Heidi Shafford's Swim Story

Where land meets water, an invitation lingers, not just between elements, but between versions of yourself. You could remain on shore where it's safe, familiar, predictable. Or you could cross into the unknown. Shannon I'm Shannon Keegan and this is Stories from the Water, where we dive into the courage it takes to begin, the resilience that keeps us moving forward, and the wisdom that only emerges in the space between. I'm here with Heidi today. Hi, Heidi. Good morning. Oh man. I'm really excited for you to share your story. Will you please tell me about your relationship with the water? I'm really thrilled to be here with you, Shannon. I would say in a word, my relationship has developed into one of love with water. It's really meaningful to me and it's one that's developed over a lifetime. When I was really young, my relationship with water was one of proximity. I grew up in Alaska. I was born on the island of Kodiak, so we're surrounded by water. And then moved when I was five to another coastal town. And I was on water and I was near water, but I was not in water. Growing up, it was just not a thing. You know, I spent a lot of time in my rubber boots in the tide pools and I was on fishing boats and I was walking the beaches. But being in the water was not, it wasn't something that I did and it was something that it would have been unexpected and unintended for me to end up in the water. And that was just the culture of growing up. We said we grew up on the water. I grew up on the water and I had a really fortunate opportunity to spend a great deal of time around water at a young age. My parents felt it was critical that my brother and I learned to swim. And so I was probably around 8 when I learned to swim and I learned to swim in the high school pool. And it was to have swimming be a life saving skill in the event that I were to find myself in the water having fallen off of a boat. And so those lessons were get to from one side to the other. Tread water was a big part. And learning, you know, this thing that they call a dead man's float, which I think it's really interesting looking back on that experience because it wasn't about how does my body feel in the water, how do I breathe in the water? And even as a life skating skill, it wasn't preparing any of us for what would happen if we actually ended up in the ocean because the ocean was cold. And so it would have been much Better for them to spend two weeks telling us and doing games and practicing, putting on a life vest, you know, and jumping into the pool with a life vest and all our clothes on. That was something that none of us ever did. And so, you know, when I think about like life saving skill, how to put your life vest on and make sure that you pass it on all the time. So in any case, I learned how to switch swim, but I never practiced that outside of a pool. And I never saw anyone swim in the ocean. My brother fell in a few times and, you know, my dad would scoop him up because he had his life vest on that had a loop on it. And so for about 20 years, I would say that mostly my relationship with water was again, that relationship of proximity. It was certainly one of curiosity and awe. I mean, it was beautiful. It was. I feel so fortunate to have grown up in this just wild space, spectacular, surrounded by wildlife, eating food from the ocean, being aware of what a rich resource the ocean is. And I also grew up with this, a tremendous fear of drowning. I mean, people. It was a fishing town that I grew up in and people would go off crab fishing and some of them wouldn't come back. And, you know, it's very common for coastal towns to have, or I would say probably everybody. All the coastal towns have a memorial to those lost at sea. And that was really present for me. So things didn't really change with regard to being in the water and feeling comfortable in the water until I went to the lower 48, which is what we call the mainland of the United States. And I went to college and I became friends with folks who liked canoe and kayak. And I found that I would much rather be in the water than in a kayak. I felt really restricted and I didn't like the idea of being turned upside down and being trapped in a kayak. In the ocean, if you tipped over in a canoe, you would. Or in a lake, you would just like, get out, you know. And that was my experience with canoeing as a kid. The kayaking in rivers was really a dramatic change because in the ocean you don't have to worry about hitting your head when you turn over. But there was this presence of like, you need to learn how to roll a kayak because if you turn over and you hit your head. So I wasn't really excited about being in a kayak, but I liked being in the water. And it was again, this exposure to flowing water, to ducks and otters and bears along the rivers. And I just wanted to be in the water and I would. Wouldn't really swim. I would like do. Had a breaststroke. I would spin around and play in the water. It was comfortable for me, but I didn't really swim and I didn't really relearn to swim until I was, I would say about 20 years ago now that I moved to Portland and one of my good friends invited me to participate in a triathlon. You know, this is where every open water swimmer story starts. So it's a triathlon. So my dear friend Lynn invited me to participate in triathlon. I had done some running, I'd done some road biking and I had never really done much swimming. So I had to figure out how to swim. And that's when I took a weekend course on freestyle to learn how to breathe because I really wasn't able to do that. And then I started training in open water, putting on a wetsuit, getting into the water and feeling trapped in the wetsuit, like I couldn't breathe. Like the water was just. Was really uncomfortable. The whole situation was totally uncomfortable and really foreign to me. In retrospect or in the moment, I'm curious. In the moment it was really was okay in a, in a wetsuit. Felt like I was being strangled and you know, just the pressure and, and it was just expected that you would wear a wetsuit. It was not. I didn't see anybody else not wearing a wetsuit. It was like the water's 58, 60, 65. We're wearing a wetsuit. Get in your wetsuit. We got to start training. The first triathlon is in late May when the water's still relatively cold here. And yeah, I remember being panicked and it wasn't fun. It was not fun, but I got through and I began to be aware of. There's this community of people that do this thing called triathlon. And then I realized, you know, this. I didn't really like the. It wasn't for me, the biking and the running piece, but I enjoyed the swimming and I particularly enjoyed swimming once the waters warmed and I could get out of the wetsuit and still it was just exploration and nothing scheduled or, or there wasn't a regularity to it. I started swimming regularly when I was pregnant with my daughter. I go to the pool and it was a, a way for me to get exercise and be supported. And I swam until right up until she was born. And I came to enjoy and appreciate the fact that I could do that at any time of day, that the water would hold me up, that I didn't really Enjoy going back and forth, but that it was exercise, that I could do it after dark. That was another really important piece, that as I became a new mother, I could go back to the pool after my daughter was asleep. So that was something that I continued off and on, not with a regular habit. And during this time, I was taking lessons a couple times a year, a summer, to touch up, because, again, I had this sense that once you learn to swim, it's this. It's like riding a bike. Which I don't find that that analogy works at all any longer. But at that time, I felt like, well, I just need to kind of get a top up and kind of figure out what I'm doing here. And then Covid and the schools closed, and I was without that time alone, that time disconnected from technology. In retrospect, that's what I now see, why that was really important to me. It was something that, again, I could do after my daughter was asleep. I lost all that. And during COVID I was very much aware of the challenges in the medical field. As a veterinarian, I was really acutely aware of how our professions were impacted and potentially even greater impact. And with COVID coming into our communities. And so I would listen to podcasts that were medically oriented to keep myself up to date. But I felt like, wow, I really need something to balance that out and something that's joyful and that I enjoy when I go for walks, because I started doing lots and lots of walking. And that's where I came to find out about, wow, there are podcasts about swimming outside. I had no idea. You know, like, you just kind of, like, poking around. And so I found your podcast. I found Will Ellis's podcast. You know, there's a. There was a wild swimming podcast. There were several podcasts at that time that were stories about the joy of being in water and people's experience around water. And so I would listen to these as I would walk. And I happen to be very fortunate that I live in a place where there are two rivers that come together, so the Clackamas and the Willamette River. So I was often near water, walking near water. There's a body of water that I had trained in for the triathlon called the Flackamet Cove. And I would walk around that, and I'm listening to the podcasts, and I finally got to this place. I'm like, I should just try going in the water I had gotten. I tried going back to the pool, but there was this crazy thing with the scheduling with the pool that you had to wake up at midnight to schedule at 12:01 in order to reserve a lane. So once the pools opened up, it was just crazy. So here's someone who's new mom having my sleep interrupted because I would set my alarm for 11:55, I'd have everything open on my computer. I just put the thing and I go back to bed. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Yeah. So In March of 2021, I said, Fine, I'm just buying a wetsuit and I'm going to go in the water. Yeah. So it's been five years since I've done that. And that marked the turning point. A big turning point, mind you. Really, really big turning point. And I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea. I was just like, I need to be outside. I need to be able to be in the wild. I need to be connected to something wild. And the water outside for me at that time was what I considered wild. So I got this wetsuit, I put it on, I got a swim buoy. And March 2021, I went down to the COVID and I got in the water and I swam. And, you know, I'm like, treading water for a little while to get acclimatized, and then I'm breaststroking. And then I started actually doing freestyle. And I had no idea that I knew the water was 41 degrees. Wow. Which is not a temperature that I would encourage newbies to start at. But my body did not know the difference between 41 and 55 or 60. I did not know the difference. And so I just knew I got in and I could swim, and I did that. And often I would have somebody on the bank or walking around with my daughter, but I would go by myself. And I had no idea that that's kind of frowned upon. Somebody knew the open water, you know, But I was out there, you know, the first day I have a picture of me swimming, and I. I'm within arm's reach of geese. Oh, wow. I mean, like, I'm. I'm with the wildlife. Yeah. And I just, like, connected with that experience so profoundly because I was like, this is immersive meditation. Immersive meditation. And nobody could get a hold of me. Right. I was without my technology. It was just me time. Nobody else that I knew of wanted to do this with me, so it was just me. And I loved it. That's amazing. So I kept going. I kept going. Yeah. So about three weeks into this, me going two, maybe three times a week. And this was in the, you know, deep middle of COVID where even outside I was when I was around other people, I would be wearing a mask. I was in the parking lot of the COVID I had just finished swimming, and I see this woman with a paddle board. And I had never seen anybody there. Wow, it felt like this abandoned place. No, I'm like, nobody knows about this. I just happen to live near it. So I know. And here's this woman with a paddleboard. And I was just so excited to see somebody else who enjoyed, you know, who was coming to this place, who had an appreciation for the wildness there. I'm just making, you know, I'm just assuming because here they are coming with their paddle board and I ran up to them and I was like. I didn't even know what to say, really. I was just so excited to meet them. And that's how I came to know Tina, who became my first connection to other swimmers who swim in that area. And she was a member of. She still is a member of the masters group in town or in this part of town. And when the pools closed, they started swimming in the river in the summer. But now it's wintertime and so most people, most of the master swimmers were no longer swimming, swimming in the out of doors. There were just three of them. And so Tina told me about how, well, there's three of us and we come on every Thursday and every Saturday and you should join us. And I'm like, terrified because, like, I don't really know how to swim. And these are master swimmers. Yeah. And so I said, well, give me a few weeks, I need to get more used to this and then I'll join you. And I tell you what, that was an enormous leap of faith for me to show up on a. You know, this was like 6 o' clock in the morning that they're doing this thing. It's quite early. And they were all in. The three of them were in. In wetsuits. They were all wearing fins and I didn't have fins at the time, so someone loaned me a pair. And even so, like, I couldn't keep up with the group. You know, I was not a. I didn't consider myself a swimmer. So I showed up. And this is something that I just feel to this day the welcome that they offered me and that I see amongst the open water community. It's just this welcome, like, join us. So what if you're like back there? We'll go out and back out and back. We're here to support you. If you only want to go, you know, five minutes, we'll do five minutes. If you want to go 10 yards and then you're done, or if you have a panic attack, we're going to just hang out with you. And that's been just my experience from that day forth is just this feeling of welcome amongst the community and from the water. And I guess I would say that I just came to really feel. Feel this profound sense of welcome in the water. Like the water would take me whether I was having a good day or bad day. And I could just lay there and be supported and be in wildness and just be. Be who I was. There was no expectation, and that was beautiful. And so such a gift. Such a gift. So these five years later on, I'm still swimming weekly with Tina, and the group has sort of changed, but the group expands in the summer and contracts in the winter. We welcome new people in whenever they come. And I have come to know that from our little node down here at the COVID that we are connected like a spider web to other swimmers around this region, around the country, around the world. And it's enlivening. I mean, the experience of being in the water and being around the wildlife, for me is enlivening. And then it's also just lovely to feel connected. And that's how I got connected with you, is because of your podcast. So here I'm walking along, and I'm thinking, you know, you at that time, you were interviewing. It was marathon swim stories, and you were interviewing folks who were marathon swimmers. And I didn't know what the heck a marathon swimmer was. I just knew they swam for a long time. And I guess at first I must have thought it was like 26 miles, because that was a marathon on land, you know? But in any case, I was like, I don't really have this desire to swim 26 miles or however long it is that a marathon is, Right. But what I connected with is how people talked about the water and how they talked about the community. And there's still one of the podcasts from that early time. One of your guests spoke so lovingly and so passionately about Lake Annecy in France. I'm like, someday I want to go there someday. That's on my list. But you just come to see how people have a relationship with bodies of water and with water as an element. And I, too, have just developed this rich, rich relationship with the bodies of water that I swim in. I think that those are so, so important. To me, I think of the bodies of water here in the Portland area that I swim in regularly as my community, the COVID where I swim most regularly in the wintertime. I stopped by there this morning after dropping my daughter off. I'm there multiple times a week. I'm not always in the water. I've kind of let myself, let that go. I don't always have to get into the water, but I can go and be with that space. I can go and be with the wildlife there. I can see the seasons change, and I can be a steward of that place. So I'm, you know, cleaning up the trash and making sure that the blackberries are pruned back so they don't catch our soups as we walk down. So my relationship with water has. Has deepened and widened and just expanded in my life. And coming here today to talk with you, it makes me realize that I'm beginning to be able to put words to this relationship, which is interesting. For a long time, I would just go and have that experience, this rich experience, and I knew that I wanted to be a part of it. And I would take pictures. I would take pictures almost every time I was down there at the water and. And for a couple of years in the really dark time of my life, I could look at those pictures and I could be present in the landscape and I would see how the seasons were moving, even though I felt stuck in my life. Like, I felt like there was no movement in my own life, but I could see it. And so it was like I had the experience. I could visualize it. I would capture it. I would take detailed notes about my swims, like, who came with us, how long we were out, what the temperatures were, and then all the birds that we saw or the green is starting to come out or whatever, like the notes about it. And now I'm beginning to be able to share in words about that experience. And that's just a gift, too, of being in water long enough and being with this community long enough to be able to share that. That language with folks and not. I mean, some people, they see us and they think we're crazy. And I. And I say, you know what? Six or seven years ago, I would have looked at folks getting in the water at six in the morning in the middle of January, and I said, those people are crazy, but we all have our own kind of crazy that brings us joy and connection. And the connection piece is coming full circle because again, I would hear your podcast and hear you speak to folks about their experiences in the water. And there came a time when, then I go into summer and I would want to swim. I would just want to be in the water longer. So that first summer into 2021 and the second summer, and then that second summer, I would. I wanted to swim longer. I just wanted to be in the water longer. And I kept coming up against shoulder pain, and that was a limiting thing for me in the water. And as we came into the winter of 22, 23, again, still listening to your podcast, there was an interview that you did with Tracy, or. No, it wasn't with Tracy. You were interviewed and you were speaking about your experience with swim mastery. And it struck me, you know, this whole time I'm like, well, these people are wonderful. They do amazing things, just like wild and amazing things that I can't even imagine swimming that long. In fact, I think that one of the taglines or the invitations that you would say is like, if you ever find yourself at the edge of a body of water and wonder what it would be like to swim to the other side, you're in good company. And I just. I still don't really have that. I don't want to be a boat. I want to be in the water. I just want to be in the water. And so you were describing your experience with the swim mastery way of swimming. And I would go back to that interview and I would write down some of the words that you would speak about ease and joy. And I had no idea what joint safe meant, but you would speak. You said something about that. And I think you mentioned shoulders. And. And I just kept thinking like, huh, this is interesting. The ease part is what got me, you know, it really did. And then In January of 2023, Cindy, we're Hang. I think was the source of this invitation of, like, here's an opportunity to go to Sitka, Alaska in August and do the Changer Latitude swim. And I'm like, that calls to me. It's in Alaska. It's in a beautiful part of Alaska. It's in August, which the water should be as warm as it's going to get. And it gave me something to look towards. And I was all in. I was like, this is for me. But I needed a way to get from where it was to where I wanted to be, which was I was going to sign up probably for the. The 6.6 kilometers, what I ended up signing up for. And I knew I needed help getting there. And I reached out to you on your contact page and said, I want to do this thing. And that was in April 2023. And I've been working with you since then. Have you ever noticed how the water shows you things about yourself you didn't know you needed to learn? My swimbound program isn't necessarily about swimming farther or getting tougher, though that often happens. It's about learning how to stay oriented when things feel uncertain. How to trust yourself in motion. How to build capacity without force. I'm exploring a new swim bound experience based on a houseboat on Lake Shasta. A multi month coaching program culminating in an in person swim experience. We'll spend our days swimming, connecting, resting and reflecting. Learning how to listen to our bodies, stay oriented and move with more ease in the water and in life. If this stirs something in you, email me Shannon ntrepid water and let me know. I'd love to hear what you're curious about. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting to me that it was the word ease that got you. What, what was your swimming feeling like before? And then have you found ease? Maybe we should come back around too. I've had moments of ease. No, I, I think I, I have a much better sense of what ease means in the water. What was it like before though? Do you have a recollection? Well, before it was, it was a struggle. I wanted to just be easy and be able to like enjoy the experience. But there were fins and there were wetsuits and I say that in a loving way because those things helped me get into the water with this group and I didn't know how to get my breath interesting. I mean, I, I managed, but it felt, it just felt sort of challenging for me and I didn't have a coach, you know, at that time I was still doing maybe two lessons a year in the pool and I felt like some of the things that were in the pool that I just didn't know how to translate them to being in open water where you might need to know about sighting. And of course you couldn't push off and there were no lane lines. You couldn't just stand up. If you were like, I'm done or I need to take a breath or reset. I was working really hard and I was doing it because I enjoyed it and I loved it. But when I heard that there was this opportunity for gaining ease, it was the invitation that pulled me in. Yeah, options. I had no idea about options. I had no idea about options. And so within two weeks I knew that I could swim without shoulder pain. It didn't mean that it didn't resurface but it meant that, oh, I need to think about how I move my body. And that was something that I was not as aware of as I am now. I mean, I felt like my previous experience with learning to swim and learning again to swim as an adult was you put your arm in at this angle and you kick in this way, and it doesn't look like that from the surface. So you need to be doing something different like that. I was receiving directions. And what is fundamentally different about my experience here is that your way of coaching and this way of learning about being in the water and moving forward in the water is an invitation of like, well, how does that feel in your body? And that was. It was. It was just, like, mind blowing because it was at a time in my life when I finally was coming back into my own body and coming back into my own experience. And for someone to ask me, how does this feel in your own body? I was like, wow. Wow, that is remarkable. And such a gift. It's a gift that you're giving to me, and it's a gift that I can give to myself to pay attention. And that is such a powerful framework. And so I came to know. I'm not really aware of my lower half of my body. I just didn't know that. And it took a long time. And it's still a process. I'm still doing the thing and learning. And it's an ongoing learning process, which is so awesome. It's invigorating and it's inspiring. And sometimes it's like, gosh, I just wish I could figure this out. But then I feel for me that I get to this point where I'm like, it's so hard, and then I can have a breakthrough. Yeah, exactly. Yep. That's. We have to. I think biologically as humans, we have to get to that point of frustration and struggle in order to break through. So it's an interesting thing to push ourselves into those places of discomfort in the interest of getting. Learning something, getting to the other side, even. And maybe, I mean, I'm thinking specifically in my swims that that struggle, like, that you get to. And like, we talk about walls and, like, there isn't necessarily, like, a breakthrough of learning. Like, there. Like there can be in the container of the pool. But it's just. It's just interesting to me that biologically we literally have to struggle in order to learn. You think of babies learning to walk and falling down and getting up, and they just don't have the judgment that we start to layer over Ourselves and self criticism as adults, thank God. And now I have that awareness. Like I know I'm in the struggle and yet I kind of in the back of my mind thinking there's likely a breakthrough coming or there's something that's, you know, so keep at it. Or, or, or the other piece that I do, and we've talked about this in this program that I'm in right now, Swim Bound. So it's a group of us that are all working together to gain more ease in our swimming. And then we're gonna gather in at the Isle of Dominica later this month. And one of the things that, you know, we have these sets that we do and we have this program that we're all intensively learning about more about moving through the water. But one of the things that I've come to find is like, this is difficult. I'm having a hard time figuring this out. You know, there are some of the cues which are the paying attention to your body that are hard for me still, like, especially if they're. I'm supposed to pay attention to the right side, but I'm doing something with my left, you know, or the other way around. And I have just come to know that I just need to back off and let that go for a minute and just swim and remind myself that I can get through the water without hurting my shoulder and that this is fun. So it seems I wanted to follow up on the first long swim that I signed up for and getting to know you and doing virtual coaching, which was new for me. I'd never done virtual coaching. I kind of, I'm, you know, of an age that I am a paper person and I'm kind of an in person person. And so I was kind of skeptical about how virtual coaching would have, how it would work. And yet I found that because it had to, because it related to how I felt in the water, that it worked. It worked for me. I mean, I know that I have had the opportunity and I love coming down to talent and being with you or doing clinics up here with you because there's that immediate feedback loop. But I was learning and able to gain skills and options for moving through the water. And we had this opportunity to get together in July for the Applegate swim, just some long distance swims in Southern Oregon. And I had signed up for the five kilometer swim there, which was going to be the longest that I'd ever swum, you know. And as we got prepared for that and I was doing two or three hour swims in the river leading up to that. I don't know whether it was me or you, but we decided that I would sign up for the 10k, why not? I was going to be the safest, most supported environment for me to just see what it would be like to go for 10 kilometers. And it was so hot. And I am not a hot person. I grew up in Alaska. 60, 60 something is my set point, at least in the air. And I was really uncomfortable today going before the swim because it was so hot. And the day of the swim came and I managed to get through and complete a 10 kilometer distance and, and it was really remarkable. I was the last person on the course. They had closed the course, but bless you for coming out and doing that last lap with me in a kayak. And the sheriff's safety crew stayed on the water for me and I made it through there and I was able to hold my hands up over my head when I finished, which was a win because my shoulders weren't hurting right. And you know, one of the sheriff's life, the rescue, you know, water rescue people came up and pressed the, you know, a Gatorade into my hand and they're like, you're amazing. So I completed that and. And then I went on to do the Alaska swim which was amazing. So I went up there for four days of adventure swims. And for anybody listening, this is a really well run community event and it's supported by the community of swimmers and fishermen and just lovely people. And I did four days of adventure swimming where you swim around an island and you hike up into the forest and you swim in a hidden lake up there. Wow, it's amazing. And you're with a group of people who are open water swimmers and you just bond and you have a great time. And then the day of the event came and I had plant. I signed up for the 6.6 kilometer and they, so they had shorter and they had longer, but I felt confident that I would be able to complete that distance. And I was in a wetsuit. The water temperature ranged from like 61 down to 51 because there's a glacial fed river that comes in at the far end of the course of this loop course. So it was quite a change in temperature. And I woke up the morning of the swim and I didn't feel well. I was like, this is weird, I don't feel quite myself. And I really struggled to get into my wetsuit. I didn't know why I felt that way. I didn't feel so bad that I was going to cancel, but I did that swim, and I felt really awful about that experience, and I wasn't able to communicate with my paddler about what I needed. And I ended up getting kind of rolled in the water because there's a shallow shoals where the beach goes out into the bay a long ways. And I kind of rolled in that, and that made me lose my confidence, and it was really frustrating. And I got out and I didn't feel cold. I wasn't. You know, I have a really high tolerance for cold, so I didn't feel cold, but I just never recovered. And I was sitting by myself, and people would give me, you know, ginger lemonade tea, which is amazing. And even that evening, I was back in the dorms with the group, and I was like, I still feel really terrible. And I took myself to the hospital and they gave me some fluids, and they were convinced that I was just recovering from hypothermia. And the next morning, I got on a plane and I was wearing my mask, and I got home, and that COVID test turned positive the moment I put the drip on the strip there. So that experience then with COVID and post Covid, really clouded my memories of my time in Citgo. And so it's only now that I feel like I can speak about what a wonderful experience it was, because I ended up having really profound disability following my experience with COVID About two weeks after my COVID test turned positive, I couldn't walk for a couple weeks. And I had post viral arthritis in all the joints of my body, and that lasted for over a year. Oh, my gosh. I didn't know I had joints in my clavicles and my shoulders hurt and my elbows hurt and my wrists. I could feel every bone in my wrist and my ankles. And so it was a profound turning point, you know, that going to do something for myself in Alaska and enjoying it and then coming home and it was just really difficult. Yeah, I don't even remember. I'm sure that I got in the water during that time because the cold water would have been very, very nourishing for me. But I honestly don't know. No journals from that time or anything. I have journals from that time and I have my. You know, my. I kept track of everything on my Google calendar. You know, I'd go swim, but I just. I'm not ready to look at that because of how painful it was. It was just a devastating experience for me. But I know that the water and watching the wildlife come and go and the spring come and go, and being present was so important for me just to be held. So even if I had difficulty walking, the water would hold me up. You did come back to Applegate. Was that the year after? It was the year after, yeah. So I was able to swim and I completed my second 10k swimming, and I actually finished before the course closed. I had seconds to spare, but it was a remarkably different experience because I knew then that I had skills about keeping my shoulder safe. And, you know, I probably would have had a few more seconds to spare if I hadn't spent most of that last lap, like thanking the kayakers and thanking the buoys because I think those big. I don't know how you say it, but it's like Fleming Flugel. The German on those buoys just makes me crack up every time I go buy them. And so I spend a lot of my energy thinking, just being grateful to the experience and not like moving my body forward. But that's just where I was. I was so grateful that I could be there. I was there with my daughter who was playing. Having a great time with your kids, but whom, you know, I spent a lot of my mental energy thinking about how she was doing, but it was just a really positive experience. And then later that year, that summer in September, I had. It's funny because when I think back to when I first started coaching with you, you said, well, what are your swim goals? And I thought, I don't know, I'm like, you know, I want to complete this, not be in pain. But I really, I didn't have distance goals, I had time goals. For some reason, time settled into my body as a thing. That was a goal for me. And I still have the little, little sheet that's tacked up over here that says like the first year I wanted to be able to do three hours. And then I had put down as a goal that I wanted for my second year to be able to complete a six hour swimming. Hmm. I don't know where that number came from other than it's just doubling of the doubling. Right. But that stuck with me. And I thought, I would love to be in the water for six hours and figure this out. And so that second summer after doing the 10K at Applegate, I put together three segments of the Willamette River. And one thing that's really important to me is again, this relationship with the water. So I want it to be familiar. It was just. I loved being familiar with the different sections of water. And so I did several Sections first and then I put together the, the full swim on the day and. And it was like swimming home. I mean, I just felt supported in the water. I could see that I was making progress because I was familiar with all the areas I could. I was. I'm really good at visualizing and so I could visualize folks being there supporting me. That's beautiful. Six hours. What was it? What did it feel like to come out of the water after six hours? It was remarkable. I came out of that water feeling like I was fully inhabiting my entire body and I felt more powerful than I had ever felt. Wow. And it was one of those experiences that I would have never predicted. And it's not like I'm wanting to get that again, but I just hold that as like, wow, I'm a swimmer. That was really what kind of. Now I can consider myself a swimmer. I never thought of myself as a swimmer until then, but that was a very powerful experience. It's beautiful. It is empowering. But it's interesting to me because it took me a while to embrace the swimmer label, despite growing up a swimmer and all the things. But I can remember a friend of mine calling me a swimmer and me being like, what? Swimmers swim every day and they go to, you know, masters all whatever, whatever my preconceived notions of the swimmer label. And I was like, I don't do those things. So my. So am I a swimmer? You know, but it. But then when. I guess my point was like when, when I allow the power of the experience to set in, like on its own, when you really embody it the way that you're saying, then you can feel that like, yeah, of course I'm a swimmer, you know, not like I did this thing and that makes me a swimmer. Not even that, but just the way that you said that. It. You could feel it in your whole body. I think that's beautiful. I love that. I'm wondering two things with the heat that's coming in the Caribbean in a couple of weeks, how you're feeling about that and. Yeah. And if there's a time goal you have for your warm water exploration on our swim bound trip going to Dominica's, We've talked about this. This is going to be a stretch for me because of the ambient temperature as well as the water temperature and it being at such a contrast. So we're going in March and right now the water is in the 40s and I'm swimming in this water right now without a wetsuit. Sometimes I'll swim with a wetsuit. Sometimes one without a wetsuit. Depends on who I'm going with. The way I'm preparing myself to be in Dominica. There's a couple things. One is that I've gone in and done some sauna to just be warm, to get experience in the warmth. I have also been spending more time in the pool and the pool is warmer. And I've really been visualizing and thinking about how the pool is very closely related to the ocean in Dominica. And this is related to my relationship to the element of water. The element of water is so stable and conserved over millennia that I am swimming in the water that the sperm whales have swam in. The water in my body is the water that the brontosaurus plotted through. You know, like the water in my body wants to go home to the ocean. I just, I have just started really exploring and being fascinated and excited about this sense of like water in me and the water that I'm in and I'm the water, my body or I am part of this water cycle. And so a lot of my preparation for going to Dominica has been thinking about water and thinking about how the pool, I even kind of like when I'm in the pool I kind of barely close my eyes and I think about how the tiles are just a mirage and that this is actually the same water that I'll be swimming in or that will all be swimming in. And I have backed off a little bit on the frequency that I go into cold water. I just haven't felt the, the yearning for being in the cold water. So I go down to the water and I enjoy being near water. But I think that's a way for me also to not be, have my set point be at 43 instead. So I'm more open to being warm. So it's a mental part of it. So I mean a lot of it is mental. A lot of it is mental. Do I have a slim time goal? I really don't. This is an exploration. I really wanting to get to know that body of water and to explore how it feels in my own body. And it will be a challenge because of the heat, but I do have a time goal for the waters near me that when I come back I want to be able to do another six hour swim in the early summer. And then I have aspirations of doing something in the 10 to 12 hour range later on in the summer. And I've actually already met with a crew that's interested in participating in that kind of adventure. And I've been looking at water and saying I would like to swim in you for a long time. So I'm excited about that. So exciting. I love your. I love your perspective. Thank you so much for sharing your relationship with the water, your passion for the water, and for being. Yeah, just in my life for the last several years. It's been so beautiful to have your perspective and your support and encouragement all this time. Thank you, Heidi, and thank you for sharing your story. You're welcome. This is so full circle for me. Thank you. Thanks so much for spending part of your day here listening to stories from the water. I know there are thousands of things vying for your time and attention, so the fact that you choose to be here to tune into these voices, these experiences, truly means a lot. Stories help us understand ourselves, connect with others, and make sense of this wild, beautiful world. They're more than entertainment. They're lifelines. They're bridges. And sometimes they're the spark that keeps us moving forward. If this episode spoke to you, if it made you feel something or see things differently, I'd love it if you'd left a review on your podcast provider or shared it with someone who might need it, too. That's how these stories ripple out and reach the people who need them most. Until next time, take care and thanks for listening.