After completing ‘The Grand Swim’ in just under 37 hours, Oly Rush sat down with Cayman Compass sports journalist Seaford Russell Jr. to talk about his gruelling 16-17 May swim around Grand Cayman.
Footage of the swim provided courtesy of Jon Schutte.
In his own words:
Starting off
I get anxiety like the best, I’m only human. We all have these different issues and, for me, swimming melts away those anxieties.
For me, a 10-hour swim should be fairly easy. This is something that I’ve trained to do for a very long time. I’m quite good at just having this really lazy stroke and able to continue for ages, but it got harder than it should have really early on, which is always a bit concerning.
The crew, I think, recognised this and a few different times they would jump in the water and say “hello”.
We did a lot of school visits before the swim and seeing those… little faces lighting up with joy while I was talking about the swim… it kept me going.
A night spent with East End sea life
I had been swimming past East End at night, which was supposedly the most dangerous part of the swim for various different reasons. The reef, the wildlife, and just swimming at night in the sea can be potentially dangerous anyway.
I’m not a religious person necessarily, but I’m sure someone was looking down on me. We did have some equipment to keep the sharks at bay if they did come and have a look. It’s funny because I thought I was going to be quite scared. I think I was so tired and so motivated that the fear didn’t arise.
Eating with a sore mouth
I’ve been [on a plant-based diet] for about seven years now. The Isle of Wight swim was a very basic feed plan. It was bananas, oats, peanut butter, loads of different seeds all blended together with maple syrup, and that kept me going for 15 hours.
For whatever reason, I don’t know if it was the temperature or the salt over here, that didn’t work. After four or five hours, the feed plan kind of went out of the window and I said to my kayaker, “No more bananas, no more peanut butter,” and all I put on my feed plan were bananas and peanut butter. So now, they’re thinking “What are we going to feed this guy because he has another 30+ hours?”
We had some land crew who was driving around all these different shops, picking up stuff like baby food; I was eating sandwiches that had spaghetti and jelly. The chopped mango was my favorite because my mouth was so sore from the sun and the salt exposure.
I was drinking about 500 ml every half an hour and towards the end I didn’t think I was drinking enough. A lot of it was going all over the place because my mouth was in so much pain, most of the water wasn’t going in.
The imaginary guitar player
So, the first time that we got a visual of Seven Mile beach, I could barely see it, it was that far away… It didn’t get any closer for hours and hours.
I was actually able to kind of force these hallucinations. I would be swimming, have my head down, and I would look up and say to myself, right now [the kayaker would] be playing a guitar and when I looked up, he was playing a guitar. I swear to you this happened.
I was able to think about four different things…and I was able to play these hallucinations because I was that tired… It was crazy. I never experienced that before.
Emerging to the cheers
I got out of the water, and I didn’t know how my legs were going to be. Quite often, you can be a bit wobbly after a long swim and I have never swam for 37 hours before. I only swam 15, so this was double and some.
Somehow my legs were still working, and I didn’t want to sit down… because I wouldn’t have been able to take it all in. The actual feeling was just pure elation, it was an incredible feeling.
Everyone that was there on the day, and you know who you are, my heart is overflowing, and I’ve been emotional over the past week. I think it’s just building up and realising that when a group of people get together, not for money or financial benefit, but because they believe in the cause. We can achieve something incredible, and let’s be honest, it was almost an impossible task.
Enduring injuries during and after
It wasn’t easy, I don’t want anyone to think that I found it easy because it was so, so tough. During parts of the swim… I kind of wanted the ocean to swallow me up because I was in so much pain.
The main issue was dehydration. I was in quite a bit of pain. A really strange sensation in my right shoulder, a really sharp pain… because my shoulders were working so hard, for so long.
The human body is very resilient; if something is hurting for a long time and you keep forcing it, I think it shuts off the pain receptors a little bit so you can swim through that pain, but when you stop, it all hits you again.
I have a little bit of tendinitis in my wrist, nothing major. A little sunburn… But I think the worst injury was the sargassum in my hair. We had to cut some of my hair out, so I was devastated.
Rush’s swim was in aid of Plastic Free Cayman to raise money and awareness of its mission to rid the waters around the islands of plastic pollution.
To donate, visit: www.gofundme.com/f/bsywxj-charity-swim-around-grand-cayman
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