8 Bridges Hudson River Swim: the last 54 Miles (Stage 5-7)

I’ve been sitting on my writeup for Stage 5, 6, and 7 for quite some time, and that’s because I wanted to do it justice. 5 was a physical battle, 6 was emotional, and 7 was mental, all in ways that I hadn’t experienced before. I wrote a lot of this over the summer, but realized that I tiptoed around the parts with my demons. I wanted this to be honest. So here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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Day 5: Manage Your Expectations

Bear Mountain Br. To New Tappan Zee Br.

The Bear Mountain Bridge looking eerie and beautiful as the fog burnt off

I haven’t written these entries in chronological order, and this is the last one I’m writing because I’ve been putting it off - this day was challenging, and I got in my own way. Unlike day 2 and 4 where I had negatives that I reframed, this one was just a mess for me physically and mentally.

I had a similar healthy respect for Stage 5 “The Beast” as I did for Stage 2, knowing it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. I did Stage 5 last year as a training swim and got lucky on the random Sunday we’d picked for it. I wasn’t fazed swimming against the current at the beginning and although the Tappan Zee was in view for hours before I got under it, I was unbothered. It hadn’t been “easy” then, but I also don’t think I really understood the hype behind it.

I also fully expected to whip out a quicker time this year – and why not? I’ve been training my ass off, the current looked to be about the same as last year, and while tired from the first 4 days, I was by no means completely wiped out. I kind of knew that was not a good assumption going into it – currents and conditions have a mind of their own – but I held out hope that I’d really crush this one.

By my side in the water was my friend Heather. We met at SCAR 2021 and immediately became friends, she’s an amazingly strong and accomplished swimmer and I’ve seen her stay constantly positive through some gnarly conditions. This year she paddled for me in April for an 8 miler in Florida, and we got to swim the O’CRUD 10k in NC together in May, so when she agreed to come up to do Stage 5 and 7 with me, I was so excited to have her with me for yet another swim adventure this year. It was also good prep for her, the next week she went to Cork Distance week to rack up even more challenging yardage.

Heather and I going 2-3 at O'Crud the month before!

The start was beautiful and eerie. There was almost no visibility as we approached Bear Mountain. The bridge was obscured by fog until we were right up on it and at that second the sun pierced through, setting a glorious scene. I was really hoping this was positive foreshadowing. Heather and I both had some pre-race jitters, and we took a minute to get comfortable and organized on the boat. David and our 1-stager of the day Will started before we did. I knew Will from Brighton Beach and from ice swimming; he’d called me the day before with some questions about the course since I’d done it before. He wrote an excellent narrative about his experience and really gets into the nitty gritty about his mental game, which I loved to read about. (here: https://medium.com/@william.hodgessny/channeling-the-beast-77ffb6669ba9.)

The beginning felt disorienting with the fog, but also strangely peaceful. I really enjoyed the first 3 hours, being up close and personal with the nature by the shore…but not as close as I’d anticipated. From the start, we had a weak current against us, weaker than expected. I’d been given the rundown from Alex, he told us that we’d need to stay very close to the edge and do our best to not scrape our knuckles on the bottom during our stroke recovery – that shallow! Being at the edge like that against a current is not entirely a bad thing – you get some propulsion at the edge. But because the current wasn’t that strong, we were a little deeper and lost a bit of that advantage.

Creeping up the side...sort of

I felt my heart jump in my throat as a freight train sped closely past us –it was deafeningly loud even with my head under the water and I was convinced for a second that it was going to fall in on top of me. I stopped and screamed and everyone laughed at me!

By the time the fog burned off, my feeling of disorientation had not – like I’d mentioned in Stage 1, even though I’d done this before, my memory of where landmarks were was really, really off. I was shocked to see the power plant through the fog, I thought it hadn’t come up until much later the last time. And I’d mentally prepared myself to see the bridge for 4 hours before I’d get under it – but 4:00, 4:30, 4:45, passed and I got more and more upset with every bend that didn’t reveal the Tappan Zee Bridge. My estimate was wrong, but I didn’t know if at the time. I began to lose my cool.

The train tracks right next to us - the gang's all here - Hi David and Will!

On the “rain day,” I paid a visit to my chiropractor who keeps my joints healthy. I’d caught some of that windy chop the wrong way on stage 4, so I got a quick adjustment. The wind started again right before I could see the bridge and so did the shoulder pain, but this time it felt more like soreness from getting adjusted. Not reassuring, but didn’t bother me again for the rest of the week after that. I was so relieved the wind died down after an hour, but still no freaking bridge! Turns out our route blocked it from view for a lot longer, we’d shifted from the center to the east side to avoid a barge which we ended up very widely missing, and then hung a sharp turn to track with the buoys on the west side of the river.

Wind picking up, morale going down....

By the time the bridge was in view, I knew that this was still going to take for-freaking-ever. Heather had matched my pace the whole time and stayed calm and collected which I was grateful for, because I was the opposite and felt like I was dragging the whole time. I should have stopped looking up because I kept misjudging the distance and needed more than a couple battle cries to get me under the bridge.

So close but so far...

The 2nd best feeling at the finish for all of the days (#1 being backstroking under the bridge at the finish), was to hold onto the back of the boat, put my feet on the lowest step of the little ladder, and stretch my lats as far as they’d go for a couple seconds before getting on, taking that short time to check in with how I feel physically and mentally. I did this, and I’d never felt like this post swim. Just defeated and angry as I pulled myself up onto the boat.

After a debrief I learned it would have benefitted us more to go down the east side buoy line. Also, Heather and I had both counted our feeds and had come up with the same number, so we were confused about the final time, turns out we’d done a couple 40-45 min feeds at the discretion of our crew. So overall that was just a tricky, disorienting swim.

I'll be honest... on my part this wasn't a real smile.

But at the time I was fuming. I got on the boat and said, “it seriously shouldn’t have taken that long, I can’t believe it was that slow!” I was so upset about not hitting a dumb arbitrary goal I’d set for myself. I was so mad, I was fighting back tears all the way back to the shore and I know my vibes were sticking onto my crew which made me even more upset at myself. Then I realized I was literally mad at myself for being disappointed, and for making an already hard day harder on others, and that it wasn’t constructive at all. I changed in the bathroom and gave myself an attitude adjustment.

I turned myself around enough to enjoy some food and drinks at the bar, while cheering on William and David as they reached the end. I hid the lingering disappointment and felt like kind of an asshole. Will finished just before the current changed and he was so excited and relieved. And after a successful, all out, current fighting Stage 4 that had me on the edge of my seat refreshing the track.rs every 2 mins, David was in the same situation for this day too and stopped heartbreakingly close to the bridge. Disappointing, but a smart move to save energy for his GPS 8 bridges. I’d been so absorbed in all my BS but Yan, with his tough love ways and Heather’s experience and support snapped me back to the reality that it hadn’t been an easy day for anyone, swimmer or crew, but we got it done and best to leave that one in the past. We had a long commute back to NYC and an easy time falling asleep that night.

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Day 6: Keep Your Head in the Game

Tappan Zee Br. To George Washington Br.

I thought I’d get to Stage 6 and be physically beat up – especially after the toll Stage 5 had taken on me. I’d spent about an hour on the floor the night before taking turns between icing and rolling out my joints and ended up feeling pretty good that morning.

Surprising? I remember having no experience and reading the FAQ on the NYOW site “How difficult is it to swim a marathon swim day after day?” And thinking “What is wrong with these psychos?!” when this was the answer:

“If you are considering taking the 7-day, 120-mile challenge, or swimming two or three stages, be assured it’s not as hard as it sounds. Yes, it’s hard to get going each morning after swimming four or five hours the previous day, but provided you pace yourself swimming day-after-day becomes second nature”

It’s completely true. Especially looking back on it, so much of it by the end was adrenaline and mental, so not being beat up was a pleasant surprise. Don’t get me wrong, I was still tired, I’d just been prepared for every stroke to hurt and to not want to get out of bed every day by this point. I was still pretty far from that! But the toll mentally was more apparent by then. The time between getting to the Marina and jumping in seemed to drag, I was ready to get in and swim the damn thing.

Ready to leave the Tappan Zee in the dust!

The last time NYOW held Stage 6 was 3 years ago, in June of 2019. All 20 of us jumped off the boat at the Tappan Zee bridge and 19 of us got back on at the GW – everyone except Charlie Van Der Horst. I saw jetskis zooming and helicopters overhead and thought,they’re taking them to safety, he’s gotta be ok, right? I couldn’t believe what I heard on deck at the ICC. That night was supposed to be a celebration, I tried to shut out what happened, I’d done 2 big swims in that week after all. I went out to karaoke with my friends but kept checking my phone for updates, and to a bar afterwards – only to see the local news playing on a TV there, with the headline “Man Missing in Hudson River.” I went home and cried. I didn’t touch the open water again until Labor Day that year.

In my Stage 6 writeup in 2019 I didn’t include what I did that night– I felt like it came off as self-centered in the middle of an incident where someone who I barely knew lost their life. But I think it is important now – it’s something I still come back to often and if I felt this way, the impact on others must be even more grave. I learned after Charlie was gone that we lost an invaluable member of our community, a passionate swimmer, doctor, and activist – and I knew that the first time people attempted this stage again, it needed to be special in memory of him. I was so happy to pay all my tandem partners’ entry fees – and to have them pay what they would have directly to Swim For Charlie, a foundation made in his honor to help 2nd graders in the Chapel Hill, NC area gain important water safety and swimming skills. I feel like it was the least I can do – and anyone who wants to read about his legacy and donate now, you can here: https://swimforcharlie.org/

My friend Kari was one of those 20 swimmers in 2019, and I knew I wanted her to complete this again with me to honor Charlie. I think the river gods agreed, because it was an amazing day on the water – the sun was shining and the water was sparkling. As much as I was ready to get this one over with, I was so happy to see the palisades and the bridge even from the start – in 2019 there was less opportunity to enjoy the scenery, the height of the chop especially coming from the west ruined all the views. It felt like a totally different swim. The whole 8B philosophy of “don’t look at the bridge” went out the window that day, I kept pivoting between “gah that’s still really far” and “yeah but it’s cool to look at.”

Kari’s quick stroke rate helped me focus. She’s a positive, uplifting person to begin with, but it showed through even more in the way she swam. She was so energetic and focused the entire time and constantly “ready when you are” on feeds, which helped me keep my head down and crank it out. As the week progressed, I found myself stalling a little on feeds, so this really whipped me into shape! Also as an epilogue, I got to crew for her in September for her Ederle swim, and I’ve never seen someone literally roll with the punches through 5 hours of headwinds like she did! Heather was our observer, recovering from Stage 5 and getting ready to swim Stage 7 with me the next day.

Lots of pep zooming down the River!

From the outset I was SO hungry. Even with cramming in a ton of food from that 3-7PM window every day and a substantial breakfast that morning, it was starting to catch up with me. All I could think about was the Shake Shack burger I had the night before. At the time it seemed like the best burger I’d ever eaten. I’m laughing as I write this now because I ordered the exact same thing a week later and it was thoroughly average, if that tells you anything about the kind of state I was in at the time.

We recognized the starting point of the Spuyten Duyvil 10k at Tarrytown and Alex confirmed. My competitive mindset kicked in right away knowing if I’d been in for X time and the bridge is like 10.5-11k away, then to go Y time I needed to go Z pace. And I knew it would be close.

From the Spuyten Duyvil to the bridge, I had the whole driving with 2 feet mentality from Stage 1 again. I had the energy, but also wanted to conserve it for 7 because I’ve heard it’s tricky. And, spoiler alert: thank God I did. An entourage of kayakers from the ICC joined us there and I did quite a bit of backstroke to check it out and some breaststroke to check out the bridge.

Approaching the Spot.

We got to the “spot.” It’s a little after the ICC and a little before the bridge, closer to the east side of the river than it is to the middle. Every time I’ve been to that spot just south of the ICC since, when I swam 20 bridges or when I observe, I try to take a moment and say a little word for Charlie. Paying respects felt more important than going “Y” time.

See you again tomorrow, GW! Our ICC Entourage is paddling back to the dock behind us. Real smile here.

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Day 7: Stay Sane!

George Washington Br. To Verrazano Narrows Br.

Looks peaceful externally but internally I was freaking out.

Woke up and felt just like any other day of this week. I was in such a routine in the morning, as I was getting ready, it didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t have to do this again on Monday. Once at the ICC, I heard some chatter that currents weren’t going to be quite as quick on this stage. My narrative though the past 6 days when thinking about the finale had been “it’s just another swim” but after hearing that, quickly shifted to “oh crap this isn’t ending without a fight.” I wasn’t seriously entertaining the possibility that I couldn’t finish, but it was in the back of my head. My brain was buzzing on the boat out to the GW – I felt a strange mania and adrenaline coming over me. It hit me, this is it. I couldn’t believe it.

Even with Desitin, swimming South with the sun rising in the East for 6 days burnt my left shoulder to a crisp!

The first 3 hours were amazing. Because I’d expected the Manhattan stretch to take a long time and feel slow against the current, my expectations were always exceeded when I stopped and looked where we were along the route (I’d taken lessons to heart after Stage 5). We swam very close to the shore and Heather and I were both in good spirits. I really enjoyed seeing all the little waterside apartments and houses up close on the NJ side; it was a refreshing change of scenery after always being on the Manhattan side observing for 20B. We breaststroked under some fishing lines and did our best not to scrape our knuckles on some rocks.

Somewhere between Central Park and Midtown, my knuckle scraping luck ran out. I’d scraped my shin earlier, but this was nothing compared to the wooden dock remains that I rotated my left upper thigh into – I still have 3 white vertical lines scarred into my leg. It stung for quite a while, but I got distracted from it with dodging all the chop as we swam into Lower Manhattan.

NJ views with an example of those painful docks (these are higher out of the water than what got me).

Yan yelled from the boat on the first feed in NY harbor “your fundraiser went past its goal!” This was also right where I started to disassociate with reality. I suddenly started to feel a strange buzz and dizziness and couldn’t shake the thought that after all this, was I really going to ever get under that bridge?

Before things took a turn.

We were getting tossed around pretty bad in the harbor and Heather and I both lost that pep we had going down the NJ side of the Hudson. There were some colder spots being thrown up from the depth of the ocean by larger tankers and I got a few goosebumps. I thought “it would be nice if Alex would take my bottles out of the refrigerator so they can sit in the sun… out of the refrigerator…. That’s not right. But it’s a miniature refrigerator on top of his kayak…” I had forgotten the word for cooler and it took me some time to remember. I rehearsed in my head for the next few minutes “please take my bottles out of the cooler so they can warm up in the sun” but when I popped up for a feed, I couldn’t get the point across and he had to ask what I meant twice before Kari tried to help translate. I knew that this was not good.

Then, from out of left field, Alex told me “pick up the pace a little” I said “why?” in a panic (I know, I know, #1 no no of swimmer/kayaker etiquette). He said “we’ll discuss later.” I had another gear which I used but I felt my heartrate skyrocketing from fear rather than effort as I overanalyzed what could possibly be happening. Why? Is everyone on the boat ok? Is there a boat crash? Am I nosediving speedwise? Is the boat sinking? Am I sinking? Kinda feels like I’m sinking. Did they see a shark? Is the tide turning? This was #2 the most scared I’d ever been in the open water, with #1 being when a shark bumped me. I saw little bubbles everywhere which seemed odd. Turns out there were 2 Staten Island Ferries converging near us and by picking it up we avoided them but my compromised mental state had made me spiral.

A little too close for comfort.

I told everyone on the next feed, “I’m not myself right now, I’m sorry, I’ll be ok.” I kept thinking sailboats were the stanchions of the Verrazano Bridge and felt even more dizzy. Around then I also noticed Sean’s boat was following ours although it had been escorting David the whole time. I was confused. I assumed he finished since he started before we did but when I learned he got pulled, I was pretty upset to hear that after how hard he’d worked the entire week. Bad news during an already hard day and it came at a time when we weren’t faring well either.

I couldn’t have finished this without Heather. Having her in the water when I was losing my mind was grounding. We paced great together and I was so happy she stuck it out with me for what ended up being the 2 toughest days. Having both Alex and Michael with me helped too. I needed a full-on entourage with me to get through that. We’d planned to do a feed where we gave chocolate chip cookies to Alex and Michael because we’d joked about it at stage 5 and I learned after the swim it happened somewhere in the harbor, but I don’t remember any of it. When the thoughts weren’t forming correctly in my head, I would say basic things like “I’m Leslie. I’m swimming from the GW to the VZ. Heather is next to me. Alex is on my left. Michael is on my right.” I was telling myself over and over, “its ok, its ok, you’re ok, you’re just a little crazy right now but at least you KNOW you’re not thinking normally.”

All the way East and a little stuck.

After approaching bridges for 6 days, I could tell something was off about the pace at which the Verrazano was coming up on us: it wasn’t. I asked if the current was switching and Michael said “even a chip bag is gonna make it to the VZ right now.” If that was true, then Heather and I were bags of Fritos contaminated with some heavy lead chips or something.

Post swim, I learned that we did hit some dead water by Gravesend Bay and that we ran out of current much sooner than what was predicted. On top of that, we’d been rerouted many times with all the excessive traffic and the double Staten Island Ferry debacle. All that really matters is that despite the insanity, we really freaking earned it when we made it under that bridge! If I hadn’t recognized that something was off early on and worked actively to correct it, I wouldn’t have finished. I think I had an adrenaline crash and the crazy spell was the culmination of all the exertion over the course of my journey. A nailbiter at the end made it that much sweeter to finish.

The end was a blur. I panicked on the boat as it plowed into the chop, speeding back from the Verrazano. The motion and bounce made my already foggy head even more confused. We got to shore and took a group picture, and everyone split. Yan drove Heather straight to the airport, the crew took off with their gear and some Thank-You Mezcal and Whiskey, and I sat in the park alone for a while, partially to take it all in, and partially because I was too dizzy and dehydrated to make any moves yet. I don’t remember how I got home. I went on to swim 7 more marathons this season, but nothing was harder than that one!

(Some of) the Dream Team

I don’t really have much left to say other than thank you! I owe so much gratitude to so many people for getting me through this, especially Yan, Alex, Michael, Matt, Sebastian, Kari, Heather, David, Rondi, Janine, Camilla, Nathaniel, Charlotte, and Jen to only name a few. And to you reading this, thanks for revisiting this adventure with me! I hope it inspires someone to do this swim in the future and if not, to at least push themselves further than they thought. Just because you can. Reflecting on the highs and lows gave me a lot to think about, as I’m still on a journey of my own for self-confidence and improvement and this week was a very important chapter in that saga. Until the next swim…