Hell with it. I had a good day. I’ll announce now.
Ladies and gents, I hereby announce my attempt at swimming across lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan, sometime between 24-28 September.
Lake Issyk Kul is the second largest alpine lake (defined as a lake at an elevation of 5000 feet or higher) in the world. The lake is approximately 103 miles long by 36 miles wide, and sits at 5,253 feet elevation.
Now before you get impressed: I’m not swimming the length or width of the lake. No no no. I am swimming a short, 8 mile section at the western end. I’ll swim either to or from the village of Toru-Aygyr.
There is a reason for my choice of crossing. The Kyrgyz have a myth about a famous horse who crossed the lake at that end. The story is too long to tell here, but if you’re interested, I retold the myth earlier here. Anyway, I thought the distance would be a nice challenge for me at this point in my training (swimming on tethers in a 12m long pool!) and it would mean a lot to the Kyrgyz volunteers I’ve gathered.
The logistics for this thing have been a bear, language issues aside. I just spent the weekend with the only guy who has crossed the lake (as far as anyone can find), and he crossed it at the eastern end, doing 36K. I told him of my plans and hoped for his help procuring a boat, with no luck. (His crossings, yes, plural, were state-sponsored and the Russians provided him two coast guard cutters!) I have a tentative okay from him to be my observer though!
I spent the weekend searching the resort town of Cholpon-Ata for boat rentals. I found a scuba diving company that was willing to let me use their 50-person boat for a little over a thousand dollars (for a short time, price to go up with more hours spent on the crossing). More than I needed. So I changed my plan to a “test swim” between two points around Cholpon-Ata, a distance of about 10 miles. I figured all I needed was a kayaker, as we’d be close to the shore, and someone to drive the truck to pick us up at the other end.
Well guess what you can’t rent here in Bishkek? I called the four “outdoor” companies in the city. I can get skis and snowboards, but no kayaks or canoes. And I had a volunteer with a kayak, but they got a last minute assignment and flew out of Kyrgyzstan today. I was distraught. What the hell?
Today, with the help of a local Kyrgyz company that specializes in creating Yurt trips for folks, I found a boat rental place in Cholpon-Ata. And their prices are reasonable. So the crossing plan is back on!
So, bottom line: I will follow MSF rules with this one caveat: I can wear water shoes from the beach to the kayak (if I can find one) or boat, at which point I must take them off and give them to the crew. On the finish, I can have the water shoes thrown to me for my walk up the beach. I’m doing this because the “beaches” here are just pebbles, shaped so as to inflict the most pain on your feet. (It really is torture.)
I have all the paperwork in my Google if anyone would like to see it. I do not have a Spot Gen thingy, but I will have my Garmin on the boat and hope to have one of my sons on the boat with his portable internet router to do updates to my FB, which I’ll pass on when the day comes. Also, once the observer is done with the notes and I get them translated, I’ll upload both the Russian and English versions on here and the MSF forums for everyone to see.
Again, it’s just a small little crossing attempt, and I may not make it (water this weekend was 20C and it can only get colder, and I’m a wimp), but I at least want to try to cross this beautiful lake while I’m here. Our first trip to the lake as a family, my wife looked at me and said, “Mike, you have to try crossing this lake. There’s something magical about it.” I agree with her.
What follows is a pictorial tour of the open water swim competition held during the International Swimming Meeting of Veterans of the Soviet, Russian and Kyrgyz National Teams, which was held the weekend of 29-31 August, 2015.
So let’s start out with the Dramatis personæ. Here’s IronMike’s crew, 3/4 of his kids and himself (the other quarter kid is behind the camera):
Now the requisite jump pictures, first yours truly, with the girls bookending me:
Next we have the girls making their entrance:
And now, boy #1, making a splash in his cargo shorts and underwear (he decided to swim at the last minute):
So we had to swim about 200m (300m according to Google maps) to the start on the beach. None of us wanted to walk over the rocks, so we lined up in the water. If you look to the left of the picture, you can see a guy with a white flag. I have no idea who this guy is. I didn’t even know he was there. According to boy #2, the guy dropped the flag a couple of times and we never went anywhere. All I know is Anarbaev said March and we all started.
Here’s where the speedsters start coming in, just a couple minutes after we started. Anarbaev, a healthy 68 years old, is among them.
Most of us are in at this point, so we had a group shot.
Here is me and daughter #2:
And there is daughter #1 after she came in, treading next to me:
Boy #1 was having none of it and got out as soon as he finished:
This is what we were racing to avoid!
Fun was had by all! If I’m still here next year, I’ll come back. The folks were great, and the lake, incredible!
The dinner with 1968 USSR Olympian and 1970 world champion swimmer Akhmed Anarbaev went well. Due to the weather, he didn’t feel confident that having the dinner at his house, under the stars, would not result in rain, so he reserved a restaurant for the plov. Damn was that good plov. The evening ended with a wonderful Russian listening practice hour where we discussed not only his open water swimming experience, but his philosophy on cold water recovery, the future of wrestling in the Olympics, and why he is looked at strangely in some immigration offices. But more on him later.
The owner of the guest house we stayed at mentioned that he gets up every morning and swims in the lake at 7. I told him I’d join him Monday morning. That meant I had to get up. Sometimes I need that extra oomph to get me out of bed. So promising him I’d join him, coupled with how damn pretty it is at the lake, made it pretty easy for me to get up this morning. Our guest house is right after the green sign in the picture below. Check out the view of the lake!
And those clouds in the background? Those are covering the tops of the 4-5,000 meter peaks! God this place is beautiful. As my wife said the first time she was here, “There’s something special about that lake.” I agree.
So this morning I got up promptly and put my t-shirt and sweatshirt on, as it was about 50-something F outside. I walked down the stairs to see my host dressed in his grape-smugglers and a towel. I asked him if he was cold. “No, Mike, it doesn’t matter. The lake is so warm.” This from someone who is acclimatized to 18-20C. (I’m getting there.) We got to the pier and spent no wasted time diving into the water 8 feet below the pier (he’s in his late 60’s). I took a few minutes to fill my SaferSwimmer with my shirt, sweatshirt and shorts. Threw my goggles on, wrapped my Garmin around the back of my googles (a mistake, as you’ll soon see), and jumped in.
Yes, it was cold. But seriously, only for a few seconds. It didn’t take my breathe away, like Dart 10K did. This really was warm. (If I haven’t said it yet, Issyk means hot in Kyrgyz, while Kul means lake.) I swam out to where my new friend was treading water, wished him happy holiday (today is Kyrgyz Independence Day) and told him I’d see him in about an hour.
As you can see, I lost satellite connection a few times. I really didn’t swim all crazy like that. The damn watch kept beeping at me, so I suspect it lost connection. Lately I’ve been throwing the watch into the dry bag. I thought today I’d try a trick I saw online a year or two ago where you simply wrap it around your goggle strap in the back. Easier to access, to start and stop. But since I wasn’t wearing a cap, the damn thing kept dragging the goggle strap down. Which made it difficult to “alligator-eye” sight, as the watch was right there, center back, hitting me in the back whenever I tried to look forward. I think the best option is how I used to wear it in the states; under the cap, flat, at the top of my head. Never lost connections. Second best, start it, throw it in the dry bag, close the bag, jump in and swim.
So, anyway, I stopped a lot. The mountains are so damn beautiful. They’re snow covered at, I’m guessing, about 10,000 feet. Speaking of altitude/elevation, yes, I got winded on this swim. Look at the green. I was swimming at 5,253 feet elevation. So yeah, just under a mile up. Bishkek is at 770 meters, at least according to Mr. Garmin (Mr Wikipedia says “about 800 meters”). 5,253 feet is 1,601 meters. So that’s a bit of difference from where I swim at in Bishkek. I really can feel it.
Which brings me to what I’ve been planning the past few months. I was going to attempt a crossing from the southern coast of Issyk Kul to Toru-Aygyr (see map below). Speaking with Anarbaev, I’ve come to the conclusion getting boats arranged will take some doing, and I probably need more time. So I’ve scrapped a crossing until next year. I think what I’d like to do next month is a test swim just to see how I can take the temperature and the elevation. I’m thinking about a 7 to 10 mile swim. I can get away with using a kayaker and a driver. The kayaker taking care of me in the water and the driver meeting us where I hope to end up many hours later. Think of it as a 5-6 hour test swim. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.
Next up, a pictorial tour of the open water swim with the veterans!
The kids and I are heading off to Cholpon-Ata, on the northern shores of Issyk Kul tomorrow morning. There, I’ll meet with Akhmed Anarbaev, 1968 Olympian for the USSR in swimming. He owns a LCM pool there and hosts a swimming festival every year around the Kyrgyz Independence Day, which happens to be 31 August.
I’ve got a couple reasons I want to meet with him. Anarbaev crossed Issyk Kul in 1982, apparently the first (and only?) person to do it so far. I’d like to talk to him about that crossing, sort of interview him, and then write it all up.
Secondly, I need to talk to him about getting a boat. I’m planning a swim at the end of September, but logistics is difficult here, with the language barrier and the cultural barrier. Additionally, Cholpon-Ata is 4+ hours away from Bishkek, so I can’t just run up there on a Saturday. If I can’t find a boat, I’ve got other options. But I can’t make final plans till I talk to Anarbaev.
Inshalah, after this weekend, I might have an announcement to make!
No, not that legitimate 5K. The 5k I did from Sutivan to Supetar on the island of Brac. The one that Google said was only 5K. This one:
Sutivan to Supetar
Yeah, that one. 5.61km. But Mr. Garmin said it was much farther.
Sutivan to Supetar Actual
Quite different. 8489 yards is 7762 meters. That’s more than 2k beyond what Google was saying. Well, it is easy to see how I “over-swam” when you lay both routes over top each other:
After 20-something hours of travel, we are finally home in Bishkek from our Croatian vacation. What a great time the family and I had. Loved the beaches, despite needing shoes to walk on the beach. Loved the water, with the clear views dozens of feet below us, despite the salt. Loved the race I got to do as well as the “long” point-to-point swim I did. Sadly, I could never arrange the longer 12-14km swim I was planning, but that’s ok. There’ll be plenty of time for that.
I got home and immediately turned on my computer and Garmin and uploaded my swims. Nice to see them on a map, see exactly where I swam. And as promised, here’s the first one, actually from Croatian Vacation Day #2, because the first day’s swim, for some reason, jumped all over the place as if I lost satellite reception. Anyway, as described, swim #2 in Croatia was a smidge over 3km, paralleling the beaches of Sutivan.
Croatian Vacation Day #2
Slow, but enjoyable. Lots of little pauses to check out the scenery. A great swim really. The areas along the water that weren’t beaches included steps built into the rock walls. For this first swim, I got out at one of those stairs, making it easy to walk east past the restaurant ( the square thing creeping out into the water in the photo below) to the shower [link jpg] at the beach about 15m further east along the road. Free word of advice: Don’t forget to shower off the sea water. Few things worse than walking around in heat checking out some catacombs with your skin all itchy from the salt water.
Day 2 finish close-up
What these pictures also show is the difficulty of getting a proper, accurate time and distance for your swim when you’re putting your GPS inside the SaferSwimmer dry bag. Each time, I’d have to start the watch recording, throw it in the dry bag, then wrap the bag, and walk out into the water. Reverse it on the way out. So my Croatia swims include about 10m of walking on either end as well as a few minutes added for that. I intended on wearing my swim cap and putting the watch under it, making it easy to press START/STOP (and even LAP), but it was so damn hot there the last thing I wanted or needed was my head to be wrapped in latex.
Got up this morning at the crack of 10 a.m. and went out for a swim. Yeah, that’s how I roll on vacation. Sleep late, stay up (moderately) late. Drink. You know. Relax.
Morning swim 2 August
I don’t know what it is about salt water, but besides the buoyancy, I feel like I can breath less often. Bilateral or every-4 breathing patterns are no problem for me in this water. (I still breathed every right during my race last week, but I always do that when I’m racing.) Additionally, the problem that plagues me in the pool, namely, water pouring into my left ear canal whenever I breath on that side, doesn’t seem to affect me in this water.* I don’t know why. Is it the beautifully clear water and the fish swimming around under me that lulls me into a nice, even, calm breathing pattern?
Not sure what it is, but that part of swimming here I’m going to miss in a week. What I won’t miss is the taste of the salt water. Yuck. My mouth tasted gross after my 7.76 (5.15?) swim to Supetar last week. I couldn’t imagine spending anymore time in this water. Although, I’m trying to arrange a boat for a Sutivan-Milna (12.26km) swim. If that happens, I’ll be sure to have a bottle of half-mouthwash/half-water to rinse my mouth during the hours that distance will take me.
*It’s like my left ear canal opens or gets wider (?) when I’m breathing hard. I get the same feeling when I valsalva on a plane. Almost like my Eustachian tube opens up on that side. Same reason I can’t wear ear plugs; at some point in the swim my left ear canal will do this thing and a bunch of water will come flooding past the ear plug and just slosh around in there. Any of my dear reader(s) doctors? Advice?
Swam today from Sutivan to Supetar. According to Mr Google, it is a 5.15km swim. I started my Garmin GPS watch just like every other time. When I landed in Supetar (granted, I landed a bit farther than originally planned), I stopped the watch to learn that I did 7.76km instead.
Map for the island of Brač
Not sure how I did that. The place I landed was only about 600m farther than planned. So how did 5 become 7 and some change? Easy. Zig zag. My crap navigation. I went back to Google maps and took my route, and made it zig zag all the way from Sutivan to Supetar and sure enough, you can get an extra 2.76km that way. Jeez.
It was a fun swim, although I’m suffering from some light sun burn on my back right now. It got really deep at one point, to where I couldn’t see the bottom, and that kind of freaked me out. I was all alone out there, pretty far from shore (500m? 600?), and you know, all those scary beach movies start to come to mind. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and all that. But I maintained.
About a k from the end, a jet skier went by with his kid, slowly, looking at me like I was crazy. Five minutes later, he and another jet skier came by. The new guy said, “You can’t swim here.” I answered, “No, it’s ok. I’m just swimming there,” and pointed at the ending. He said “Hop on, I’ll take you.” I said, “Uh, no. I have to swim. And I have this bright orange thing here so you can see me.” He looked at me like I was stupid and he and the other guy took off at fullspeed, and I got to swim through some bubbles for a while.
As I was approaching the landing, I got a welcome from apparently one of Supetar’s finest. Some old guy sunning himself on the rocks, commando-style, legs spread, with all of his glory out there for all to see. I found a place on the rocks a bit away from him to land, then I saw why that old guy was sitting where he was. About 20m from him, and in the direction he was facing, were three 20-something women, two of whom had no tops on. They didn’t seem to mind and he sure was happy. 😉
All in all a great swim, if not long (2:50). Fembot, her sister, and daughter #2 walked and swam to Supetar, then we all walked back. The GPS said 7k almost exactly for the walk when we got to the house, so a very good day when you throw in that other half of my duathlon! Next up on the plan, a swim to Milna?!
I hit under my goal of two hours with a 1:52.16 in the Raslina 5K. While that’s not my best time ever, I must say that of all the 5Ks I’ve done, it felt the best. Like I said in my review yesterday, I never felt better. I pushed hard through the whole damn race. Nothing hurt beyond my typical initial sore shoulders and arms in the first 500-1000m. My breathing was perfect, my navigation not that bad, and my pacing great. I really am happy with that time, despite it meaning that I was swimming only 2:15 per 100m. That is slow! But I think if you took my times at each kilometer, you’d find it pretty damn consistent. Except for the last one where I pushed the hell out of it!
So, all in all: happy. That time got me 17 out of 25 males in the 40-49 age group, and 59 out of 80 males total. Not sure where I stood among all swimmers, but I can tell you that only one woman swam slower than me. Also, if you know me and you know Fembot, you know I have no problem being “beat by a girl.” Just ask me about my first Olympic-distance tri and Ruth. 😉
And, I managed to get the Marathon Swimmers Federation mentioned!
25 July was the 6th iteration of the Raslina (Croatia) Plivački Maraton, a 5K swim in beautiful and isolated Raslina, Croatia, about 80km from Split and about 5km from Krka National Park. The day was beautiful and not too hot, about 34C. Raslina lake is part of a river system that connects to the sea; it tasted slightly salty and had a gentle current. The water was about 25C, a bit cooler than the water I’ve been swimming in all week on the island of Brač, but not near as cool as I would have liked it, especially an hour or so into the swim.
Raslina 5K start
The 5K was an out-and-back, which I love. No laps to count and remember, just a simple “swim yonder, then return.” The course was incredibly well marked, with huge red buoys every 500 meters or so, and strange square things (imagine 1.5m x 1.5m squares of compacted newspaper, and that’s what they looked like…they were much more solid and heavy, see below) which announced how far you’ve gone, if you had the wherewithal to stop and look. There was also a yellow buoy at 1000m for the 2K swimmers to turn around at as well as our 2500m yellow buoy for us 5K swimmers to turn at. The buoys were so well-visible that I had little to no trouble spotting them.
Raslina course map
As I’ve said before, Croatian beaches are rocks, and I’ve got some crazy tender feet, so much so that I’ve bought scuba shoes for my swimming on Brač. That wouldn’t happen here, of course, so I wore my flip-flops till the bitter end and then handed them to Fembot, who graciously got up early while on vacation (0545!) to come with me and hold my crap. Anyway, I entered the water like a man walking (slowly) on hot coals, and lined up with the other 190+ swimmers.
Iron Mike walking into Raslina
Several minutes passed whereby angry volunteers yelled in Croatian to those swimmers who wouldn’t line up behind an imaginary line from the edge of the dock and the race director’s boat. I have no idea exactly when we started (1000 start) but we were late by a bit, but finally the horn went off and I let the speed demons charge forward and then I started. About a dozen strokes in I realized I hadn’t started my stopwatch, so I stopped quickly and did that. Then I put my head down and swam.
And they’re off!
As always, the first 500-1000m of any swim is a warm-up for me. I stretch before beginning a race, but I rarely get in the water and swim. I’m superstitious in that I think all my best and fastest strokes will be during that warm-up, so why not save them? I know, stupid, but it’s my stupid pre-race ritual.
It felt SO good. My stroke felt great and I got in a rhythm very early and felt very fast. After about 1000m I came across a pod of just slightly faster swimmers, about 3 of them, and kept with them for the rest of the race. Or attempted to. I drafted off one guy for a bit until I realized he was a worse navigator than I was, and got tired of being run into (or over) by him, so I bailed on him, sped up, and hung on the side and then toes of one woman. Damn she swam straight. I drafted off of her until about 3500m.
Water was nice, if a little brackish, but I kept up my 85-90% effort the entire way. At 2500 meters, the woman and I rounded the buoy together, did our alligator eyes to spot the way home, and put our heads down. It was tough keeping up with her, and that pretty much ended at about 3500m. She didn’t pull far away, but the other two guys came up alongside me and the battle to stay straight started again. I could see the woman about 5m in front of me and I tried to stay with her, on her toes if even a bit back. That worked until I ran into one of those weird square things floating in the water.
I thought I hit a person’s head the damn thing was so solid. My watch actually hit it and I stopped to see if the swimmer was ok, and I realized I hit the square thing. I didn’t hang around long enough to see what it said as far as my progress is concerned. Better not to know. I put my head down and tried to catch up with my pod of swimmers.
And I did. And I even caught up with the speedy woman. I managed to draft off her feet for quite a while, then she took off with about 1000m left. My tank was running low. I could spot the other two guys, one parallel to me and off about 10m to the right, and the other back and to the right. The final red buoys started coming after the yellow buoy. I thought they’d never end. One had the number 3 boldly printed on the side and I remember thinking, God, I hope that doesn’t mean there’s 2 more? In my mind those buoys were spaced 500m apart each, but they couldn’t be, because I’d already passed the yellow one marking 1000m from the start/finish.
I didn’t try to see numbers on the final buoys, but suffice it to say there were 2 more. After what I thought was the last one, I saw the finish. The finish was preceeded by two red buoys, larger and less round than the others, oval-shaped. These buoys were parallel from each other about 20m apart and about 50m before the finish. The finish was one of those you see in the big races where the swimmers finish right under it and have to slap it for the timers to call their time. Very awesome. Anyway, I saw these two buoys while alligator eyeing during my sighting. I started to head to the right side of that channel made by those two buoys, knowing the finish chute was on that side. Unfortunately for me, what I was seeing was yet another round red buoy on the right, and the left-side of the oval red buoy. What this meant as I got closer was that I was about to swim to the left of one of the course buoys, when you have to swim to the right of all the course buoys! So I had to adjust my course, probably losing a few seconds.
Which was important to me, because at around what I thought was the last of the red buoys (which should have been numbered 1 if logic prevailed), I put on the gas and passed the other two guys from my pod. I didn’t spend valuable time or neck muscles to try and look back to see where those guys were, but I adjusted my path to go to the right of that last (really last?) round red buoy and head into the finish chute. Kicking like a crazy person and upping my stroke rate to something fierce (while still thinking about my form). I came through and tapped the finish sign, and my nearest competitor was about 10-15 seconds behind me. We high-fived, then I remembered to turn off my stopwatch. So I don’t know for certain what the hell my time was, but I’m sure it was under 2:00, which was my goal. Actually, after my 5K last year in National Harbor, I would have been happy with 2:00! Instead, I’m ecstatic! I guess you really can train for OW in a tiny pool with elastic straps tied to your ankles.
Getting out of the water took some doing. Again those damn rocks and my weenie feet. How the hell did my feet get so sensitive after growing up in Texas and only wearing shoes for school, church and work? Fembot had to throw me my flip-flops so I could walk out of the water. She got some glamour shots of this process.
Can’t get these damn things on!“Smile!” she says.
The swim felt incredible the entire time. I felt fast and never once gave up. I can honestly say that I gave 85-90% effort the entire swim until the very end when I gave 100%. I don’t remember a swim where I felt that ready and good. When we got home and I took my suit out to rinse it, I saw that I had a huge hole in the crotch area of the suit. Wonder how long I was flashing the Croats?
Edit: Final time was 1:52.16. The guy finishing right in front of me was 1:52.10 and the guy behind me was 1:52.25. I was 62 of 83 men and 18 of 26 men in the 40-49 year age group.
