Kathleen Wilson swims around Charleston, S.C. Photo: Gary McElveen
Karah Nazor Friberg hates the TV show River Monsters, which centers around man-eating fish. A show that highlights the vicious underbelly of our waterways hits close to home for Friberg, an accomplished marathon-distance swimmer living in Chattanooga. She spends most of her free time swimming long distances in rivers. The 34-year-old has ticked off some impressive marathon-distance swims, including swimming the English Channel, and she says it’s best not to think about what’s lurking beneath the surface.
“In the Tennessee River, it’s catfish. Really big catfish,” Friberg says. “People catch huge ones all the time. They’re the size of Volkswagens. Okay, half the size of Volkswagens. But they’re still scary.”
According to Friberg, you can’t think about the catfish, or the sharks, or the cold temperatures or the incredible distances, or any of the concerns that keep most of us out of the water. To swim open water, you have to enter with a clear mind, free of negative thoughts. It’s a process that more and more athletes are discovering as the sport of open water swimming spreads. Every year, more swimmers are crossing bays and lakes and knocking out long stretches of mountain rivers.
“I have this urge when I’m at the edge of water to get in and swim straight out,” Friberg says. “I want to swim all the way to the other end. No walls. No boundaries. It’s like backpacking in a wilderness.”
She is currently training for a 30-mile relay swim that begins at the Farallon Islands and ends in San Francisco, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge and through “sharky” waters. After that, she’s off to swim 8.5 miles from Maui to Molokai Island, also through sharky waters. Friberg doesn’t like the notion of swimming with sharks, but the fear isn’t strong enough to keep her onshore.
“When you’re swimming open water, you’re a part of the elements, probably more so than in any other situation,” she says. “That’s part of the appeal. You’re literally immersed in nature.”
That same sense of immersion that attracts Friberg keeps the majority of us out of open water. Americans aren’t in love with swimming. We’re not like Western Europeans, where open water swimming clubs are almost as common as running clubs. According to a Gallup poll commissioned in the late 1990s, 46 percent of American adults are afraid of the deep end of pools, and 64 percent of us are afraid of deep open water, be it an ocean, lake, or river.
Richmond-based triathlete Jay Peluso has created an entire coaching business designed to eradicate that fear of open water. “A lot of people aren’t comfortable with being out in a river or a lake. It’s the fear of the unknown,” says Peluso. “Some people freak out when their feet touch the bottom of a river. Or they’re scared of the wildlife. Even some competent pool swimmers are uncomfortable with open water. They’ll start to hyperventilate and panic in the river. What happens is they lose perspective. The water’s murky, there are no black lines or tiles to mark distance. It can be overwhelming.”
Even veteran swimmers can be overwhelmed by the enormity of a lengthy open water swim, particularly when swimming in the ocean. Denis Crean is a long-time swimmer who has competed in some of the country’s most lauded and longest open water races. He was training for a pier to pier race in California one day when panic began to take hold.
“Those piers stick a half a mile out into the ocean. I was swimming by myself between piers, training for a race. You’ve got nothing to hold onto out there. You’re all alone. All of a sudden, your mind starts playing tricks on you. I was out there and I realized, if I went under, or if something ate me, no one would know. The lifeguards wouldn’t see me. I stopped, looked around, but what do you do? I had to keep swimming to the next pier.”
While swim technique and fitness are the foundations of open water success, coping with the mental aspect of swimming great distances is just as important.
“Negative thoughts will drag you down,” Crean says. “When you’re swimming 20 miles across a bay, your body is screaming at you to stop and you begin to doubt yourself pretty quickly. You can’t think about the waves, the current, the sharks. You can’t think about how tired you are. If you do, it’s over. Those negative thoughts will act like weights and you’ll sink.”
With his budding triathlete clients, Jay Peluso begins developing a solid foundation of swimming technique in the pool, then introduces open water in a comfortable group setting with safety kayakers along for the ride. He’s also developed a local open water race series to give athletes as many chances as possible to dive into the world of open water.
“Acclimation is the key to enjoying open water swims,” Peluso says. “The more you do it, the less anxious you’ll be.”
Kathleen Wilson has long since moved beyond the anxiety involved with swimming open water. The professional harpist and Charleston, S.C., city councilwoman has completed most of the big swims around the world, swimming the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar, and a circumnavigation of the island of Manhattan.
“The English Channel stands out,” Wilson says. Only a thousand swimmers have made it across the 21-mile channel that separates England from France, which is considered the Mount Everest of open water swimming, but many more have tried unsuccessfully. “That’s the granddaddy of all swims. It’s a tough way to spend a day. It was a terrible fight for me getting into France. I always wondered why so many swimmers failed in the last mile or two. I wondered why they couldn’t dig a little deeper with so little to go, but I know now. There are terrible tides that run parallel to the coast of France. They’ll take you miles off your course. I was in the middle of one of those tides running north. I was just 800 meters from France, 11 or 12 minutes from being finished and I got swept north a good distance, and the coast fell away. So then I was 1,500 meters from land. I was only making an inch or two of progress with each stroke. That 11 minutes turned into almost two hours of basically swimming in place.”
Last fall, Wilson became the first person to swim 16 miles around the Charleston peninsula. “The older I get, the more I’m attracted to long distance open water swims,” she says. “The pool is too confining. I like being away from the land. I like the expansiveness of the ocean. I’ve come to terms with all of the typical fears that keep most people out of the water. I take safety precautions, but I don’t obsess about what’s out there.”
If anything, Wilson thrives in the situations that would worry the rest of us. The first hour of her Charleston swim was completely in the dark, which Wilson says is her favorite way to swim. “It’s peaceful and relaxing. I can set a good pace, get into a groove and watch the sun come up.”
Wilson had three kayaks paddling with her during the seven-hour, 16-mile swim, which took her in and out of busy shipping channels around the bustling city of Charleston. The last stretch involved swimming up the Ashley River during a stiff head wind.
“You can train and you can have a plan, but Mother Nature dictates the pace,” Wilson says. “You have to accept that. After you accept the situation for what it is, it’s just a question of how badly you want to finish.”
Organized open water swims are attracting more swimmers looking to finish marathon distances, and new races sprout up every year. One of the region’s largest races, the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, saw 600 participants swim 4.4 miles across the bay last year. Karah Nazor Friberg held the inaugural 10-mile Swim the Suck outside of Chattanooga last year, which drew swimmers from as far as Canada.
“People typically get into open water swims through triathlons,” Friberg says. “They do okay during the swim leg of their races, then start looking for longer distances.”
Denis Crean is as responsible for the growth in open water swimming in our region as anyone. He founded the U.S. Open Water Swimming Connection, an organization that provides the community with information about swims and a platform to help keep great swimming destinations clean, and is producing three new open water races in D.C.’s National Harbor this year. He’s also created a weekly “happy hour swim” in the harbor. His efforts have helped turn D.C. into a booming swimmer’s town.
“More clubs are starting to use the harbor as their group swim destination, so you’ve got this real social scene going on in and out of the water there,” Crean says. The National Harbor, which is surrounded by restaurants and hotels, is a scenic, clean swimming destination that Crean uses to introduce to more swimmers with his three new races. His first race, the Seaport Swim, has distances from 0.4 miles to two miles, and has already attracted 200 participants.
But as more triathletes looking to push their personal boundaries sign up for long-distance swims, veteran open water swimmers become more worried about the safety of their races.
“The sport is getting more popular, but with that comes a decrease in the quality of swimmer participating in these events,” says Kathleen Wilson, who insists that triathletes typically aren’t strong enough swimmers to tackle distances over a few miles. This year, she’s staging the Swim Around Charleston, a 10-mile point-to-point swim that covers a portion of her own route around the peninsula. “As a race director, you really have to monitor who’s entering your race. There’s no putting your feet down out there. Inexperienced swimmers may not even realize they’re in trouble.”
As with all adventure sports, risk is inherent in open water swimming. Once you’ve made the preparations, you simply have to weigh the risk against the reward and decide if swimming across an expansive body of water is worth it. For Friberg, it’s more than the challenge of swimming from point A to point B. Swimming open water is very much a Zen-like practice for her.
“Swimming is about repetition and rhythm. You breathe every three strokes. Having a breathing pattern automatically gets you into a rhythm. Some people play mind games to deal with that repetition, but I embrace it. I try not to think of anything. My mind becomes completely blank,” Friberg says. “When I was swimming the English Channel, I counted to three over and over for 12.5 hours. After six hours, I was in a completely meditative state. I wasn’t even on this planet. I don’t remember much from hour six to the finish. I just have little visions. That’s never happened to me before or since. But even swimming for just an hour can be relaxing and meditative.”
Interested in swimming open water but nervous? Follow these three tips from coach Jay Peluso for an easy transition from the pool to natural water.
1. If you’re a poor swimmer, wear a wetsuit. They’re buoyant and can help with anxiety.
2. Take breaks. If you get tired or anxious, roll over on your back, look up at the sky and take deep breaths. It’s okay to slow down and relax.
3. Consider the water and weather conditions. A stiff wind can make a calm lake choppy with whitewater. If the water temperature is over 84 degrees, don’t wear a wetsuit because you’ll overheat.
Swim Around Charleston
October 23 – Charleston, S.C.
A 10-mile course takes you around most of the Charleston Peninsula. It’s open to solo swimmers and relay teams up to four people.
swimaroundcharleston.com
Potomac River Swim
June – Point Lookout State Park, Md.
Swimmers tackle 7.5 miles of the mouth of the Potomac where it meets the Chesapeake Bay.
potomacriverswim.com
Seaport Swim
June – Washington D.C.
Pick your distance from .4 miles to two miles. The shorter distances make this an ideal swim for traithletes looking to test their open water mettle.
theseaportswim.org
Swim the Suck
October 8 – Chattanooga, Tenn.
This is a 10-mile downriver swim of the Tennessee River through the Tennessee Gorge.
swimthesuck10mile.com
Great Chesapeake Bay Swim
June – Annapolis, Md.
Considered one of the classic open water swims in the country, this 4.4-mile, point to point race attracts more than 500 swimmers each year.
bayswim.com