Why I Started Marathon Swimming
In the water, either a pool or an ocean, I feel Mother Nature embracing me. The sensation of water on my skin is that of being alive and connected with life itself. This is what I realized six months ago, at the age of 36. I had always felt it, but never realized how deep the connection is, or understood how important it is to me.
Struggling with depression and anxiety for most of my teenage and adult life didn’t help, as I feel disconnected from myself, most people and life experiences I go through. I have always felt things just happen. In the water, things change. I feel. It is when I am truly present and happy to be alive.
My days never start until I get in the water, and often times, I feel they end as soon as I get out. I feel like I can swim forever, since I want to be there. During a harder swim session, my body might tell me to stop. But then I ask myself, where would I rather be? The answer is always the same – right here, right now, where I am. Keep on swimming.
And this is how I understood what I have been missing my whole life – not understanding what a deep connection I have with water and swimming.
My Swimming Background
Growing up the sport I enjoyed more than any other was swimming. One of my first memorable achievements was qualifying for the school swim team. I tried out in fifth grade, but didn’t make the cut. However the coaches let me train with the team during the swim season. I swam regularly on weekends throughout the year. It helped that my father really enjoyed swimming and would take us every Sunday morning.
In sixth grade I qualified for the team, but performed poorly at the local swim meet. The whole year was spent improving swimming over the weekends. In seventh grade I won a third place medal in the 200m freestyle. I wasn’t a fast swimmer by any standards, but good enough for local meets, and one of the fastest in my school. I made swim team captain in my junior and senior year, continuing to do well and enjoying.
In college I made a list of things I wanted to learn & experience in my freshman year: Sailing, scuba diving, lifeguard certification. I only took 2 semesters of sailing before deciding all these were less important that academics. I focused on getting a double major in chemistry & economics, and wanted to pursue a PhD and eventually join my family business, in chemicals manufacturing. I still regret this, but at the time I was on a mission to be successful, following what my parents believed to be the best path for me. I never tried out for the college swim team, something that baffles me now, but probably made sense then.
Discovering Endurance Sports
Fast forward to 2018, where I had just started running. A friend of mine suggest I start cycling again, as I used to ride around in college. I did that. After a few months the triathlon bug hit me. Let’s do a sprint distance triathlon. I can run 5km and bike 20km, and I used to swim. Why not? This started me on a three year triathlon journey, where I completed a half-ironman, and even organized a duathlon during Covid19 lockdowns. I completed training for a full ironman, but was unable to travel for it due to Covid restrictions. I jumped on the ultra-marathon bandwagon and loved it as well.
During all this, I learned that endurance swimming was a thing. There are 10km swim marathons, Oceanman events, and the pinnacle – the English Channel swim & the Triple Crown of open water swimming. It took a while for these ideas to ferment and grow. And grow they did. Most 2020 and 2021, pool access was limited due to Covid19.
In mid-2022 I decided to focus on swimming instead of triathlon. In October 2022 I swam a 5km just to get things started. I had been swimming only once a week at that point, with a focus on ultra-marathons. It took me just over two hours, finishing in 2 hours and 10 minutes at Khanpur Lake, a 5 hour drive from my house. The first hour was ok, but the second hour was tough. My calf almost cramped, I had chafing and sunburn all over. After the swim was over I was completely drained.
Even though I had two races lined up, I decided to start swimming on top of my 60km to 90km weekly running. In October and December of 2022 I had signed up for 2 backyard ultra-marathons, and my training was run focused. I decided to add easy swims to improved aerobic conditioning and also aid in recovering from running, but the swim distances just added on. Starting from 2000m per day, I ended up swimming 3000m, 3500m. On top of a 60km-90km running week, that added up, both in terms of time and physical ability.
After my 102km ultramarathon finished in December, I took a leap of faith. Time to swim.
My First 10km Marathon Swim
Although I hadn’t signed up for a race or an event, I gave myself a deadline for the 10km: March 2023. I swam a 5km with once a week swimming, surely with 5 swims a week, a 10km will not be that hard.
Ramping up my swimming, I saw drastic improvements in my speed, form and endurance. My coach guided me through this, managing my intensity, scheduling in progressively longer swims and taper weeks. My longest pool swim was 9000m, two weeks before my scheduled 10km.
I offered a few of my friends to make a road trip out of the event, and they agreed. The nine of us drove up to a hotel by Khanpur Lake the night before the event. We had planned to rent a boat to take us to a suitable spot for a few hours for my 10km. I had set a target of 3 hours, but in retrospect it was a bit too ambitious, given the lack of open water swimming and endurance swimming in general.
The morning of the swim, I ended up getting earlier than I wanted to. A few of my friends planned to go for a hike on the nearby hills, but I had every intention of waking up as late as I could. On most days I wake up at around 6am, but I ended up wake up at around 5am.
I went to check the water temperature, it was around 16degC, meaning I would be swimming in a wetsuit, something I had not properly trained for, nor do I enjoy it. However I knew I would struggled with a 3 hours swim at this temperature, despite regular ice bath and cold water showers all winter. We had breakfast and were on our way to the swim by 10am.
On getting to the start point, I put on my wetsuit, organized my nutrition and set out. I ended up doing 9 loops, around 1.1km each, circling back to the starting point each time. I took it easy, enjoyed the swim and pushed harder towards the end. All my nutrition was in liquid form, I would have half a bottle of liquid carbs every 30 to 40 minutes.
Things went as expected, nothing out of the ordinary. My left should started to nag me about 30 minutes into the swim. The wetsuit changed my form a bit, as expected, and this was the biggest problem. I realized how little I enjoyed swimming with a wetsuit – my connection with the water felt severed.
I ended up doing the swim in 3hours 18 minutes. I was happy to have achieved this. My next goal is to swim a sub-3hour 10km before moving onto a longer distance. And train more with cold-water swims during the winter, something I neglected this year.
I rested the rest of the day. The next day the boys decided to go on a 30km trek from Khanpur to Islamabad. I woke up feeling a little tired but fine, so I joined them. This whole trip turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and memorable trips I have ever been on. The support of my friends really made a huge difference.
Throughout this journey, I have gone through a process of soul searching, learning to appreciate myself and a renewed sense of life. I feel like I am starting to have a better understanding of myself, which can be embarrassing to admit as a 37 year old. This is something that should have happened a long time ago.
