I good a team. I hope you're bloody great. It's me. It's Tammy Van, It's Tiffany ankled katsasit you. It's the bloody you project coming at you. I was going to say live, definitely not live. It's light for us in the moment, We'll start for the non swimmer in my top left corner. The pugilist is she who punches humans in the face for joy Hi.
Tiv Hi and sinks to the bottom of the pool.
Yeah, you don't really have a good kind of body composition for floating. You're you're kind of a little bit rockish in the floatability department. There was a time in my life where I was like a fucking human cork. I was a fat, little fucking bobby up and down. You could just people could sit on me and fucking row ashore like I was like a fucking canoe with feet. I mean, I was so fucking floating.
That's what miss the window to get you into marathon swimming.
Then, huh oh you did. But I could eat my way back there in a fucking month. Don't worry about that. If I committed to getting fat, I could be fucking world class by Tuesday. Don't worry. Hi Tammy, how are you?
I am well, thank you. That was a great introduction.
Yes, putting on fun things to do when you're a marathon sim It's just it actually falls in line with sumo wrestling, I think one of the few sports where you know, the fat body fat is admired.
Well it's not only is it my admired, it's like a physiological necessity for survival and performance and you know, getting the job done right.
Absolutely, because you know, cold, when you're swimming in cold water, it doesn't care how fit you are, and you have to gain that extra insulation layer to basically survive for long periods of time in freezing waters when you're doing big, long swims.
So yeah, it literally is a survival technique.
But you have to you have to do otherwise you might not make it to the other side.
So me as an exercise physiologist, right, I'm fascinating because I guess there's so you think, oh, well, obviously you need to be able to fit enough, to be fit enough to you know, swim the English Channel or Bass Straight or Murray River or Cook Straight or all the bloody myriad of things that you swam but so you've got to be fit enough obviously, but then you've got to be able to swim well, so technically you've got to be able to swim, but then the more fat
you've got, the more floatable or the more buoyant you are. And then also the more body fat you've got, the more you're protected from the cold. So you might be really fit and really good technically, but you can't get the job done just because you ain't got enough warps and.
That is so true.
But it's also a balance because although that helps you to fly, you've also got to be strong enough to carry that extra weight through the pool. So you can be fit, but then you have to I guess up your fitness to be able to you know, pull that extra in five ten kilos and it does balance out
obviously with the floatation. But yeah, so it's a fine line between getting enough weight on to be able to sustain yourself to actually make it, and yet not too much on the other side, where you know you're compromising lots of your fitness or you're not fit enough, you have to train your way through. So it's a really
difficult situation. It's like the conundrum isn't it. You're trying to get fit, you're trying to gain weight, trying to be able to build strength, so there's so many things going on, and yeah, it's a fine balance, that's for sure.
It's like a dichotomy or a contradiction because you know, endurance training expends vast amount of calories, right, So one, you've got to eat enough calories just to fucking break even, and then you've got to double that so you can get fat on top of all the you know, functional fat. There's a thought, Yeah, what what was the I mean? Is that unenjoyable? I'd like, it seems like to me, I think, wow, imagine just having to fucking at all the food part of me is like ever, best day ever.
But in reality it wouldn't be much fun. I would imagine, oh, look.
It's best day ever for you know, for a few weeks, like everything, you know, the joy kind of goes out of it. At first, You're like really excited about the prospect of eating whatever you like. You know, like back in the day, Yeah, I might have been impartial to a few doughnuts and chocolate and eating peanut butter straight from the jar and cakes and you know, all those things that usually are off limits for an elite.
High performance.
And it's great fun, but then it becomes a chore because you're literally you know, like you said, I was training in the vicinity of twenty to twenty five kilometers a day swimming and trying to eat enough to just cover the calories that I expend in my training was hard, let alone, then trying to make game.
On top of that.
So it's literally like a full time job. If you're not sleeping or swimming, you're eating. You just have to keep stuff in your face. So like everything that the novelty wears off fairly quickly. And yeah, everybody's envious. And in fact, I had a lot of support crew that were like.
Hey, bring me up, Hey Tam, I've eaten, like, you know, a whole block of cadgurys and I've put on another kilo.
But they wouldn't come to the pool and train with me. They were just my eating support crew.
Pure nutritional emotional eating support crew.
Correct.
What was the what was the coldest water that you swim in?
Ah, that would be lockness, That would be lockness.
It was about six decrees in locknow six to seven. But it felt like, you know, when you see the news were on, the weather presenter says, you know, tomorrow is going to be twelve, but it's going to feel like it's minus two.
And that was pretty.
Much lockness because it's fresh water and it's very den and whereas the saltwater get the boy and see and you know, it just feels a lot easier to swim through fresh waters, like like swimming through syrup, and it's heavy, it's dense, and you sink, so you have to work hard, you have to expend more energy to keep yourself afloat, and you also, yeah, struggle to stay as warm.
So yeah, that I really felt it in Luckiness.
And I do remember at one point, I think I was just past the halfway mark and I was so freaking cold.
I was just like an icicle. And I turned around to my support crew and actually said to them, I wish Nessie would let it come up and eat me right now. I'm that cold and put me out of my misery.
And on my support crew, I had Olympic ledgend Dawn Fraser, and Dawn's like she just looked at me, She's just gone, well, Nessie doesn't like cold cuts, So just keep swimming.
Oh wow, so.
No sympathy, no sympathy.
Yeah, God bless hers.
You just said that's you keep food Messi's not going to like you.
I never thought. I mean, I don't know why I never thought of this, but I never thought about the difference in buoyancy between fresh and salt water. Do you do you have any way to illustrate that, Like, is there a number? Is there some kind of comparative, you know, like we're twenty five percent more buoyant when we're in salt versus fresh or maybe you can google, maybe the interwebs can tell us that TIF compare buoyancy in fresh water for to salt order for a swimmer. So that
that that took you nine hours and six minutes. I've got all your data here, it's my memory.
Is not that fucking amazing I've.
Got I'm glad you reminded me. I couldn't remember.
Well, you were the first person. Yeah, you were the first person to swim It's forty kilometers in nine hours and six minutes. Well, is it more physically or mentally challenging?
You know it's physically challenging, but is.
It harder to keep your head in the game than your body in the water.
I think.
So, Look, I really believe it's a mental game at the end of the day, because I think once you get to a certain level of fitness, you know, it's all about the mental game that you play, because if you if you haven't got the right strategies and the tools, you know, it's so easy to pull out at any.
Point in time because you just you're continually hit.
By waves of different things, whether that be like the physical waves, or whether that be the cold, or whether that even just be you know, your mind in a tailspin, you know, out of boredom even because you've got to keep yourself occupied for a long period of time.
You're in your own.
Head, so of course you get the thoughts and the doubts in spinning around. So you've got to keep yourself on an even keel for a long period of time. And you know, it's like a negotiation. Your brain's constantly negotiating with the body because you know it's giving you all sorts of signals to tell you how bad you're feeling and how much pain you're in, and it's really it's hard to ignore them. As you get on and specifically in a very long swim, you're also sleep deprived.
So not only you know.
Are you physically exhausted, but you're you know, your brain, your decision making processes are slowed down from the cold and also from the actual exhaustion of you know, maybe swimming through the night when a time when you would be sleeping. So you're just not functioning at your best level. And the further you go, obviously, the more the mental aspect comes into play.
And I mean, and the bottom line, and we all do things that aren't great for our body, but the bottom line is it's not awesome for your body. Right, It's not like, oh, this is a good thing for my body, Like it's a potentially dangerous thing for your body. So what are the provisions? And like, obviously you have a medical person. I imagine you have a doctor or someone in the crew. What who gets to make that call?
Like if you're like no, you can all get fucked on swimming and they're like noewere take like under what circumstances can pull you out of the water? What needs to be happening.
That's a that's a really great question and it's something that we explored through I guess through nearly a tragedy because I actually swim in the English Channel with.
My brother in nineteen ninety three, my brother John, and.
We wanted to become the first brother and sister assuming the English Channel together. And I put on ten kilos and I think he'd put on close to ten kilos as well. But his starting point was a lot dinner than me, and so he didn't have as much fat, and even in training swims leading into the channel, you know, he'd get a lot colder than I would, you know, when we'd go for six hours was in the bay.
So during the English Channel swim four kilometers away from the coast of France, he actually got hypothermia and a couple of you know, like he stopped for a feed and they you know, his support creed on his boat at that time was Dawn. She asked him me uok, and he said yes. He was able to answer some basic questions and within about five minutes then he just basically sunk, disappeared underwater.
Dawn jumped into the water, pulled him back on board the boat.
She broke two ribs in the process of pulling him back in because it was a rough crossing and she had to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation basically, so through that horrendous experience, he luckily he was okay and they were able to motor back to England again. And I was still swimming at this point in time, and I was unaware and the crew. I kept asking how's John, How's John? Because I was very worried about him getting hypothermia.
It was in my mind for most of the swim, and they wouldn't give me any updates on how he was going. They just said, no, he's fine, but they wouldn't give me any specifics and they didn't want to tell me because they were worried that I wouldn't finish because I was only a couple of kilometers offshore, So they didn't tell me until actually after I'd finished my crossing, and then you know, obviously I jumped back on my boat and we motored back to England, sort of chasing their boat to make sure.
I was beside myself worried about how he was. So there was.
A happy ending to that outcome, luckily. But you know, lessons learned, and so now whenever I'm in a cold water swim, Dawn has the Basically, she has the ability to call a swim off, which is a huge responsibility
to put on someone's shoulders. But we have a pact that if she thinks that, you know, I've been in the water for a long period of time and I'm heading towards hypothermia, she'll ask me what my name and my date of birth is, and if I can't answer those questions quickly and clearly, then the swim's over and she'll pull me out, no questions asked. Because when you sort of hypothemia is a slow creeping thing on the body and then all of a sudden, you know, before.
You know it, you're hypothermic. So you can answer very basic questions yes and.
No, but when you need to actually think about something, your response is a lot slower.
So that's the sort of level.
Of safety that we have, you know, for the swims, and everybody knows that. So it's good to have that, you know, through that lesson, we learned we needed to have those protocols in place.
That's amazing, And how did God bless Dawn, she's fucking represent Shout out to Dawn. She probably won't listen to this, but I saw you on the news the other night, Love and you're back in the pool and you've had a few challenges. She's doing well. She was doing some easy, peasy laps I saw on the news. Good on her. How did that? How did that impact John? Like did he like like fuck that I'm not doing that anymore? Or did it scare him? Did it make him reassess what happened?
I think it made him reassess.
He put on a bit of bravado, and you know, we came back to Australia and you know, just sort of came the farm for a little bit. But he actually decided that he wanted to go back again and do the channel and not let it beat him. And so he I think he was more receptive to taking on board advice because we had been telling him to put on more weight, you know, because the signs were there, and like I said, I was very concerned because you know, he was not coping as well with the cold you know.
Before we left.
So this time he put on We went back the following year in ninety four, and he put on twenty two kilos. Wow, twenty two kilos, and yeah, we became the first brother and sister assumed the channel together, so successful crossing.
Yeah, and he's a naturally lean dude.
I haven't seen him for but I used to see a fair bit of him. He's a lean dude naturally.
Right, Yeah he is.
He's very tall and very lean, very muscular, and he's actually very suited to endurance running as well.
He's a fantastic marathon runner as well.
He's one of those rare athletes that can cross over and has crossed over and you know sort of done went into triathlons iman and ultra you know, try ultra endurance trathlons as well. He did want from London to Paris as well. So yeah, it's it's incredible. He's very versatile, but yeah, he runs very lean, so for him, you know, for athletes like that. You know, again, everybody is different and that's why your training is really important. You've got
to listen to your body. You've got to understand what it's going through. It's the same with your feed regimes, like you know, you have timings for your feeds during a swim and what you have, like you know, it varies from athlete to athlete because you know, one particular formula for one person, you know, makes somebody else throw up.
So there's all different variables, and it's really important to.
Put in the groundwork and the base and know what works for you and practice it again and again and again.
That's so interesting. Like we talk a lot, Tif, I'm going to ask you that question in the moment. I apologize. We talk a lot about genetic variability and how everyone's body responds tam differently to even the same stimulus. It's like you and Tiff might eat the same diet, do the same training, had the same amount of sleep, same mount and recovery, totally different outcomes. Right, she gets injured, your fine, or you get injured chese fine, or she
makes amazing progress, you stagnate. Whatever. It's a bit about the diet and the training and the recovery, but it's a lot about how your body responds to that particular protocol. And I love the I love that you're saying that somebody can have a certain formula in the water and it's going to make them throw up. But for somebody else that's exactly what they need. That's just trial and error. I guess, is.
It it is? It is?
I mean, you know, obviously you take on board, the generic advice of what people are using a particular carbohydrate drink or bananas or you know, so you listen to the advice and then you just practice that in your training leading in and so you trial something and see whether it agrees with you and see whether you still
feel like you're performing well. And obviously you have to take that you have to do long swim, so you literally whilst you don't do the full distance, you know, you're doing training sessions that are quite long, and you just need to keep trying and practicing different things until you find something that you think works for you and is agreeable and look, and you have to have a couple of plan b's as well, because you know, sometimes even during a swim, one thing may that may have
worked for you in training, may be good for the beginning of the swim, but then you find, you know, you start to feel a bitqueasy, so you need to change. So you just have to have plan A, Plan B, Plan C. It's about being prepared. It's just all about being prepared and tailoring it to yourself and that only comes through practice before you actually enter the event.
And so what was your I'm sure things varied over time, but like in the lock nest, like nine hours freezing water, coldest water you've ever been in. You wanted the locknest monster to eat you halfway. You're hating life, what you go to? What are you drinking or eating in that situation.
So I for a lot of my you know, for a lot of my swims, pretty much probably for ten years, I used a particular energy bar that I sawced out of Canada that taps into your body fat and gives it to you as fuel.
And that worked.
Mean it's chocolate, and I would turn that into a powder. Yeah I couldn't. They didn't actually have it as a powderfum back in the early days, but they did then turn it into a bit of a I'd grind it up and then it'd be like a hot chocolate for me, or lukewarm might have it in the cold water swims, So cold water SOMs, you're going to want to be having stuff that's warm, generally to make you feel better on the inside. Hot water swims generally you know, cold drinks.
But for me that was my go to and herbal tease that sort of thing, as well as bananas occasionally mouthwash just shirensing salt water SIMS was really helpful because your mouth becomes so salty that you actually can't taste anything either, Like your throat and tongue just swells up.
And that's one of the things as well.
At further you go like you can't help but swallow water during a rough crossing, so you start to get an upset stomach, so that interferes again with what you're able to keep down and also just the crew being able to access you. I remember during Bastraight, I swim
mostly during the nighttime and the waves picked up. We had three to four meter swells, and the crew found it difficult just to sort of pass me my drinks and food like, because a wave of just knock it out of their hands, so we'd have to try again and try again. So it became very frustrating even just to get sustenance at some point. So all these little things again, you know, it's where the mental game comes in.
It's so easy to get really overwhelmed and upset and frustrated with what's going on, but you just have to try and stay calm.
Did you find out anything.
I found out that there is a two point eight percent increase in density with salt order, which sounds tiny, but it's a game changer when you're swimming. Fun fact, though, the deep the Dead Sea has a salinity so high that it's twenty five percent denser than regular ocean water.
Yeah, so you can float on the top and read a newspaper and yeah, I've seen pictures of people doing that.
It'd be terrible to swim in, but.
I'd be a world class swimmer in the Dead Sea. Hey, Tam, do you know? Thanks TIV, feel free to ask a question, tip or jump in, Tam, do you know so when you're I mean, this would be a guestimate, but I'd just be curious around calorie expenditure per hour when you're in lock nest, because there's the thermogenic requirement of trying to keep your fucking body warm, Like trying to maintain body heat is a massive calorie burner. And then on
top of that, of course the swimming. Any idea how many calories you were burning per hour in that swim or any of your swims.
I have no idea how many calories I was burning, but I can tell you that I lost ten kilos during the swim.
You're in lockmans. Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Hang on, I'm writing that down. Think about think about that, everyone, ten kilos and you were in the water for nine hours and six minutes. I'm trying to yes, nine hours and six hell everyone, so everyone head to lock nest.
There's your answer.
I got bucko zen pic.
Just swim in freezing water, dodge a few lockless monsters, and gastric bypassed.
I wonder, I mean, I know, like obviously some of that that weight loss would be water loss. But I mean, this is a strange question. I probably shouldn't ask it, but fuck it. But before you got in the water, right, you were chubby obviously because you needed to be for the like you had to gain all the fat for functional and health reasons. Could could were you noticeably leaner when you got out? Like did you? Did you?
Yeah?
Yeah? Yeah? Yeah?
Absolutely no, noticeably thinner? Same with Bastraight. I lost ten kilos across bas straight as well, and I think I lost eight across the English channel, so yeah, yeah, so it varied, but yeah, it was pretty high up there with calorie loss.
So yeah, this podcast, this podcast could be called how to Lose ten kilos in nine hours?
It could be or it could be called swim yourself, thin.
Yourself. So what's the hottest water or the warmest water of swimming as competitively or as an event or as a one of your challenges.
Yeah, So I did this race in Greece in a place called the Gulf of Toronaos, and the water temperature there was twenty nine degrees salt water, and I actually got hyppathermia.
By the time I came out.
I was so I literally came out I was so sun burn because it was full summer in Greece. And afterwards that night I started to violently shiver because I was sumbern I had hypothemis, so I was like wrapping myself in sleeping bags and all the warm clothes. So it was the opposite effect, you know. I'd maintained my fluids, but yeah, it was just so hot that I'd overheated. And the other place where I'd swim in warm water
was the Murray. When I started swimming the length of the Murray, I started up in Koreyng in the high country, and it was only about nine or ten degrees in the river. Because I was swimming in the snowmoult coming down from Coosiosco. But sort of two months in I crossed the border into South Australia.
We were about two thousand nearly two thousand k's.
You know, down the road, and Adelaide had like the hottest summer on record for like twenty years, and it was fifty five degrees in the shade, and it was twenty nine degrees in the Murray River, and so swimming in the river was it was like swimming in boiling water too. It was really hard, and so I had to space my swims out. Generally, i'd start really early in the morning and swim sinner's sunrise and we had
light and we could see our way clear. I'd start swimming for maybe three or four hours, and then we'd rest during the main part of the day because of just you know, the heat of the sun and the risk of sunstroke as well. And then i'd start again in the late the late afternoon and swim into the evening until sunset. So yeah, yeah, different, different end of the spectrum swimming.
I'm pretty sure I asked this last time, but I can't remember, so I'm sure our listeners can't remember. The second part. I didn't the first part, I think I did snakes in the Murray River, Yes, I think. Remind me. Remind me about what was the You bumped into a few, or you saw a few, or crew saw a few.
Yeah, yes, we had a few encounters of the reptilian kind. Tigers and brown snakes are quite prevalent on the Mari, and I guess if you're going there for a holiday, you don't generally see them. So there was a couple of factors that added to the number of snake sidings that we had, and one of them was that the river had been in drought for five years prior to me starting my swim, and I actually thought that I would be walking parts of it it was that dry.
But two weeks before I was due to start, we had like really heavy downpaws and so much so that the river was out of its banks, and the sees advised me to postpone my swim by a week or two until it sort of receded, and of course that flushed out from the wetland areas as well a lot more snakes and so Yeah, so a few times we
saw them. My crew the way that I had my crew structures that I had a boat beside me, a kayak paddler on the other side, and then another boat which was my scout boat up ahead, and its job was for them to look for snags and snakes and then you know, obviously shout out. But it was really scary for me because I had ear plugs in, you know, to avoid getting ear infections.
And so, and the water was pretty muddy, and so.
I was really on edge quite a lot because I was worried that I wouldn't hear, you know, the whistle being blown if there was a snake, and a couple of times, you know, I had to be evacuated extracted out of the river pretty quickly because there was a snake up ahead.
In fact, the first time my crew saw a snake.
They actually thought, oh, we'll run over it with the IRB and of course then the snake actually disappeared under the water and sort of popped up at the river banks. We didn't realize that snakes can actually swim quite far under the water, so.
That made me even more paranoid.
I was like, oh, no, I'm swimming along, I can't see underneath me and I touched something and I think it's a snake, and particularly as I got further as well, because I was getting more and more exhausted. I remember being in South Australia again and I'd stop for a bee and all of a sudden, I had this really sharp, sort of like a sting on my back, and I thought.
And I started crying and screaming.
I said, I met you.
I was just delirious at.
That time, so hot, and my crew like pulled me out of the water really quickly, zip down my wet suit and there was a bee that had sort of snuck its way.
Yeah.
Yeah, but because I, you know, immediately went to snake. So was that was that paranoid about it? Because we'd seen so many you know, when we were camping on the side of the river bank, but also in the water. So yeah, some pretty scary moments with that, and also with the snags, and I got concussed a couple of times running into submerged logs as well.
So that was, yeah, you're always always on edge.
It was hard to relax and that that was probably one of the most difficult parts of the swim.
Hell, I mean, this was never in doubt, but you're so much braver than me. I mean, that was never an issue. I mean, nobody doubted that, including me, but I just thought i'd clear that up an.
I'm we've got it on public record, now keep this chick.
That's I mean, nobody's surprised by that. I would I'm not even being funny. This is not even me being funny for a gag. I would not fucking get in the wa if they went, oh, by the way, there's tiger snakes and brown snakes, I'll be like, fuck that swim I'm jogging. I'm like, put me in a swimming pool or something. My other question was speaking of dangerous Australian wildlife in the in the ocean. Of course, sharks never an issue or some ever.
Yeah, a couple of times, really yeah, yeah.
So probably the scariest one was when I did the cook Straight from in New Zealand from the North to the South Island, and I actually did the first crossing and I had a really great swim and I broke the world record, and then I planned to do a double.
So I turned around and I started swimming back again to the North Island and I was only I'm going to say less than a kilometer in and the tides turned weather conditions started to deteriorate, and the crew said to me, look, you know it's it's really becoming messy. It's better to pull the pin now because it's just not going to be an easy swim to get back.
So I sort of, you know, relented, and I swam to the back of the boy and literally, as I was climbing up the back ladder, like a three and a half meter white pulled up right like you saw the fin, like it just rose from the depths, and it pulled up right where I was swimming, not like fifteen seconds before.
And the thing about this was that I was actually.
Consented because you know, I always worry about sharks. And I had said to the old and I of the swim because there's a cook Straight Swimming Association, and I'd said to the organizer, hey, like, you know, what's the precautions with sharks here and so do you use a cage or what's the go And he said, no, no, don't need to worry about sharks.
You know, we never have an issue with them.
They get scared off by the noise of the engine, so you know, don't panic, It's all going to be fine. So, of course, as this shark pulls up and I'm climbing up the back of the boat. I straight away grab the organizer knows it to.
So what's wrong with this shark then? Is he deaf or something?
I was like, you know, like that could have been me.
So it was one of those moments it was meant to be that I got out of it.
Just at that time just kind of just point out that three and a half meters is about twelve foot. I mean, that is that is a very big I mean, that's a that's going to bite you in half shark.
Like yeah.
And by the way, when you swim from one island to the next in New Zealand, like did you have north south South North?
I can't remember, I went north south.
Okay, So you swim from North Island to the South Island and you break the world record. What you do then is tam you go fuck, I'm good, and you get in the car and buger off. You don't turn around and go I'm going to swim back.
But yeah, that was the big part of it.
I was looking forward to doing my tumble turn at the end and then you.
Know, actually it was a scary finish to you because as I arrived in the South Island, you know, arrive just sort of just a bit up the coast from Picton and it's pretty much a sheer cliff face and there's rocks jutting out of the water, but there's huge kelp and you have to swim through the kelp and to physically but for them to stop the clock, you actually have to physically have your whole body out of the water.
So I had to find a rock to climb.
On, and of course, yeah, yeah, it was not rock climbing is not my thing. And late after you've been like you know, going flat chat in the water for you know, six seven hours and then like making my way through the kelp was really frightening because that was the scariest part.
So it was just was really big, like swimming through the kelp to find a place to stop.
So yeah, can I ask after, Well, yeah, you can ask because you've got a podcast and that's what you do, so you don't need to ask. If you can ask, you if fucking just ask. All right, thanks, Hey, everyone, just chatting myself. I'll be back in a moment and now back to the show. I'm just going to ask when you finished all the swimming, all the training, all the competing, and all the vast amount of energy expenditure.
Did you have to really be super duper careful about you know, diet, and because I would imagine if you kept your calories anywhere in the same ballpark, that wouldn't have ended well, are you right?
Yeah, no, one hundred percent, spot on.
I had to really think about what I was eating because swimming, I think when you're a swimmer anyway, you tend to eat a lot more.
I think because your body temperate.
You're in water, which is generally lower than your body temperature, so it stimulates your appetite, not like runners, where you tend to I guess burn more and you tend to be as hungry after.
A big run.
But you know, when you've been doing lots of swimming, you just work up such an appetite. So I was lucky that my body kind of adjusted so I didn't feel the need to eat as much. But you know, look, I had to be careful as well. But for a long time, even though I wasn't doing the marathons, I was still doing, you know, a bit of training because I love it.
I'm a bit addicted to the training.
The training is the part I really love more than the competition side of things. I just, you know, I really enjoy being part of the squad and just that feeling of, you know, being fit.
It's a great thing.
And I know that I perform a bitter mentally during the day if I've done some exercise.
So it's always been a big part of my life.
You know, when you've got to ask someone to a question, you think, fuck, I don't know if I should ask this question because this person who I'm talking to might like this person or might not like this person. And the person that I'm currently talking to is very polite. So anyway, there's a dude that's always coming into my feed.
And his I don't know.
I think he's probably the highest profile distant swimmer in the world. His name's Ross Edgeley.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about him. Yeah, yah, yeah, I've been following too.
Have you ever, Tiff, have you seen this dude? Right, He's been like fucking soup. You look at him, it's like this guy's a bodybuilder. He's not Ross Edgeley. Now, all of our listeners are going by the way, ladies and some of the blokes you will not be disappointed. You will not.
I'm not disappointed.
I'm a straight man, and I'm like, I'd probably spoon that motherfucker, no problems. We've got some popcorns and Netflix. I'd be pretty happy that dude, what do you think he's ripped and he seems he's he's swimming in the next week or two or three and one thousand miles around down Tactic or or something ridiculous.
Yeah, I'll be interested to see and to follow that from about how he's like, you know, how he's prepared for that. But I mean, look, he's done a lot of big swims, he's done a lot of cold water swims, so he knows what he's in for. And I do believe he's an exercise physiologist as well, so he's got the science.
You know, he's very knowledgeable.
So I imagine he'll be super prepared and I've done a lot of work for that, and it'll be interesting to see how he goes mentally. Is really strong, and yeah, it's great.
It's great to see.
Events like that where people are just you know, pushing the boundaries of human endurance in different ways, and especially in that cold water is going to be excruciating.
So yeah, yeah, imagine he's going to be doing very short stints.
It's going to be a lot of short swims because he wouldn't want to be in the water for too long, obviously risking hypodermic, but also just the energy deficit, like you know, because it makes you so tired, Like you come out and you are so tired.
So I think the recovery is going to be really important.
But obviously, again he would have been doing a lot of training and practicing and understanding those components of it and have it all together and have a pretty awesome support crew. I think he's going to have to have a pretty heavy duty medical team traveling, and he'll probably have a.
I wouldn't be surprised if he.
Has like an internal temperature age, if some sort inserted so that his support or he can monitor what his core temperature is at all times, so that if it drops too low that they can just extract him.
Yeah.
I was pretty happy with that until you got to the word inserted.
Yes, well to what do you think, well, between Bailey Smith yesterday and Ross Edgeley today, my insta feed is going to be cracking.
Now, Yeah, she didn't know how she didn't know who Bailey Smith was. He's an AFL player. She's now very happy with him. I don't think it hurts to have a bit of eye candy coming up in your feed tip.
I look very delightful. Everyone give him a follow apparently I'm the last person on earth to follow him, though he's already got a million.
Yeah, good on him. Hey, Sam, we'll wind up, but just quickly. The last few years haven't been a lot of fun for you. How are you has your health? How are you tracking? Do you need a hug from harps? What's the update?
I always can do with a hug, you know, that's a very important thing.
But no, look, thank you for asking. I'm doing well.
And yes, I celebrated two years post breast cancer treatment last week.
So yeah, you know, that.
Was an endurance journey of a different kind, and I guess, you know, it was something that was unexpected that I hadn't prepared for, you know, a lot of uncertainty. So I used a lot of the mental strategies that you know, went into the marathon seeming side of things to sort
of get me through treatment. But it was a very very different experience, you know, in terms of being thrown in the deep end, I guess you could say, because I said, you know, I didn't know what to expect, whereas at least with the marathons whom I've trained for it, I'm prepared. I understand what the variables are. But you know, when you are diagnosed with something like cancer, it's a
it's a totally different journey to go through. But I'm happy to say that I'm doing really really well, and yeah, and I've learned a lot of things, and it's you know, you come out the other side, and there's.
Always through the hard stuff.
There's always learnings and growth, and I think, you know, you might not see it when you're in the midst of it, and this.
Bloody sucks, but you know, it does change you.
And I think for me it's been being actually a real positive because I've sort of thought about I guess my health a.
Little bit more as well.
Like you know, it just changes your outlook on life a little bit and gives you a lot more empathy for what other people are going through. And I think, you know, sometimes we get so busy that we don't realize everybody else is going through lots of stuff. As well, so it's made me a bit more tolerant. So yeah, it's yeah, through bad things you get good things too.
But no, I'm doing well well.
You deserve all the good things from the day that I met you, which was I don't know, thirty years ago or something until you've.
Got it thirty years ago, dude, it was.
I know, I know, but I still can't believe. My brain doesn't want to accept that. I feel like that long ago that was walking in the doors of Harper's and you know, having a time of a life.
Being smad.
I'm going to try with a maniac. Hey, Tim, you're great, we love you. How can people find you? I know you do a lot of speaking. If you need somebody who's going to blow your socks off with your organization or your team, or your club or your school. I've heard Tammy speak many times. She's world class, She's fucking amazing. So at the very least have a chat with her. How do people connect with you and follow you and get you on board.
So they can find me on LinkedIn? Just under Tammy Van with the same with Instagram. They are two easy ways to connect. And my website is also just Tammy Vanwisa dot com.
Thank you, tam Well, say goodbye fair but love your guts. Thank you. Thank you for introducing Tiff to Ross Edgeley as well. Maybe I did that, but she's going to be hard crushed and we'll talk again because you bo.
Thank you,