three weeks before the big swim.
The day of the swim, I was really nervous because of the lack of volume and a shoulder that had started to hurt a couple week prior. But despite the nerves, I had no doubts I wouldn’t finish the swim, it was just a matter of how fast or slow it would be. Plus the conditions looked pretty good, the water was very warm for Tahoe (70 degrees) and the wind was pretty weak and forecasted to be out of the west which seemingly would be pretty negligible for a south to north swim. It was a great night to swim, I would be ok.
At around 6pm, we got on the boat with my crew (Dad and Cate!) and headed to the starting point. Along the way, Sylvia and Brian (the boat pilots) gave us a briefing, I greased up and it was time to jump off the boat and swim to the shore to do the start. I waited for a couple short minutes on the beach before they blew the horn and the swim was underway.
The whole crew on the boat before the swim
Standing on the beach waiting for the swim to start
The first hour was beautiful. Swimming into the sunset, in the clearest blue water, feeling pretty good and on pace. It didn’t take long for things to change though. By hour 2 the sun had dimmed, the dark crept in, it was choppy, we started fighting a slight head current and my shoulder started to hurt. It had never hurt this early on in a swim. Even on my last 6 hour training swim, it had only started hurting around hour 5 - and even then the pain was pretty minor. So I was a little concerned. But I just pulled back my effort a little to try and push off the pain. Around hour 3, the first thought of ‘am I going to be able to finish this?’ crept into my mind - I felt slow. Really slow. And my shoulder shouldn’t be hurting this much only 3 hours into the swim, how am going to do another 7-10 hours of this? But at that next feed, Brian and Sylvia shouted “you’re doing fantastic, your pace is really really good” and as my dad leant over the railing to toss me the feed, I heard him say “everyone is really impressed at how fast you’re going”. Maybe I wasn’t going as slow as I thought? Maybe my intuition about pace was off? Regardless, I needed to hear that, it kept me going despite how skeptical I became about this swim and how slow I was feeling.
The sunset was beautiful
Hours 3-7, were hard. No one told me during the swim, but they later told me we hit a head current that dropped my pace from ~2.2mph to ~1-1.5 mph. I certainly felt like I was crawling and my shoulder was one fire. Lifting it out of the water was actually hard. The only thing that kept me going was just getting to the next feed. Just 45 minutes and then I could give my shoulder a quick pause, hear a “go get ‘em” from my dad, a sarcastic comment from my sister and catch glimpse of the stars. Despite these hours being really hard, there was still something really calming about it. It was really quiet. The water was pretty still. The movement on the boat slowed as everyone started to sit down and fall asleep. And the green glowsticks on the boat and the bright stars were the only light cutting through the sharp darkness.
Night swimming
At hour 7, I caved and did what I swore I wouldn’t do on this swim - asked for Advil. I’ve never needed meds on a swim, never *wanted* meds on a swim, cause pain is just part of the process right? But this pain was different and something I shouldn’t have felt only halfway through the swim and wow I wished I asked for them sooner. Hours 8-11 were glorious. I found my stroke again, the currents changed direction to give us a push, my pace picked up and I felt like I could swim forever. Had I not had these 3 hours of relief, I don't know if I would have been able to finish.
At around the hour 11 feed, Brian told me not to look ahead for at least the next hour, to just look at the boat and focus on my stroke. Not going to lie, him telling me not to look ahead, only made me want to look ahead even more. But I did try my best to just look at the boat because I knew at the end of the day, it was best to not think about how many more miles or hours I had left to swim. Ultimately though, it was really hard to not want to catch a peak at what was ahead and I lifted my head forward a couple times to take a look. And every time I did, I regretted it a little because I could see the shore, see the beach I was supposed to land on, but it never seemed to get any closer. It just seemed to stay stationary.
The sun starting to come up
Throughout the entire swim, I was counting my feeds as a way to try to keep track of time. Every 45 min, I added another chunk to my total swim time and it was a nice mental check of having some sort of sense of where I was at. At around hours 12-13, though, I started to question all my math. If it was 12 hours it would be about 7am, but the sun seemed too high/too bright for 7am. It wouldn’t be unlike me to miscount a feed or two and instead of hour 12 or 13 this was actually hour 14 or 15. Mentally, this was a little disappointing as I was aiming for around a 12 hour swim, but at this point my shoulder hurt too much that I was happy I would just finish and if it was a 15 hour swim - that would be ok, the first goal was always just to finish.
I don't think I'll ever get over how blue the water was
Eventually, I saw the boat stop which was my queue that we were only a couple hundred yards from shore. Crawling onto the beach after a whole night of constant motion was a surreal moment. My mom, Aunt and Uncle were on the beach cheering me on which was really nice to see. Immediately, I asked what time it was, eager to know just how long I had been swimming and when they replied with 8:23, I was a little shocked that I had in fact calculated my feeds correctly and it was a 13 hour finish instead of a 15 hour one. Still an hour off my initial goal pace but I would take 13 hours.
The whole crew and family at the end of the swim
After letting it all sink in, I learned a lot from this one. Going into this swim, I was only really concerned about the mental aspect. I’ve always been a big believer that big athletic events like this are almost entirely mental, our bodies are stronger than we think and are much more capable than our mind tells us. But this swim was a great reminder that there is still very much a physical aspect to it all too. My shoulder was without a doubt a big roadblock in this swim - I knew going into this, I had at least a minor injury but chose to ignore it believing that I could push through for 13 hours during the actual swim, it would all just be mental. In reality, if I had just taken a couple extra days off - even a week - I would have still been fine aerobically to complete the swim and it would have likely felt a lot better during the swim.
There are so so many people to recognize for making this swim possible. First my family for the relentless support throughout the entire process. Dad and Cate kept me fueled and alive and it was so nice to have some familiar faces on the boat. These two in my opinion are the real superheroes for sitting on a boat all night long and watching me swim at a crawling pace. Of course my family on the beach and all those that cheered me on - so so appreciate the support. My captains Brian and Sylvia were absolutely fantastic and got me across the lake safely. And last but not lease, the many friends and training partners that were there for the everyday training to get to this point - y'all kept me going on a daily basis and when I was in terrible pain halfway through the swim.
Some photos of beautiful Lake Tahoe just because.
