What is There to Love About Swimming in the Cold, Murky Ocean?

When the tail end of a wave flattens out, slides up the sand and swiftly paints my feet and ankles, I like to guess the temperature of the water. Even if it happens to be in the high 50’s, which for Santa Cruz is what we gleefully call ‘warm’, the startling chill will strike for the second time when I get waist deep. Salt water oozes into the zipper on the backside of my wetsuit like a subcutaneous injection of ice cream. If my ankles ache as I linger to adjust my goggles I know I’ll get jaw freeze when my face hits the murky water and that about half way through the swim, fingers will flop uselessly with the cold even as I will them to hold steady and together.

If the waves are forgiving I’ll linger for a moment in mid-body deep water, chatting, assessing

sea lion activity, winding up my mind for the impending sudden shift in reality. In chilly water its easier to adjust to the abrupt environment change up if it’s decisive—kinda like swiftly ripping off a bandaid. You are leaving the lower-half body cold injection, which you are now numb to, into a world of full sensory disturbance, muted social stimulus and compromised vision. Once your head is submerged you’ve just transformed not only your environment, but who you are in it—a cold shocked, unnatural, creature of the ocean.

That whole scene definitely doesn’t lay out the positive appeal of the swim even to the most stalwart of non-wetsuit wearing open water swimmers. The big love-part is what happens after overcoming that barrier and while actually swimming: That our experience is entirely dependent on the mind-set we bring on the day. The whims of the ocean will always push back, but how you roll with what you are handed will define your experience. Isn’t that cool. And it gets even more interesting to negotiate when we bring unsavory attitude into the mix.

If fear lurks in even the recesses of subconscious thought, due to lack of confidence, subpar skills, or irrational odds assessing, it will either steadily or intermittently blind you like an annoying friend who shines their headlamp in your face while hiking at night. They didn’t mean to stop you short, but the light was on and they weren’t attentive. BLAM! What started as just a chilly bodily experience will then either become a nightmare of varying proportions, or you’ll ask your fear to turn off the light and you’ll get on with it (usually a bunch of times). 

Or, just like any athletic experience that goes hand and hand with physical discomfort (wait, isn’t that all of them!), we can also bring our annoyance to our swim. Annoyed with the cold, our friend who is swimming faster than us, the buoys that won’t get any closer or at ourselves for not training enough to allow this swim to be less than uncomfortable. If so, annoyance will prevail and no matter how gorgeous a day, we may label the swim as an irritant rather than a vigorous endeavor.

But the coolest realization in all of this is that in either of the above cases or in any other mental state, the outward conditions are exactly the same. The only thing that changes up is the meaning we place on our experience.

I don’t tend to do fear in the ocean but I can tip the annoyance scale now and then so my goal is to show up with, dispassion. Dispassion sets me up for moment by moment ease and flow as a temporary sea creature. I accept the cold, zero visibility and how I feel on the day which allows me to then fully immerse in my unusual surroundings. I can just be in the swim.

Days of dispassion have lead me to swimming with sea lions, otters, dolphins and more creatures than I could name because I often can’t see them. I’m just one of them—equally irrelevant to the whims of nature. I’ve swam in tepid, tropical calm waters, scary strong currents, huge waves and to unknown places that could be considered really stupid, for diving in with lack of beta on the area. All vigorous and energizing if just for the change up in environment, while dispassion keeps my head calm and objective.

If open water swimming gives me an opportunity to hook into to the critical dispassionate mindset, the most ‘interesting’ times are when I can’t seem to do it. Some days bonding with our ‘creature of the sea side’ eludes us. Which is the reason why on the days we do connect, we really get how special it is to just be out there.

Because of my slightly askew love of the ocean, for over 25 years I’ve offered open water swim clinics that will help you connect with your inner creature of the sea. Join me this July 26th for the next and we’ll work on honing your dispassionate mind.

– Terri Schneider