Lynne Cox: Cold Water Queen
Twenty-five years ago this summer, Lynne Cox swam across the world’s deepest lake. Situated on the Central Siberian Plateau of Asia, Lake Baikal would be too cold (low 50s water temp) for most of us to stay in for more than a few minutes. After battling the cold and poor conditions for four hours, Cox arrived on the far shore greeted as a hero by a group of Russians who threw pink roses into the water. “I felt like a cosmonaut!” Cox said.
Cox has swum all over the world in incredibly challenging conditions. When she was in her 40s, Cox aspired to complete the first mile in Antarctica’s waters. She realized she would need to swim as fast as possible to keep her core temperature from dropping precipitously. In 2002, Cox successfully swam 25 minutes and 1.06 miles in the 32-degree waters. “All I could feel was cold,” Cox recalled. “All I could do was turn over my arms as fast they would go and breathe. All I could think about was moving forward.” As a sport psychologist and swimmer, I was riveted by our conversations and by the stories in her book Swimming to Antarctica.
Persistence, adaptability, focus — mental toughness
In 1987, Cox swam in the Bering Strait – frigid water between Cold War countries. Since her late teens, Cox had dreamed of making the historic crossing. The closed border demanded persistence from Cox – eleven years of writing to officials from the U.S. and the Soviet Union to gain permission to attempt the swim. This tenacity and focus, along with other psychological strengths and thinking habits, are central to Cox’s success.
“I don’t think there’s a separation between the mental and the physical,” Cox told me earlier this year. “If I don’t prepare mentally, I can’t be prepared physically.” Prior to her record-breaking English Channel swim at age 15, Cox talked with a Channel veteran. He described what Dover would look like and how the water would feel. Cox visualized the crossing but knew from her training in the Pacific that “everything changes when you’re in the middle of the ocean. Unexpected things happen. You have to be prepared to adapt.”
Cox’s ability to adapt was tested fully when she attempted to swim between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, across treacherous Cook Strait. “I looked at the map,” Cox said, “and thought: ‘Oh, it’s ten miles. It’ll take me four hours to do it.’ So after five hours of swimming I asked how close to shore we were and they said I was still five hours away (laughing). I learned then, you can’t predetermine the amount of time you’re going to swim before you take off. It’s very much like life: you start on shore and you finish on shore but you don’t know when you’re going to finish. Keep going and adapting to whatever the conditions are and draw strength from the people who are encouraging you.”
At that crucial juncture, when she was still five hours away and considering ending the attempt, Cox was told that New Zealanders were following the swim closely on the radio. She felt a tremendous boost from this and was able to renew her energy to cross the strait.
It’s going to get better: Optimism over physiology
Because of her record swims, scientists have examined Cox’s responses to cold water. Much has been made of how Cox’s physiology and distribution of body fat enable her to make these swims. And yet, it is a study conducted by researchers in London that shows how her toughness goes beyond physiology. Cox was asked to immerse her hand in 32-degree water for more than twenty minutes. While others quickly began shouting and banging their dry fists on the table, Cox focused on a large clock in the room and engaged in positive self-talk: “I watched the seconds go by and I don’t know why I told myself this, but I thought ‘After nine minutes it’s not going to hurt as much (laughing).’ It wasn’t true; it didn’t hurt any less! But I just kept thinking it’s going to get better.”
Many of us who swim open water have experienced anxiety about an upcoming race or training session. Giving in to fear means focusing on it, escalating it, thinking about what could go wrong. The key is staying in the moment and solving the problem at hand.
Cox said that as she planned difficult swims, the naysayers would appear. “’It’s not going to work because the water’s filled with icebergs’ some said,” Cox told me. “So I started thinking ‘Well, how can I make sure we’re gonna go around the icebergs?’”
Cox banged her arm on a few of those icebergs, but also was fascinated by their shapes and by the color of the polar water. In the midst of pain and difficulty, Cox took a moment to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings and the enormity of what she was doing.
Channeling Lynne Cox
Lynne Cox is a gracious woman who shares her stories with a great sense of humor and humility. Her approach to training and performing serves as a beacon to all of us as we navigate our own icebergs. Here are a few tips I take away from my conversations with Lynne and from reading her book.
~ Visualize the ideal performance, but be prepared to adapt when circumstances change.
~ Seek out and use support systems for motivation.
~ Practice deliberately. Identify a skill set you want to master. Break it down into chunks. Repeat frequently. Get feedback.
~ Manage the moment. When fears, doubts, or negative thoughts creep in, think to yourself: “What do I need to do right now, this minute?” One stroke at a time.
Note 1: Parts of this post are published in the June issue of Blue Ridge Outdoors.
Note 2: Moments before I hit “publish” for this post, I saw that a story on Lynne Cox had recently been put out (ten days ago — scooped!) by Sarah Turcotte of ESPN the Magazine. It’s a great read and gives much more detail on Cox and her achievements, including her harrowing swim in Disko Bay (pictured above). The arctic water temp was 27 °F and didn’t freeze due to the currents and the salt.