Don Macdonald of the USA and France blogs his aquatic journey swimming, hosting swims around the world, one body of water at a time.
Those who aspire to this life goal please join and share.
#onestrokeatatime
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.
Master Swimmer Don Macdonald knows in his heart that he would be gearing up to swim the English Channel if not for a cardiac arrhythmia that very nearly killed him.
Learning how to "take it easy" after the near-fatal episode, the 52-year Barrington man kayaked 28.5 miles around Manhattan Island on Saturday. Macdonald and his marathon swimming buddy and fellow Barrington resident, Doug McConnell, 56, have completed several similar grueling swims. But for the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, Macdonald merely offered support from the kayak as McConnell swam the course to raise money in the fight against ALS.
"Kayaking," Macdonald says dismissively, "is very easy."
With the tide helping propel his kayak, Macdonald says his effort was more emotional than physical.
"There's value in helping other people achieve their dreams," Macdonald says, recalling how he rooted as his investment banker friend swam the English Channel in 2011 just before a storm wiped out Macdonald's scheduled shot at fame. "You want to revel in his success, and at the same time I say, 'Oh, man, I wish that could be me. I know I could do it.'"
A doctor on the medical team that saved Macdonald's life says the environmental engineer appeared to be in shape for that 2011 trek across the choppy, cold water that separates England from France.
"Fortunately, he didn't get to do the English Channel," says Dr. George Christy, a cardiologist with Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington. "Swimming that distance in the cold of water for that long of time, there is a likelihood something adverse would have happened."
The bad weather that scuttled Macdonald's Channel swim gave the swimmer time to discover that a lingering pain in his shoulder blades was not just a training ache but a symptom of coronary disease.
"Here I am, a guy who swims 25 miles in 60-degree open water, and you're telling me I have clogged arteries?" Macdonald asked in disbelief.
Doctors inserted stents to open his narrowed arteries and put Macdonald on medication to regulate his heart.
"I'm fixed. They put the stents in. Let's go. Woo-hoo!" he remembers thinking. After a year of treatment and several stress tests on his heart, Macdonald was cleared to train again for a Channel swim this September.
"Even fit people develop coronary disease," says Christy, who adds that Macdonald developed another problem. "It's a false invulnerability people get, especially when they are endurance athletes. There's an aura of invincibility to some of these guys, and you can't blame them."
Having set swimming records during his high school career in Goshen, Indiana, competed on the swim team at Ball State University, played on the water polo team at Indiana University and enjoyed success as a master swimmer beating younger athletes, a confident Macdonald backed off his medications. "I made the decision to go with the less potent (medication), and it almost cost me my life," he says.
"He goes out for a jog when it's 100 degrees, which I wouldn't recommend for anybody," Christy says. Macdonald ran up to his home in the midst of a block party and "crashed," the doctor says, explaining how the athlete's heart went into ventricular fibrillation, an uncoordinated heart rhythm, which can be fatal.
A retired nurse on the scene performed CPR and a medical emergency team got him to Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital's emergency room within minutes. Knowing Macdonald's tolerance for long swims in cold water, doctors used a device to put him in a hypothermic state that lowered his body temperature.
"Neurological recovery was key," says Christy, noting that hypothermia slows the metabolic process that can cause cognitive damage when the brain goes without oxygen. Tests showed his heart and blood pressure were good. But Macdonald's life was in danger for days.
"Is he or is he not going to wake up? It was all guesswork until we warmed him up," Christy says.
"I wake up three or four days later," Macdonald says. "I don't remember a thing. I don't remember seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing."
Knowing how close he came to dying and leaving behind his daughter, Rachel, 16, and his wife, Jennifer, Macdonald says he wants others to know the value of stress tests and good cardiac care.
"The harsh reality is very scary," say Macdonald, who practices kayaking in Lake Zurich and on Lake Michigan, but misses swimming. "I have been in the swimming pool three times, and just sort of paddled around. I'd be lying to you if I didn't say it was scary."
Long, open-water swims have been part of his life since high school, when he and pal Steve Conder swam 8 miles across Lake Wawasee in Indiana. Macdonald has completed swims from Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco and lighthouses off the coast of Boston. He and McConnell swam marathon races in Crystal Lake, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
"We were beating kids in their 20s and 30s pretty regularly," Macdonald says. "One night at the dinner table, drinking some wine, we said, 'How about the English Channel?'"
McConnell became the 48th person older than 50 to swim the Channel and continues to do well in marathon swims. Macdonald, who has a device implanted in his chest to shock him if his heart gets out of rhythm, stays in the kayak.
"If it goes off when you're facedown in the water, you could drown. After all this, to die drowning, that would be really embarrassing," Macdonald says. "But I just can't sit on a floaty and hang around. It's not me."
When talk turns to his English Channel quest, he repeats the mantra, "Sometimes you have to let that go." Then he pauses.
"I'll tell you," Macdonald says, softening his voice as if he's sharing a secret. "I'm not so sure about that."
Reprinted with modifications from Daily Herald, Burt Constable.
Jun 13, 2012
Big Mac
Testing one's resilience literally returning from death!
A few days ago, sweet recovery
I finally returned to open water swimming last weekend after a tumultuous month of surprise cardiac medical activity. I am so happy given the ride I have taken recently but more so the friends from BAM and the Otter Club at Lake Zurich, my Doctor George Christy, Good Shepard Hospital and my family welcoming me back.
Since September when I sat on the shore in Dover watching my chance to attempt the English Channel fade due to bad weather, I took off some well deserved time and focused on my heath, letting my shoulders, upper back and neck recover from the last big push in training where I was routinely stroking away 35 - 38,000 yards per week during last summer.
In late September I was diagnosed with C 4, 5, 6 stenosius and one disk that is significantly compressed and two others that appear poorly aligned. We all thought swimming took its toll, or so we thought so this wasn't the real surprise.
The big surprise came after my doctor suggested I get that ubiquitous 'turning 50' stress treadmill test. Boy was I in for a surprise. First of all I hate running, actually let me rephrase, I respect greatly those who run well, I don't, I am a plugger on land. Thus, after 14 minutes on the tread mill at 20% incline running full out my heart monitor was showing the little tell-tail signs of a problem. At the same time I could not max our my heart rate which was at 148 and should have been 170 at this point. Thank god for my swimming and aerobic capacity helping out what we discovered later in a subsequent angiogram were two artery blockages the front 50% and in the back 90%. We did not immediately do the angioplasty and stenting because my doctor knew this was a surprise and and being such a great Doc conservatively pulled back to confer. I thank god for him and his counsel, wonderful bedside manner and that he kept my health and safety at the very front of all discussions.
It was during this time we all agreed that a conservative approach was to be taken prior to my angioplasty and I started taking Beta Blockers to prevent any heart damage. While I was in no danger since we had caught this very early it nonetheless slowed my heart rate further to the low 40's. Of course because I was aerobically in such good shape it seemed just fine until coming out of anesthesia from the Angiogram.
During my recovery from the Angiogram I was very comfortable but sat up quickly and proceeded to slowly pass out, speaking with the nurses calmly that I was faint. I vaguely recall as I blacked out hearing one of the nurses say something like "should I hit him" then someone said no, give the adrenaline push. a few seconds later I came around and the whole thing was surreal. I didn't know it at the time but I flat lined according to my Doc for a 8 seconds. I recall saying to my wife later that if that was what dying was like then no problem. It was extremely calm, warm and surprising relaxing. But of course it could have simply been Vagal response or something medical like this a few commented? What ever that means. Anyway, everything went well after that recovery proceeded and other than some minor drug adjustments I am fine.
Somewhere in front of my lies another scheduled date with the English Channel Sept 1-6, 2014 to be exact and the yet unknown cervical neck issue that I hope through better and more holistic training I can avoid to achieve my dream of being the 50th over 50 person in history to cross the English Channel. My coach, Marcia Cleveland and training pal Doug McConnell will get me their!
This Saturday I do my follow-up stress test which I expect to be normal, despite my hating running, and hope to return to some normal land and water training to have fun and build back endurance for perhaps a short race or two yet this fall.
The true test of ones resilience. Listen to your body and get a full stress test.
I recently took a breather from my 2011 English Channel attempt and training to let my cervical neck impingement calm down to some 'normal state' as a test to see if swimming itself, and the resulting wear and tear on my body was the cause of my symptoms - warm tingling sensations between my shoulder blades, across the outside of my shoulders and neck.
After these symptoms calmed down, and I began to really listen to my body, something else was amiss. These sensations when I exercised even a little bit were now also in my left front chest pectoral region and sometimes dropped down to my inside left and right elbow or even to the inside palm of my hand. A burning sensation at the back of my throat from time to time seemed linked with the amount of food I ate and led me to discuss this with my doctor, who is very good and put me on a standard OTC prescription for GERD. He already had known about the neck issues and we all thought this was it.
During my EC training I had taken heavy loads of NSAID's and then switched to Celebrex for the cervical neck impingement pain and assumed this and the intense nutritional food loading, supplements, highly concentrated carbo diet we marathon swimmers consume probably led to tearing up my stomach lining. So we went merrily along and as my annual physical came along plus turning 50 years old we decided to get a full stress test.
WOW a big surprise was waiting for me.
After 13 minutes on the tread mill, my aerobic capacity and conditioning would not allow my heart rate to max out (I only got up to 148 out of the prescribed 170 I recall) at the prescribed maximum so they kept going and effectively ran me into the floor. Finally giving in (thinking that Nurse Hatchet & Attila the Hun were running the machine I am a swimmer, not a runner) I stopped.
A testament to my training, my resting heart rate after one minute was back to 72. But in those 13 plus minutes they detected a flutter and moments later saw the telltale evidence on the X ray scope that I had some cardiac event.
Referencing my earlier blog posts on cervical neck impingement issues, I want to share my near miss and trio of symptomatic cross-references between my newly diagnosed cardiac 'walking angina' which I will undergo an angiogram procedure this Friday for complete evaluation and the earlier reported cervical neck problems (c 4-7).
What is relevant to the marathon swimming community is the overlap of symptoms between cardiac situations, GERD and cervical neck impingement's and ignoring these in favor of assuming its the training and bio-mechanical stress on your body, DON'T!.
All result in discomfort, tingling, a fuzzy warm sensations across the same area as noted above I have learned. For me personally, I would not describe this as 'pain' but then again as a marathon swimmer pain in these areas from training, age and competition masks goes with the territory.
So Friday with my health care professionals leading the way, I embark on a journey that will take me to the 'heart of the matter' no doubt testing my resilience along the way then to cervical neck repairs perhaps with an eye on returning to the English Channel and open water swimming.
Referencing