"Being the ruler of the sea I grant successful voyages and save those who are in danger" I therefore hold you in the palm of hand as but a few of the things I control.

Nantucket to Marthas Vineyard

Don Macdonald continues his epic life journey swimming and kayaking around the world again taking up the banner of helping others while bringing attention to cardiac and other healthcare issues in a planned 24 mile journey across the great white shark infested Nantucket and Marthas Vineyard channel, Muskegret. 

Kayaking to support Doug McConnell's A Long Swim charity, I have christened my kayak "Poseidon" in the hope the oceans god watches over us in the grueling test of athletic performance and natures purest born killer the Great White Shark. 

Similar to our 2016 attempt to cross the Hawaiian channel of bones from Molokai to Oahu it will be a team effort lasting some 14-16 hours, fraught with open ocean waves and tides, wind, scorching sun, and glorified movie made marine predators.

This expedition I thrilled to connect with my sponsor, Boston Scientific my long time cardiac healthcare technology provider. Boston Scientific since 2013 has been an integral part of my life, actually part of my heart to be more accurate watching over me like Poseidon himself. 

While training to attempt the English Channel a second time I encountered a Sudden Cardiac Arrest (which is not a heart attack) and upon awakening learned my doctors George Christy and Eric Kessler had implanted a sub scapular ICD technology which monitors my heart rhythm remotely 24/7 so I can continue swimming and kayaking around the world. 

Since then and with their watchful support I have been without event, healthy and swimming  with this expedition being my third ultra-marathon kayak trip. The last two being a circumnavigation of Manhattan island and attempt to cross the channel of bones between Molokai and Oahu both for A Long Swim.

"Life changing events have a funny way of giving you perspective, that when shared with others makes humanity better", Don

Hers a like to my 2013 experience that began this journey, Open Water Marathon Swimming Sudden Cardiac Arrest physiology and Swimming around the world.

There is lots more to come so watch for our posts. Dougs swim live feed will be on ALongSwim.org and I will have in water video and posts from kayak perspective.

#onestrokeatatime

The Heart - Swimmer vs. Runner and Athletic Heart Syndrom

The Heart of a Swimmer  vs. Runner

Regular exercise changes the look and workings of the human heart. And researchers are discovering that different sports affect the heart differently.

Reprinted from Gretchen Reynolds and related articles in Wikipedia

Do world-class swimmers’ hearts function differently than the hearts of elite runners?

A new study finds that the answer may be yes, and the differences, although slight, could be telling and consequential, even for those of us who swim or run at a much less lofty level. 

Cardiologists and exercise scientists already know that regular exercise changes the look and workings of the human heart. The left ventricle, in particular, alters with exercise. This chamber of the heart receives oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and pumps it out to the rest of the body, using a rather strenuous twisting and unspooling motion, as if the ventricle were a sponge being wrung out before springing back into shape.

Exercise, especially aerobic exercise, requires that considerable oxygen be delivered to working muscles, placing high demands on the left ventricle. In response, this part of the heart in athletes typically becomes larger and stronger than in sedentary people and functions more efficiently, filling with blood a little earlier and more fully and untwisting with each heartbeat a bit more rapidly, allowing the heart to pump more blood more quickly.

While almost any exercise can prompt remodeling of the left ventricle over time, different types of exercise often produce subtly different effects. A 2015 study found, for instance, that competitive rowers, whose sport combines endurance and power, had greater muscle mass in their left ventricles than runners, making their hearts strong but potentially less nimble during the twisting that pumps blood to muscles.

These past studies compared the cardiac effects of land-based activities, though, with an emphasis on running. Few have examined swimming, even though it is not only a popular exercise but unique. Swimmers, unlike runners, lie prone, in buoyant water and hold their breaths, all of which could affect cardiac demands and how the heart responds and remakes itself.

So, for the new study, which was published in November in Frontiers in Physiology, researchers at the University of Guelph in Canada and other institutions set out to map the structure and function of elite swimmers’ and runners’ hearts.

The researchers focused on world-class performers because those athletes would have been running or swimming strenuously for years, presumably exaggerating any differential effects of their training, the researchers reasoned.

Eventually they recruited 16 national-team runners and another 16 comparable swimmers, male and female, some of them sprinters and others distance specialists.

They asked the athletes to visit the exercise lab after not exercising for 12 hours and then, when on site, to lie quietly. They checked heart rates and blood pressures and finally examined the athletes’ hearts with echocardiograms, which show both the structure and functioning of the organ.

It turned out, to no one’s surprise, that the athletes, whether runners or swimmers, enjoyed enviable heart health. Their heart rates hovered around 50 beats per minute, with the runners’ rates slightly lower than the swimmers’. But all of the athletes’ heart rates were much lower than is typical for sedentary people, signifying that their hearts were robust.

The athletes also had relatively large, efficient left ventricles, their echocardiograms showed.

But there were interesting if small differences between the swimmers and runners, the researchers found. While all of the athletes’ left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners. Their ventricles filled even earlier and untwisted more emphatically than the swimmers’ hearts did.

In theory, those differences should allow blood to move from and back to the runners’ hearts more rapidly than would happen inside the swimmers’.

But these differences do not necessarily show that the runners’ hearts worked better than the swimmers’, says Jamie Burr, a professor at the University of Guelph and director of its human performance lab, who conducted the new study with the lead author, Katharine Currie, and others.

Since swimmers exercise in a horizontal position, he says, their hearts do not have to fight gravity to get blood back to the heart, unlike in upright runners. Posture does some of the work for swimmers, and so their hearts reshape themselves only as much as needed for the demands of their sport.

The findings underscore how exquisitely sensitive our bodies are to different types of exercise, Dr. Burr says.

They also might provide a reason for swimmers sometimes to consider logging miles on the road, he says, to intensify the remodeling of their hearts.

Of course, the athletes here were tested while resting, not competing, he says, and it is not clear whether any variations in their ventricles would be meaningful during races.

The study also was cross-sectional, meaning it looked at the athletes only once. They might have been born with unusual cardiac structures that somehow allowed them to excel at their sports, instead of the sports changing their hearts.

Dr. Burr, however, doubts that. Exercise almost certainly remakes our hearts, he says, and he hopes future experiments can tell us more about how each activity affects us and which might be best for different people.

In other articles summarized here from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome) 

We find discussion of Athletic heart syndrome (AHS), also known as athlete's heart, athletic bradycardia, or exercise-induced cardiomegaly is a non-pathological condition commonly seen in sports medicine, in which the human heart is enlarged, and the resting heart rate is lower than normal.

The athlete's heart is associated with physiological remodeling as a consequence of repetitive cardiac loading. Athlete's heart is common in athletes who routinely exercise more than an hour a day, and occurs primarily in endurance athletes, though it can occasionally arise in heavy weight trainers. The condition is generally considered benign, but may occasionally hide a serious medical condition, or may even be mistaken for one. 

Athlete's heart most often does not have any physical symptoms, although an indicator would be a consistently low resting heart rate. Athletes with AHS often do not realize they have the condition unless they undergo specific medical tests, because athlete's heart is a normal, physiological adaptation of the body to the stresses of physical conditioning and aerobic exercise. People diagnosed with athlete's heart commonly display three signs that would usually indicate a heart condition when seen in a regular person: bradycardia, cardiomegaly, and cardiac hypertrophy. Bradycardia is a slower than normal heartbeat, at around 40–60 beats per minute. Cardiomegaly is the state of an enlarged heart, and cardiac hypertrophy the thickening of the muscular wall of the heart, specifically the left ventricle, which pumps oxygenated blood to the aorta. Especially during an intensive workout, more blood and oxygen are required to the peripheral tissues of the arms and legs in highly trained athletes' bodies. A larger heart results in higher cardiac output, which also allows it to beat more slowly, as more blood is pumped out with each beat. 

Another sign of athlete's heart syndrome is an S3 gallop, which can be heard through a stethoscope. This sound can be heard as the diastolic pressure of the irregularly shaped heart creates a disordered blood flow. However, if an S4 gallop is heard, the patient should be given immediate attention. An S4 gallop is a stronger and louder sound created by the heart, if diseased in any way, and is typically a sign of a serious medical condition. 

#heartofswimmer

#athleteheart

Chicago River Swim - Challenge Fundraising

What in the heck is Don Macdonald up to Now?

August 25th, 2018 I will jump in the Chicago River, defying the City's fears the river is toxic, death, legality, and a myriad of other nonsensical urban myths. 

"I'm charging ahead doing something positive for Chicago". 

Admittedly our City needs positive news, good things to happen. As one voice, I can only lead by doing rather than talking. Bringing attention to the our 'City's heart' its less-and-less polluted status, hoping for a brief moment to get people to Stop, Think, Lay Down their Guns, Arguments, and Differences and come watch something nutty!

The river is our city's heart, if we don't take better care of it, like ourselves, were dead. 

Donate to this charity event, this positive and inspirational Chicago Jump and take "One Stroke at a Time" with me to live!

100% of funds raised goes to Friends of the Chicago River.

Donation Link:
http://weblink.donorperfect.com/swimmingintheChicagoRiverwithMWRDCommissionerMoritaandFriends/TheBigJump2018/ChicagoRiverSwim-DonMacdonald

Conquering Hawaii's Biggest Waves

Don Macdonald kayaking down the face of a huge rolling wave crashing down on Doug McConnell

It's a few months since escorting Doug McConnell (A Long Swim) across the Molokai Channel, better known as the Ka’iwi Channel (or Channel of Bones) separating the islands of Molokai and Oahu.

Stretching 26 miles (42 kilometers) and plunging to a depth of 2,300 feet (701 meters), the Ka’iwi Channel has the reputation as one of the world’s most treacherous bodies of water.



Leaving at midnight in pitch black inky warm, with not even a house light from shore, we shoved off from shore Doug's red and green safety lights blinking away as the only visual contact between us, stars shining so bright I felt like Christopher Columbus knowing ahead there was an island yet to reveal itself after 18 hours of sun drenched paddling.

I knew that each human powered race across the Channel of Bones is regarded worldwide as the crowning achievement of the sport and it doesn’t give up easily.

Some 16 hours later, after calm seas and great swimming, mother nature unleashed strong winds following behind a tropical depression driving the seas to 12 foot.
The escort boat with a fly bridge would dip down in the trough ahead of us and disappear completely.

As evening fell, it became apparent mother nature had won this day. I leaned over to Doug and said ‘you have to let it go’, your sister and dad will understand and prefer you come home safe. I find in these swims when every ounce of energy is depleted and you are mentally destroyed, you must help swimmers (who are in a depressed state) to make these decisions with little coaching comments and suggestions to allow them to come to the right (and safest) decision. We abandoned the swim within a 1/2 mile of shore but facing jagged black rock walls, 10-foot surf to come ashore and darkness once again.

Before we left, I reflected on some recent history which left an impression and one that would live up to its reputation. The tragic loss of Hawaiian big-wave rider and waterman Eddie Aikau in the Ka’iwi Channel during the 1978 Polynesian voyage of the Hokule’a sailing canoe added to the mystique and revered power of the channel. After gale force winds and 30-foot swells disabled the Hokule’a, Aikau left the ship on his rescue paddle board to seek help for his stranded crew mates. His body and board were never found. Paddling has been a part of Hawaiian heritage since early Polynesians navigated thousands of miles of open ocean guided by nothing more than currents, wind and stars. Double-hulled sailing canoes were used to cover longer distances and single-hull outrigger canoes covered shorter, inter-island distances.

I am sure we will be back and if mother nature allows, we will be standing on the Oahu shore.

Affects of Fueling from Sugar or Carbs and Affects on your body

A Long Swim & One Stroke at a Time Teams

"Channel of Bones" Hawaii Charity Swim

July 25-31, 2016

First lets talk about health fueling when you swim - 

Two great video shorts on the affects of fueling your body using sugar based diet or carb based diet in easy and simple to understand terms.

The affects of these fuels, the timing, and amounts can act as a arterial inflammation agent. Review and consider the fuels used for open water and marathon level athletic events. Consider using natural foods as an alternative such as juices, fruits, peanut butter rather than dextrose based gels and Gu pacs.

Keep up the great adventures and remember One Stroke at a Time.

Catch our next adventure kayaking for friend and training partner Doug McConnell and the A Long Swim (ALS) team as we attempt to cross the Channel of Bones from Molokai to Oahu over some 18 hours of truly open ocean swimming. 

Heres the link: http://www.alongswim.com/meet-the-team-don-macdonald/

Eat Well, Live Well

Barrington man takes on ‘Triple Crown’ challenge with swim around Manhattan

Don Macdonald Kayak's alongside Doug McConnell here pictured in the middle of the pacific ocean between Catalina Island and mainland California in 2013.

With Doug's swim, the third leg of the Triple Crown bearing down in several weeks, we have been focused on extending training time in open water. While Doug has the Yeoman's work in the water this time, Im in the kayak again, and support crew in the boat. Both exposed to the weather (what ever condition it is) for 9-10 hours. 

The biggest concern we have for Doug is safety. The rivers around New York Harbor are very congested and dangerous with large ocean going ships, ferries - docking, embarking at all hours. These ships also generate sizable waves that multiply both in height and length bouncing off sea walls causing both kayaker and swimmer tremendous stress to stay on course. 

The other challenge are the piers. These are not your standard piers but large loading docks, commercial businesses extending into the river sometimes 100 plus yards disrupting the flow of water, swirling ebbs, causing the kayaker and swimmer direction problems and immediate danger from a collision. 

"There's no room for error, the current never stops and at 2-4 MPH, you will get dragged into a pier pole, debris, or ship very easily", said Don Macdonald who recently went on a test run while in New York. 

As a marathon swimmer myself, I know its essential for me to remain focused on all aspects of Doug's safety but not outwardly show the slightest change in my tempo, direction and even mood as things happen. And they always do. 

As these swims progress, its not uncommon for swimmers to become depressed from the solitude of the effort coupled with the physical exhaustion. As the reach 6-8 hours mark, the swimmer hits "the wall" both physically and mentally. The slightest perception of stress can be detected from the swimmer, stress from changes to direction, hitting some debris floating in the water, swallowing some polluted water ... can weigh heavily on the swimmers mental outlook. 

For both of us, this will be another test of resilience, forged in the desire of pushing oneself to help others. 

Sometimes your simply alone

Article Reprinted from Sun Times

As harsh, cold and seemingly unending as the winter was, few were clamoring to take long dips in area lakes as of mid-May.

Doug McConnell, however, already was swimming about 20 miles a week, often in lakes registering thermometer readings in the 50s and 60s, including Lake Michigan.

No, he wasn’t wearing a wetsuit. And no, he’s not crazy. He’s on a mission.

On June 28, the 56-year-old will attempt what is known in marathon swimming circles as the MIMS, the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim. Swimming long distances in breathtakingly, bone-achingly cold lakes is all part of the training.

McConnell, of Barrington, already swam across the English and Catalina channels. Only the MIMS — a 28.5-mile swim around Manhattan through the Hudson and Harlem rivers — stands between McConnell and the Triple Crown of open water swimming. If he makes it, he’ll join just more than a dozen others who have completed all three while over the age of 50.

Perhaps equally as remarkable, through a fundraising organization he started with his swimming friend and fellow Barrington resident Don Macdonald, McConnell has turned pulling and kicking his way through waves into more than $225,000 for the Les Turner ALS Foundation.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, claimed the life of McConnell’s father, David, in 2006. Another of his relatives now battles ALS.

“It’s just dreadful,” McConnell said of the disease, which affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. “It’s a slow motion shipwreck. To watch anybody you love go through that, to see them just go to pieces like that, it’s hard to watch.”

Proceeds from McConnell’s organization, A Long Swim, go to the Les Turner ALS Laboratory to advance treatments and find a cure. Researchers are making great strides, McConnell said.

“It’s a pretty gratifying and exciting time to be supporting research into a disease that has frustrated so many for such a long time,” he said. “There are drug trials going on. There are new discoveries about upper motor neurons.”

Dr. P. Hande Ozdinler is director of the Les Turner ALS Laboratory and an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

Support received through McConnell and A Long Swim has been vital, Ozdinler said. With it, Ozdinler developed a method of making corticospinal motor neurons fluorescent. The labeling makes it easier for doctors to discover what goes wrong in patients with ALS and other motor neuron-affecting diseases.

Because of the headway that’s been made, the National Institutes of Health has granted $3 million to further studies at the lab, Ozdinler said.

“Before we got the NIH money, the only support was from the Les Turner Foundation, which depends heavily on people like Doug,” Ozdinler said. “His efforts make a difference.”

McConnell, meanwhile, is focused on ensuring that his body is well-prepared for the MIMS. Though he swims throughout the year at Foglia YMCA, recent conditioning has meant 6 a.m. loops around Lake Zurich and adventures in Lake Michigan, as well.

“It’s just such a lift to be outside in the sunshine,” he said. “The water’s been cold, but boy oh boy, to be out there and watch the sun come up, it’s just fabulous.”

McConnell expects to encounter chilly waters in New York, which “had the same crazy winter we did,” he said.

“The only way to get acclimated to cold water is to spend a lot of time in cold water,” McConnell continued. “It can be unpleasant and so forth, but the acclimation really works.”

McConnell noted that hypothermia is not a condition to be taken lightly. His swims are monitored. The crew often includes his wife, Susan, and their four children, ranging in age from 16 to 26. Macdonald also typically is there, riding alongside in a kayak.

The Manhattan Island Marathon Swim will start at Battery Park, with a view of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. Twenty-three swimmers are signed up to participate on June 28, McConnell said. Others are swimming June 14 and July 12.

Start time is 7:20 a.m. Central time.

“They time it carefully around an incoming tide,” McConnell said. “It’s what pushes you north up the East River. You swim on the East River to about 120th or 130th Street, and then you cut left. You take the Harlem River northwest and swim that to 210th Street.

“That’s where the Harlem dumps into the Hudson, and you take that back to Battery Park,” he said. “This is 28.5 miles. However, because of the tidal push on the East River and the downstream ride on the Hudson, most people do it in eight or nine hours. It swims more like 17 or 18 miles rather than 28.

“That, of course, is all dependent upon the day and how well you’re able to hook into the currents.”

McConnell said he looks forward to the event, which also is a race. He crossed the English Channel — a feat that included 25-knot winds and 5-foot waves as well as pitch-black darkness — in 14 hours and 18 minutes. The Catalina Channel took 12 hours, 41 minutes.

McConnell said that turning a personal goal into a charitable endeavor adds to his motivation.

The response from both corporations and individuals has been tremendous. Minneapolis-based Medtronic is among his sponsors. The company makes medical devices, including the PRESTIGE disc, one of which was implanted in McConnell’s spine in 2009.

“From individuals, we had some $5 donations and one that was $5,000. The message and the disease really resonate with people,” McConnell said. “Many of the donations were from good friends of my father’s. I have another family member battling with ALS now, and a lot of old friends of hers are donating.”

Anyone interested in learning more or donating is encouraged to visit alongswim.com.

“The funding that [McConnell] received has turned into something really big and really good,” Northwestern’s Ozdinler said. “Without him and the support of the foundation, I don’t think we would have been able to generate the tools we have today.”