XL Cover Story: Open Water

When the lane markers of the cement pond start to look like prison bars, hard-core swimmers head for the deep end. The really deep end.

By Pamela LeBlanc
August 18, 2005

• Video: The wonders of open-water swimming
• Ready to dive in?

Given the choice, they spurn the chlorinated lanes of a swimming pool for the waves and fish and seaweed of open water.

Some of them swim from England to France for fun. Or around Manhattan Island. Closer to home, they churn down Town Lake or across Lake Travis under their own power, hydrilla tickling their toes and blue herons flapping overhead.

For open-water swimmers, the lure of a natural body of water -- one without stripes painted on the bottom or lane lines dividing its expanse -- proves irresistible.

Currents? No problem. Cold water? Love it. Close encounters with marine life? All the better.

For them, it's all about aesthetics, the way it feels to glide through a comforting cradle of liquid. It's also about the challenge, because you never know when the weather will change, making that placid liquid roil, surge, buck and slap. And that's when you really know the power of open water.

Just who are Austin's open water fanatics? We headed to the lake to find out.

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ASHLEY BASSMAN

Small swimmer with a big love for the race

Because she wasn't quite 12 at the time, Ashley Bassman had to ask special permission to swim in the Capital 2K Open Water Race and Pledge Swim in Town Lake in May.

Request granted, she leapt in the river and chugged her way from a dock near Austin High School all the way to Auditorium Shores, no problem.

Amber Novak for AA-S Ashley Bassman, 12, dove into competitive swimming. She's getting together a team for October's Lake Travis Relay.

"I did really well and got 41st place," Bassman says. "That was really, really fun. Just watching the people up above on the bridge -- it was really cool." And challenging. "At the end I was really tired. When I got out of the water, I could barely stand up."

As the youngest swimmer in the race, tipping the scales at a mere 75 pounds and measuring under 5 feet, she faced some unique problems. "Since I was the smallest one, people would kick me and I'd get smushed between people," she says. "I just tried to push through and squeeze through and get ahead."

Her mom walked along the trail, cheering the whole way.

That race hooked Bassman. This month, she heads to Acadia National Park in Maine, where she'll compete in another open-water swim race. She's also organizing a six-person team for the Lake Travis Relay in October.

"Open water feels a lot different," the 12-year-old with freckles sprinkled across her nose says. "In a lake, it's more wavier. There's water pushing against you. The scenery is always changing. In a pool, it's just flat. The same things are there every day. You have to go back and forth and do flip turns."

The seventh-grader at West Ridge Middle School has been swimming three years with Lost Creek Aquatics, where she is coached by Steve Jones.

"I just think swimming in a lake is way more better than a pool," she says.

While swimming in open water, Bassman sometimes sings a song in her mind. She pops her head up every three strokes to make sure she's on course, and tries not to think about what might be lurking nearby. For that reason, she prefers lakes to oceans.

"There could be a shark or something," she says. "I haven't been bitten by a turtle, but you never know what's under you."

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DAVID AND LESLIE BLANKE

Two people with the same love of being 'part fish'

Longtime swimmer Leslie Blanke got serious about swimming in open water after the open-water leg of a half Ironman triathlon relay in 1985.

"It was in horrible weather and freezing cold water -- and it was just great," says Blanke, 43.

She loves the freedom of swimming in a lake or river (she prefers fresh water over salt water). "In the pool I'm a compulsive clock watcher and lap counter," says Blanke, who trains with Weiss & Weiss Aquatics in Rollingwood. "In a pool, you're there to work."

That thought slips away in a bigger body of water. "There's that feeling when you dive in that you're part fish," she says. "It's like 'OK, this is where I belong.' It's a place where you're completely at ease."

Larry Kolvoord / AA-S David and Leslie Blanke, here at Lake Austin, are open water fanatics. She prefers lakes, but he likes the oceans.

She likes the variety that open water offers, too. "The water is always different," she says. "Sometimes it's choppy; other times it's like glass. You get temperature variation and you get to see how your body does in cold water."

Her ideal swim? A body of fresh water with a straight shore so "all you have to do is put your head in the water and swim."

Lucky for Blanke, she's married to another open-water swim fanatic, David Blanke, 45, who has sliced through open waters the world over. He swam the English Channel in 2001 and has finished the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim five times. He's also completed marathon swims in the Straits of Gibraltar and Tampa Bay. Two weeks ago, he swam from Catalina Island to the California coast in just less than nine hours.

"So much of the pool experience is dictated by the walls," David Blanke says. "Open water is about getting into a rhythm and establishing a cadence."

Unlike his wife, he prefers oceans over lakes, because they hold more variables. "It's just always going to be the same in a pool. You can't stir it up enough for it to be a different experience," he says. "In the ocean you can see all sorts of stuff -- fish, phosphorescent crabs leaning back and pinching like they were cheering you on ..."

He calls crossing the English Channel in 2001 his greatest swimming accomplishment. "It's like swimming a river that changes directions, and at 10 hours you don't know if you have one more hour or 10," he says.

Of course, open water swimming isn't always pleasant. Perhaps that's part of the fascination. Once, during a failed English Channel attempt, David Blanke's throat swelled nearly shut and hypothermia set in.

Once, while swimming around Manhattan Island a few days after storms had created runoff, his wife wrote him a note on a grease board and held it up for him to see. "Are you swimming with your mouth closed?" He gave her the thumbs up. Then she responded, "Good; there are condoms in the water." (Blanke notes that the water quality is usually decent in the Manhattan Island swim.)

He loves the unpredictability of the sport. "In open water, because of the elements, you can swim a long time and swim in place, or you can fly along. It's that interaction with the elements," he says.

He compares open water swimming to the Tour de France. In open water, the same body of water can feel like a flat stage one day and the Pyrenees the next.

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KEITH BELL

Lake and ocean hold equal allure

Keith Bell can't decide which he likes more -- swimming in a crisp, clear lake or plunging into the salty goodness of an ocean. But he prefers either one to the tepid sameness of what Jed Clampett would call "a cement pond."

At 57, Bell has swum every day for nearly 20 years. He is a coach, author, sports psychologist and organizer of a slate of open-water swims held in the Austin area. He's also president of the American Swimming Association and coach (along with wife and triple Olympic gold medalist swimmer Sandy Neilson-Bell) of TeamTexas Masters Swim Team. (He's also my swim coach.)

Amber Novak for AA-S Keith Bell organized last year's inaugural Lake Travis Relay, which starts at Mansfield Dam, background.

The Capital 2K Open Water Race and Pledge Swim, which debuted in 2003, is a straight-away cruise through downtown Austin that raises money for the Friends of Deep Eddy, a nonprofit organization that supports the Austin pool. Last year, Bell organized the first Lake Travis Relay, a 12-mile, six-person relay starting near Mansfield Dam. This year, he is introducing two new events -- the Quarries Open Water Festival in September and the Dam 5K in Lake Travis in November.

He lights up when he speaks about swimming, especially if it involves open water. Consider that Bell and his wife swam a 1-mile open water race the morning after their wedding (both won their age group), then did two open-water races while honeymooning in Hawaii -- the Maui Channel Swim Relay and Waikiki Roughwater Swim.

Bell lists Lake Tahoe as one of his favorite places to swim. "It's gorgeous, surrounded by mountains. The water is crystal clear and purer than drinking water. When you're out in the middle of Tahoe, the water is so clear the sun rays shoot through the water 20 or 30 feet down -- it's like a laser show."

When he's racing, he loves the cold and the chop.

"The ocean is extremely humbling," he says. "I love waves, the roll of the ocean, the pull of the tide ... It's so powerful it throws you around like you're nothing. I like the challenge of handling waves and swells and tide and being off balance and trying to find your way."

He also likes the way salt water supports you high in the water. "You can put your goggles on and swim around so easily and look at the fish," he says. "In a race, it allows you to pound it without having to kick so hard."

Bell's fondness for open water goes back to his childhood, when he trained in a small private lake in New Jersey. He never wanted to stop swimming, because if he did the sunfish would nibble at him.

Now he has memories of swimming alongside dolphins, having a face-to-face encounter with a sea lion and beating a hasty retreat when something very big and very gray swooped beneath him. He's swum with sea turtles, pulled himself through the ocean by grabbing leafy handfuls of kelp and spied a monster-huge lobster. Swimming at night in the ocean, he says, "can be scary, but it's also pretty peaceful."

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JAMIE TOUT

Austinite channeled much energy into an impressive feat

For someone who struggled to earn his swimming badge in the Boy Scouts, Jamie Tout, 52, has racked up a pretty impressive swimming resume.

He's completed the 28.5-mile Manhattan Island Marathon Swim in New York eight times and swum across the 21-mile English Channel. Just a few weeks ago, he completed the Alcatraz Challenge, a 1.5-mile cruise through 58-degree water -- without a wetsuit.

And talk about passionate. "When you're in the ocean you feel sensuous -- there's water flowing over your body. You're there in the morning, you see the sun come up, you see the day change," says Tout, who essentially taught himself to swim when he was 27.

Larry Kolvoord / AA-S Jamie Tout, standing in Lake Austin, says marathon swimming is 'almost like flying in water.' In 1987, he swam the English Channel.

After finishing the first Kona Ironman ever staged in 1981, Tout thought, "That wasn't so rough." For his next challenge, he considered trying to scale Mount Everest, but then realized it would cost too much. Then he met someone who had swum the English Channel, and he set his sights on doing the same.

"I had such a horrible swim (stroke) and a cocky Lance Armstrong attitude," Tout says. But he was a natural athlete who ran track and played football in college. He also loved to test himself.

Heeding the Channel veteran's advice, Tout started right off swimming in Corpus Christi Bay. "He convinced me what I needed to do was throw away my stop watch and start counting hours," Tout says. He purposely swam in areas populated by jellyfish, to toughen himself up. He wore wrist weights and a drag suit designed to create more water resistance.

In 1981, he tried to swim the English Channel but didn't make it. He moved from Corpus Christi to Austin solely so he could train at Barton Springs. It worked. He calls his successful crossing in 1987 -- in 10 hours, 33 minutes -- the most exciting, euphoric experience of his life.

"In the ocean you can get into the zone if you and the boat are working well together," Tout says. "When you get out there and into the twilight zone and accept the pain at four hours, it's that Zen experience."

He loves the sound his hand makes when it slaps the water, the rhythm of his stroke, the fact that there's no coach screaming at him from on deck, and the change of colors as the day progresses. And he loves cold water. Factor in a little tongue swelling, difficulty hearing and salt water sting, and, well, you've got one man's nirvana.

"You're constantly thinking about your stroke -- hand entry, rotation of your shoulder. And then I go into a period that I'm counting numbers," Tout says. "If I can count to 1,000, I know I'm focused."

Tout has a bumper sticker that reads, "Real swimmers don't wear wetsuits." He refuses to share a pool lane with anyone wearing one. He also calls people who swim only in pools "poolies."

Once, he was sucked into a whirlpool created by a passing ocean liner; another time he got tangled in seaweed. He's faced storms, seasickness and swells.

"You're going to throw up; that's part of being a marathon swimmer," he says. "But there's nothing like it in the world. It's almost like flying in water."

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DIVE ON IN

Austin's a great place to test the waters of open-water swimming. Here is a list of upcoming events:

• Sept. 17 -- The Quarries Open Water Festival. Distances of 400, 800 and 1 mile, plus a four-person, 1-mile relay. For more information, go to americanswimmingassociation.com.

• Sundays through Sept. 30 -- Masters of South Texas hosts regular supervised open-water swims at Lake Boerne, west of New Braunfels. Start time is 8 a.m. If you plan to attend, email Susan Ingraham at aquatex101@aol.com. Fee is $5 for drop-ins. For more information, go to www.mastersofsouthtexas.org.

• Oct. 15 -- Lake Travis Relay. Six-person relay teams swim 12 miles through Lake Travis. For more information, go to americanswimmingassociation.com.

• Nov. 5 -- Dam 5K. A straight out-and-back course in the main basin of Lake Travis, near Mansfield Dam. For more information, got to americanswimmingassociation.com.

• May 7, 2006 -- Capital 2K Open Water Race and Pledge Swim. A straightaway race down Town Lake. For more information go to www.cap2k.com.

• June 17, 2006 -- Boerne Lake Distance Adventure. Races of 5K, 1.5K, 800 meters and 400 meters at Lake Boerne.

• Open water swim clinic. Swim SA hosts an open water swim clinic each May at Decker Lake. Students practice sighting, breathing, maneuvering buoys, entering and exiting the water, drafting, passing and positioning at the beginning of a race. Next year's clinics are not yet set, but check www.mastersofsouthtexas.org for updates.

• Pure Austin Quarry Lake, 4210 W. Braker Lane, is starting a U.S. Masters Swim team that will train in open water. Pure Austin Swim Team will meet from 6-7 p.m. Tuesdays. Cost is $10 per session for members and $15 for non-members. For more information, contact Jason Schmidt at jason@pureaustin.com.