A Little Background...

Orinda Aquatics Masters Newsletter

November 28, 2014

Greetings!    RANIE PEARCE - Elite Endurance Athlete / Open Water Swimmer / Cold Water Swimmer       For those few of you who don't know, Ranie Pearce (a six AM OAM swimmer) is a world class open water swimmer. How did this all come about? Well she was kind enough to share her background with us and to also answer a few questions.   "I didn't start swimming until 1988 on the verge of getting married. I was just looking for a way to get some exercise. I found the Tsunami Master's Swim Team in SF. I wasn't very consistent, but after a few months several swimmers invited me to swim Lake Berryessa. I swam the two mile, and was so happy, that I swam the one mile as well. I swam that event for the next 24 years! I joined Orinda Aquatics Masters in 2008, but again I wasn't very consistent. I did a lot of the PMS open water events over the years, and finally swam Alcatraz and found the South End Rowing Club. I joined the SERC in 2009 and never looked back.   With the help and encouragement of OA and the South End, I swam The Straits of Gibraltar in 2010 (10 miles) and The English Channel in 2011 (21 miles). In 2012, I swam several 10+ miles swims including the Portland Bridge Swim, the Bay to Breakers and Capitola to Santa Cruz. But this didn't satisfy my big swim hunger. So I signed up for and swam Catalina in 2013 (20 miles). I went to Cork, Ireland to train in Ned Denison's Distance Camp which was a magical experience where I swam 100K in three weeks in some of the most beautiful, wild places. But I also realized that I was not ready to tackle the North Channel, yet!   This past spring I went to SCAR in Arizona. A four day stage event where you swim the 9.5 miles of Saguaro Lake ( each one end to end), 9 miles of Canyon Lake, 17 miles of Apache Lake and finally 6.5 miles at night in Roosevelt Lake for a total of 42 miles in just under 25 hours. This was my training for MIMS the 28.5 mile swim around Manhattan Island. I like to tell people that I am an overweight, over 50, suburban housewife, but in truth, I am an elite endurance athlete. I am both! I wish I was a better swimmer, but that's one of the things I love about swimming: everyone can do it, and everyone has to work at it to be good at it. There is always more to learn and ways to improve. Becoming a channel swimmer has enriched my life and opened me up to some unbelievable experiences. The most recent was the opportunity to visit Argentina as a representative of the USA at the International Winter Swimming Festival. We were allowed to swim in three different locations in increasingly colder water culminating in a swim in Patagonia in a glacier lake in 37 degree water! Becoming a Winter Swimmer has exposed me to a whole new world of swimming. I started in a pool with Masters, found the Open Water community only to be pulled into the Marathon / Channel community, and now I have found a new small intense subset of "cold water" or Winter Swimmers.   My next adventure is to go to Tyumen, Siberia this December and swim in an Ice Pool where they cut a hole in the ice the size of a pool, insert lane lines and hold races. I kind of thought that the images of this on the internet were photoshopped. But now I will get to go see and experience it for myself. I would like to swim an Ice Mile this winter (swimming a mile in water temperatures between 0-5c). I am a Triple Crown Swimmer having completed the English Channel, the Catalina Channel and Manhattan, and a member of the "Half-Century Club" since I did all three of them after turning 50. So that's pretty good. I am content. But I am always looking for my next swim. This is an expensive hobby but my life is more interesting when I have something to train for...it makes it easier to get up at 5:10 am to hit the pool!   Hope this is ok,   Ranie" Well that's more than OK, Ranie! Thank you! And here are a few questions she answered for us: You work at Campo, right? I am an aid in the Special Ed classroom at Campo.  I primarily work with Freshmen this year.  Married to Jorge?  We have been married for over 26 years.  Met fall term, freshman year at CAL.  He doesn't swim, but we both ski together. Have two daughters?  I have two daughters that swam rec swimming for Park Pool.  Katharine just graduated from UC Davis in BioChemistry and Molecular Biology, and Coco is a sophomore at UCLA in Mechanical Engineering.  They could both swim faster than I can by the time they were 6 (I am not kidding).  Where are you from originally?  I am from the East Coast.  My parents split when I was young so I lived in both NYC, Hanover New Hampshire and I went to Phillips Academy Andover, a boarding school in Massachusetts.  Scariest thing about what you do?  I can't really say what the scariest thing about marathon swimming is, because it doesn't really scare me.  I don't think I would do it if it really scared me.  I worry about whether I can succeed, but that's not scary, just challenging.  People always ask about sharks, but I truly believe that a shark attack is about as likely as my winning the lottery.  And I don't play the lottery so I don't expect to win.  My kids worry about the sharks, and that by the sheer volume of time that I spend in the water, I am increasing my odds, but it doesn't feel that way to me.  The water is where I am happiest.  EVERY time I dive into the ocean, my whole body relaxes, like I am "home".  The water feels soft and inviting.  Even in the Glacier Lake in Argentina where the water was 37 degrees, it was still just water, and it invited me.  It was so cold that it was painful, but it was still swimming, and I loved it.  I think Perito Moreno (the Glacier) was the most "dangerous" swimming experience that I have had, and it was very life affirming.  The allure is huge. I will be exploring very cold water this winter!   How often do you train and what kind of training is it.  I train too much, but it is only because I prefer the water to land based activities.  I swim in the pool with OA 4 days a week and then swim in the ocean both weekend days.  If I am training for a channel, I make sure that I swim that distance every week and build to swimming double that distance each week.  I swim over 50 miles a month, regularly, and up to 100 miles in the two months before a big swim.  I set my goal to swim 1,000,000 meters this year. You are an inspiration!!!  I like to tell people that I did not swim in high school or college, but in the last five years I have achieved every goal I set for myself.  It's empowering to learn at this late stage in life (53), you really can do anything you set your mind to.     WISH RANIE LUCK ON HER NEXT SWIM ADVENTURE!    So, on Dec 8, Ranie is off to Siberia to swim in an Ice Pool. This pool has to be cut daily, as it freezes nightly. Lanes are put in, and races held. Ranie has signed up for everything, and even has a chance to be one of the lucky swimmers to see how far/long they can swim in this ice pool. Brrrr....

Part of the Defenition of Adventure...

It's less than a week now before I go to Siberia.  The crazy thoughts are starting to inhabit my head.  I don't have enough warm clothes.  But truth be told, I don't know if I do or not because I seem incapable of laying out my stuff and beginning to think about packing.  That might make this real.  As long as I am just thinking about what I might need or shopping for some more wool socks, I can still change my mind, right?  It's only money so far.  I have bought a plane ticket, applied for an received a visa, and booked a hotel in Moscow.  All of that is just paper, money and time.  None of that is going to help me withstand the cold water of Tyumen!  None of that will prepare me for just walking down the street in Moscow where it is currently 25F and "clear" according to my i-Phone, or Tyumen where it is 15 Below zero!  Really?  How am I going to cope with that in my bathing suit?  .What have I gotten myself into?  Up to now it has all been logistics and trading emails with people I met in Argentina on my first Winter Swimming Adventure.  But this is real winter!  Winter with a capital "W".  It is 61F and raining at home right now.  The water temperature in the SF Bay is a balmy 56F.  I can swim for over six hours in 54F, I've done it.  So 56 is joyful.  But that means that 32F in Tyumen will be like swimming in concrete.  Every part of your body hurts in water that cold, oh wait, how would I know?  I've never experienced water below 37F!  I don't know anything!  That's why this is both scary and exciting.  It's new territory.  I keep thinking to myself, no mater what you will be fine.  You will be cold, but so what.  It's only a week!  You'll be fine.  And no matter what, you will have a blast!  You know some of these people, and you are excited to see them again! 

New!  That's part of the definition of adventure! Go try something NEW!

Visa???

I am going to San Francisco this afternoon to apply for a visa from the Russian Consulate.  I feel like pinching myself sometimes to see if this is really happening!  How did I get here?  How did I get included into this strange little subset of Open Water Swimming?  I can't say if I enjoy Ice Swimming, (swimming in water below 5c/41f) because much like child birth, you forget almost immediately afterwards what it felt like.  But I love the way it's opened up my world. 

I really only started swimming about six years ago when I joined the South End Rowing Club.  I had been swimming on an off for the fifteen years before that, but it was mostly for exercise and mental wellbeing, and I wasn't very consistent.  But once I joined the SERC swimming became more of a lifestyle than a workout.  Once I made that mental adjustment, there was no going back.  I made a group of new friends and acquaintances who exposed me to possible swims all over the world not just in Northern California.  They proved to me that even middle of the pack swimmers could dream big!  That first year I tackled the Maui Channel as a relay participant.  I knew from that moment on that I was not a relay swimmer; the time in the water was bliss, the time on the boat horrendous.  For most of the swim, I was wishing that I was doing it by myself.  My relay teammates were fabulous, but I hated waiting for my turn.  I got sunburned and seasick.  But what a great introduction to marathon swimming it was.  Next I took on The Strait of Gibraltar.  I travelled alone to Spain because I was so worried that I wouldn't succeed and I didn't want my family there adding to the pressure.  The power I took from being alone in that vast expanse of water, and getting across with the help of dolphins, has stayed with me to this day.  That magical experience led me to attempt the English Channel.  This time, with the help of some amazing new friends, I was again successful.  I came home from England happy and proud.  But now I was bitten by the bug, and every channel and every challenge was calling to me.  I went to Ireland and spent three weeks swimming; first with  Ned Denison at his Cork Distance Week swim camp, and then up the East Coast of Ireland all the way to Donaghadee  to look across the North Channel.  Here I blinked and didn't make an attempt.  I knew that I wasn't ready for this Herculean challenge yet.  But I was ready for Catalina, which I did a few months after Ireland.  Then I went to S.C.A.R. in Arizona.  The fun just keeps rolling on.  SCAR led to MIMS (Manhattan Island Marathon Swim) and the completion of the Triple Crown of swimming.  I was over 50 years old for each of these three swims, so I am also credited as a member of the “Half Century” Club. 

I met some wonderful people along the way, and this good fortune led to my being included in a very select group (three people from each of 18 countries) who were invited to travel to Argentina for the International Winter Swimming Festival/Argentina 2014.  There we got to travel around Argentina and swim in some beautiful locations.  The most dramatic was a swim in the Glacier Perito Moreno in Patagonia.  It was snowing lightly, there were ice bergs in the water and the water temperature was 3c!  I made some remarkable connections with people from around the world. 

This leads me to the point of this Blog.  I am travelling to Siberia in December to compete in the Tyumen Cup 2014, my first International Winter Swimming Competition!  I need to pinch myself again, Siberia?  Really?  I am so excited!  And this trip I hope will afford me enough experience to be helpful in bringing Winter Swimming to the US.  In February 2015 there will be the first US Winter Swimming Competition in Vermont.  I'm going to have to find a money tree to keep up this rigorous travel schedule, but until then, I will just keep swimming and see where it leads me.