Big congratulations to Karianne Lancee and Sam Bail who completed the crossing of Lago di Bolsena in water temperatures of between 10.1 and 10.9 Celsius on Thursday 2 April.
With both wearing wetsuits, Karianne and Sam traversed from Capodimonte to Bolsena in a time of four hours 55 minutes. John Tierney who swam without a wetsuit, got out after one hour and 51 minutes. But for Karianne and Sam, both endurance specialists, this was a heroic marathon swim in cold waters.
Karianne has arrived at swimming from the ultra running marathon circuit, and Sam’s longest trip has been a bike ride from Egypt to South Africa. I think this feat has also been achieved by fellow club member Volker Koch. One wonders whether they had a Stanley and Livingstone moment if they cycled at the same time?
Based on their Italian success, and for their next challenge, Karianne and Sam will focus on the purer element of open water swimming which is “senza gomma”. But don’t tell Momma.
a bit more...
It was 5C at 8am and I knew it would be cold. We measured the water temp at the shallow shoreline and it registered 11C in two inches of water.
I started with a fast pace to keep warm, and although I never looked at the HRM information, I wore it throughout the swim. There was also some technical doping, in that I did some double-hatting by wearing two Serps caps. I didn’t see the other two swimmers as the sun was in my eyes and they were to my right on the sunny side. Sam was faster than me, and Karianne swam behind me. I had a fast feed at 30 minutes. Afterwards, my hand was contrastingly cold where I had been holding the warm drinks bottle. My goal was to swim, swim, swim and avoid the cold. At 60, I switched hands halfway through the feed to warm both hands. The sun was high and encouraging and I was concentrating fully and positively on the swim and on preventing the cold seeping in. At 90, I knew that over four hours would be impossible due to my pace and the cold water. By this time, I also felt my belly had a ring of cold around it; surprising given my girth of 97kgs. I slowed my stroke rate down to my normal pace but was getting colder. For the first time, I looked at my heart rate and it was 117 bpm. I raised my pace and reintroduced my leg kick to help stimulate blood circulation. I managed to get my heart rate up to 119 bpm and was surprised it was so low compared with when I train at around 130 to 140 beats per minute. I put my head down and tried a bit more but I knew it wasn’t to be. So, before any accidents happened, I got out.
[John Tierney]
Heroic swim of Lago di Bolsena
