On Flathead Lake, Two Girls Change into One with the Water

As the founding father of the Flathead Lake Open Water (FLOW) Swimmers, which promotes open water swimming within the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, Mark Johnston was thrilled when he acquired a name inquiring about ideas for swimming its size. When he acquired one other inquiry a short time later from a swimmer enthusiastic about testing the identical endurance waters, his enthusiasm turned to suspicion.  

“It was almost like I was confused,” Johnston mentioned. “Is this the same person calling? Because I don’t get calls like that very often.”  

It wasn’t. Bella Seagrave, a 23-year-old Missoula-born swimmer, and Tess Andres, a seasoned marathon swimmer from Virginia, each occurred to have their sights set on including the lake to their private accomplishments this summer season. Neither knew of one another.  

The first particular person on file to swim the 28-mile-long lake was Paul Stelter in 1986, with seven others trickling into the file guide over the subsequent almost 40 years.  

On July 19, Seagrave swam her approach into the information because the youngest particular person to make the swim. Eight days later, Andres swam the size in 15 hours and 27 minutes.  

“Eight people, it took forever, and then two people did it within like, eight days of each other,” Johnston mentioned.  

Seagrave has been swimming since she was 6 years outdated, persevering with via highschool and ultimately into faculty at Long Island University – Brooklyn in New York. So a lot in order that, now, swimming in a pool frequently is as a lot a hair care routine as it’s train, she mentioned. 

“I find it’s good for my hair and my skin, which is contradictory to what most people say,” Seagrave mentioned. “I figure I’ve just been swimming for so long my body had to reroute and get used to the chlorine.”  

In fall of 2024, a longtime coach and marathon swimmer, Monica Bender, reached out to see if Seagrave would try and swim Flathead Lake together with her. Seagrave, having graduated earlier that yr and lacking the construction of a swimming schedule, agreed.  

“It just seemed like the natural thing to do to fill that spot,” Seagrave mentioned.  

Seagrave put her bachelor’s diploma in train physiology to make use of by constructing her personal coaching routine, which included being the primary one within the pool most mornings at Missoula’s YMCA.  

Shortly into her coaching block, Bender triggered an outdated shoulder damage, stopping her from ending sufficient exercises in time. Instead, she joined Seagrave’s mother, dad, and uncle on the assist crew, sharing her data gleaned from previous marathon swims, together with the demanding 21-mile crossing of the English Channel.  

Around the identical time, Seagrave additionally started teaching 8-year-olds for her outdated membership staff. 

“I’m helping them learn to like swimming and, in the process, reconnecting with why I like swimming,” Seagrave mentioned. “There was a lot of mental training that went into it as well. You can’t just schedule a session in the mental gym.”  

A number of weeks earlier than the scheduled swim, Seagrave ran the Missoula marathon, for which she’d concurrently been coaching. 

For the previous 5 summers, Andres has set a private objective of finishing a marathon swim, which she defines as distance better than 10 kilometers that’s not current-assisted, every summer season. She landed on Flathead Lake as her focus swim this summer season, recalling a “big, pretty lake” from the primary time she visited the Flathead Valley about 17 years in the past. That time, she had damaged her again leaping from a bridge on the finish of a float alongside the Flathead River.  

“This was like my comeback tour to Montana and Flathead Lake,” Andres mentioned.  

Andres swam in faculty and rapidly fell in love with swimming in open water. As she obtained older, the theme of her challenges developed, trending towards going additional fairly than quicker. A science instructor and exercise director at a Virgina center college, Andres mentioned her summers supplied the chance to take day without work and pursue longer journeys to discover new locations to swim.  

She travels with a gaggle of different swimmers, having visited and swam alongside St. Croix within the Caribbean, North Dakota, Vermont, California, and others.  

“It’s a really fun way to kind of see new places and challenge ourselves in new bodies of water,” Andres mentioned.  

For Flathead Lake, Andres corralled a few swimmer pals as assist crew and reached out to a good friend in Montana for a ship captain connection. In April, Andres encountered a setback when she broke her elbow, requiring a six-week relaxation from swimming, which made coaching “tricky.” When she returned from therapeutic, she resumed coaching, however restricted her swimming to shorter intervals and distances than she would usually log whereas coaching for a marathon swim.  

Later in July, Andres and her pals flew out to Montana, proper on schedule. 

Seagrave and Andres are the third and fourth girls on file to swim the lake’s size, with Seagrave acknowledged because the youngest at 23-years-old. 

The different two girls, Sarah Thomas and Emily von Jentzen, each have swimming resumés and information that defy gender. Thomas holds the quickest Flathead Lake crossing ever at 13 hours and 39 minutes, whereas Von Jentzen stays the one particular person on file to swim the size of Flathead Lake and again in a single, 56-mile push. 

Johnston, whose roots within the open water and ultra-distance swimming world date again to the early 2000s, mentioned that it’s widespread for girls to excel at marathon swimming. 

“Especially nowadays in swimming, the ultra-marathon events are tending to be more done and accomplished by women rather than men,” Johnston mentioned.  

Numerous research through the years have discovered that relating to swimming lengthy distances, girls are sometimes quicker than males. According to research by exercise researcher Beat Knechtle and others, it’s partly as a result of the feminine physique is healthier at burning fats over longer distances than the male physique. Female our bodies sometimes have round 31% physique fats, whereas males often have round 19% — and a better fats share equals higher buoyancy and insulation towards chilly water.  

To do a marathon race in any respect requires quite a lot of work, which is a part of why Johnston began FLOW Swimmers — to make details about swimming Flathead Lake extra accessible. Hiring or discovering a assist boat and crew can be time consuming and fiscally draining. Above all, nevertheless, Johnston mentioned the psychological problem of getting ready for an extended swim is what makes it distinctive.  

“It’s really that the mental challenge of doing anything for 17 hours is to me as hard as doing the swim,” mentioned Johnston. “So that mental aspect of just hanging with anything for that long is what I try to convey to most people.”  

When it got here time for Seagrave to swim, the climate turned inclement. With restricted day without work for her and the crew and the whole lot deliberate for that weekend, Seagrave mentioned she felt it “pretty much had to happen that day,” regardless of the climate.   

At 11:26 p.m., Seagrave dove into the water at Somers.  

The waves have been uneven, however bearable. She appreciated beginning at night time as a practiced pool swimmer, so she couldn’t see what was within the water. Her assist staff tossed her Swiss Rolls and Smucker’s Uncrustables to assist preserve her going.

Then someplace in the midst of her swim, the wind shifted. Seagrave recalled her captain telling her the waves have been six to seven ft tall. The massive waves made it tough for her to breathe, whereas including distance to her to swim and requiring extra vitality — with each exertion, the swell would drag her again.  

“If I had been swimming against those, I think I would have had to stop,” Seagrave mentioned. “There was no practicing in those waves because I shouldn’t have been swimming in waves like that. But it’s what happened.”  

Seagrave mentioned the true psychological pressure got here whereas in Polson Bay.  

At 6:14 a.m. eight days later, Andres jumped in at Somers. Her climate was luckily higher. She tried to keep away from mountain peaks that appeared to inch by, relishing the hen nuggets thrown to her each 5 or 6 hours from her assist crew.  

“I just got out there and you get into a zone and just keep going,” mentioned the seasoned marathon swimmer. 

Andres felt nervous about her elbow and instructed her good friend Heather to not share stats from a web based tracker till she reached the “Narrows,” a bottleneck characteristic separating Polson Bay from the northern a part of the lake, in case she didn’t make it. 

“Then she posted it, and I was like, ‘yay!’ Even though the Narrows to the finish was mentally the hardest part,” Andres mentioned.  

Both Andres and Seagrave described encountering the psychological problem of being so near a end line that appeared to linger the identical distance away regardless of their regular strokes and relentless ahead progress. Their respective assist boats waved off the boats whizzing across the busy outlet.  

In order to have the swim formally ratified by the Marathon Swimmers Federation, Andres swam and not using a wetsuit, with out touching the boat and with out carrying a watch. Seagrave, unconcerned about having her swim ratified, adopted the identical guidelines, however made an exception for carrying her watch.  

Miscommunication between Seagrave and her assist crew led her to imagine she had 1 / 4 left of the bay, when she was solely 1 / 4 of the way in which via. Her dad, following beside her in a kayak, started to sink as waves crashed over his boat, filling it with water. 

“I can see the shoreline, but it’s not getting any closer, and my dad is sinking behind me,” Seagrave mentioned. “But it worked out.”  

After 17 hours and 36 minutes of swimming, Seagrave’s ft touched floor in Polson. As she walked out, her knees buckled, and a girl got here out and helped her up.  

Supported by good climate and expertise, Andres completed at 15 hours and 27 minutes.  

“I kind of want to do a redemption swim with good weather,” Seagrave mentioned. “But it’ll have to be in a couple years.”  

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