I Tried to Swim a Marathon with No Training

how you doing right now i'm seven and a half kilometers into my first open water marathon my hands and feet feel numb from the cold and my hamstrings are starting to seize from over three hours of kicking at this moment i'm really wishing i trained a lot more before trying this challenge i should probably admit right now this was not my original plan going into this goal i had taken part in a couple lane swims at the end of the summer and was doing 45 minutes without a problem my plan was to move up to 90 minute swims then two hour swims and by the end of the month take a shot at swimming the distance of an olympic marathon which is 10 kilometers in open water all that seemed like a really workable plan until all of it went wrong my first problem came with a lack of pool access as the outdoor more coveted safe pools closed down for the fall and there was still a two-week gap before the community centers reopened with limited capacity so i thought okay i'll do some cross training my experience with jumping rope was that it targets your shoulders as well as your lower body and i could always go to a nearby court to get some more cardio work playing ball then it seemed like the entire western half the united states caught on fire and for about five days it was advised in my city to stay inside with your windows and doors shut that limited all of my cardio down to riding a stationary bike and doing a little bit of weight training on the side with just over a week to go before the day of my swim i knew there was no way i was going into this challenge with even half the training i'd hoped for and i had a major problem to figure out so i decided to try something i'd never done before called visualization practice visualization is a form of mental preparation that's practiced by top athletes it involves working your mind through various scenarios before they happen imagining your success and visualizing what that will feel and look like research has found visualization actually stimulates the same regions of your brain that will be in use during the invent itself a perfect example of visualization in practice comes from the most decorated olympic swimmer of all time michael phelps in a gold medal race michael's goggles filled with water after his opening dime fortunately michael had already played through this exact scenario in his mind long before it happened he pre-counted every stroke he needed before it was time to go into his flip turns and at the very end of the race michael's opponent looked up a split second before touching the wall while michael phelps with his goggles still filled with water kept his form and touched the wall just as he imagined doing in his preparation and won the gold again for my own visualization this process involves setting 20 to 25 minutes aside each day to lay on my floor and imagine myself going through the different stages of my 10k swim the goal is to paint as complete and detail the picture as possible from the temperature of the water to the choppiness of the waves i decided to roll onto my stomach to try and imitate the position of being in a front crawl and imagine various problems and challenges that may come up over the course of the marathon after my session i actually wrote out a list of all the challenges i expected to come up over the course of the swim and i kept adding to this list after each visualization on the following page i would write out various solutions to these problems as i imagined them some were quite simple like what happens if the cold water starts to give me a headache and the solution was to buy a swim cap beforehand other problems like what to do if i get a muscle cramp or if after my first couple kilometers i'm way behind my times and the race is going to take significantly longer than expected those took a lot more thought and preparation to get through going through these visualizations really helped me feel a lot more mentally prepared before arriving at the lake but i still had the lingering question on whether my physical conditioning was anywhere close to ready for what i was about to do despite my fears cam and i drove up early in the morning where we met up with derek and loaded a boat into the water if anything goes wrong during my swim i'll have these two champs standing by ready to help but before i get my swim underway this is probably as good a time as i need to talk about the sponsor of this video magic spoon one of the things i hope these videos do is help make your own fitness goals and living a healthy lifestyle a little easier and more accessible and that's why i'm really excited to have magic spoon as a sponsor of this video magic spoon has taken the flavor and fun of morning breakfast cereal but instead of being packed with sugars and artificial flavors magic spoon is sugar-free a high source of protein and only has three net carbs each serving i like to snack on magic spoon in the afternoon when i'm working on an edit or i'll pair it with some fruit in the morning so it's unironically part of a balanced breakfast cam and i both loved trying magic spoon's variety box set my favorite was their fruity option then my wife tried it and she loved it then she brought a box to a friend who can't have gluten and they loved it as well magic spoon is gluten free grain free soy free gmo free and keto friendly so it's a fun and healthy option no matter the diet you're trying to keep if you want to try the same variety pack cam and i enjoyed and sample magic spoon's four most popular flavors those are fruity cocoa frosted and blueberry then go to the link below and use the code goldguys for free shipping when you purchase enjoy great tasting breakfast cereal that also happens to be good for you as well now back to my swim when we arrive at the water i go down and dip my fingers in the lake and the water is pretty warm which is a good sign it's also really calm which is nice so i'm not gonna be dealing with a lot of rapids and waves that are gonna be just messing up with the swim the downside the downside that is really sinking in is from here if you can see all the way in the distance there is a walkway that goes across the water that is the one kilometer point of the swim i have to go down to that walkway and back five times and looking at that distance it is really setting in that this was maybe a stupid idea as i get my wetsuit on cam and derrick head out in the boat they'll be with me every step of the way for safety and i've tied a flotation buoy to my waist in case there's an emergency [Music] my first challenge getting into the water is the shock of the cold on my face it's something i never had to deal with when i was in pools that immediately makes my body feel tense and my heart rate speed up i gotta take a moment get settled fortunately this was an easy obstacle to visualize beforehand and prepare steps to deal with i assume a few strokes to my head above water take some deep breaths and try again from here i start swimming so last night i was watching olympic marathon footage of the actual like proper athletes doing it average times are usually around like hour 40 hour 50 and these guys are booking it like booking it the whole time so i'm trying to pace myself but i'm also out here just like if i get anything sub five hours i'll be really really happy five [Music] hours [Music] my first kilometer comes in at 16 minutes which is better than i was expecting if i can keep each kilometer coming in under 20 minutes then i should be on track for a really good final time after my second kilometer i put my swim cap on to keep my head warm and for the next few laps everything is going about as well as i could have hoped with no signs of any of the worst case scenarios i imagine might happen during my visualizations [Music] halfway there buddy how you feeling okay yeah okay yeah better or worse than you expected exactly where i thought it would be faster though you're doing great but my sub 20 minute pace isn't holding up and my speed is dropping quickly what are you seeing buddy i'm seeing someone get really tired yeah um we were crushing through the first two laps and he's barely moving now dude looks like he's hurting halfway through my seventh kilometer my body hits a wall my hamstrings are starting to seize from the kicking which i never prepared for in my visualizations and i'm basically out of gas i need a moment bring this to a grand total of you swimming now for two hours and 40 minutes that sounds about right [Music] fortunately i'm able to grab my bearings holding onto the boat i snack on some rice cakes and hydrate and eventually i feel ready to keep going when i ran through the visualization for this part of the race the motivation i kept coming back to was knowing it was almost over and i've come too far to quit now so no matter how slow my pace is i have to see this through [Music] [Music] so close i can't believe [Music] you okay thanks those last two were unpleasant in so many ways and it really just never felt like i would look up and i never felt like i was making any progress so i'd just be like i'm not moving i'm not moving oh and it got cold really after a while yeah it's just in there for so long we'd really worked this out in advance you should be handing me a bowl of magic spoon just yeah yeah exactly right oh thanks dark this is what i need it took me four hours and 35 minutes to complete the swim and if i'd been able to train the way i'd originally planned for this challenge i might be disappointed by that time but given the circumstances i'm just really happy to have finished i'm genuinely amazed at how much my visualization work actually helped prepare me for the swim itself by allowing me to think through roughly 80 of the problems and mental blocks i experienced in the water to the point where i don't think i would have made it the full 10k without that time doing the visualization work however next time i take on a long distance swim hopefully that mental preparation can be paired with some actual swimming training and now that vancouver's community pools are open again i'm planning to continue that training through the winter if you've made it this far through the video it would be so helpful if you could hit the like button and leave a comment videos like this take a lot of logistic work to plan and pull off so it would really suck if the old ones of youtube chose to bury this deep in the algorithm thank you so much for watching and until next time gold gold youtube rangers you mighty goalie you oh for f sakes

Channel: Goal Guys

Views: 74,523

Rating: 4.9415927 out of 5

Keywords: Goal Guys, Self Improvement, I tried to swim a marathon with no training, marathon, swimming a marathon, I tried to swim a marathon, Swimming, distance swimming, swimming training, visualization, fitness, marathon no training, swimming challenge, 10km open water, triathlon, triathlon swimming, ironman swim, marathon swim, swimming endurance, swimming visualization, swimming a marathon with no training

Id: A4bu2Bkyz3o

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020