Q&A Series #4 with Spencer Schneider
Athlete #4: Spencer Schneider
P2P Challenge: Block Island Swim
Questions by Mike Mata (Director of Mental Performance)
Mike: Let’s get to know you- describe yourself a bit.
Spencer: I'm a New Yorker. I'm 64. By day I'm a lawyer, I grew up in Long Island…I was always a swimmer, and I got more involved in swimming in my early fifties… so that's pretty much, you know, in a nutshell, I mean, I could go into my life story. But you don't want to hear that now, do you? Now? It's too much, it'll evolve. It'll come out in this interview. How's that?
Mike: What “pulls you in” when you think of a point-to-point challenge? What’s the draw for you?
Spencer: I love the Dawgpatch community, so I’ve been doing lots of swims for years. And, I love the accomplishment of doing them, but the added aspect of a community… with the right people and the right reasons, makes it really fulfilling and enjoyable for me.
Mike: Describe your passion for open-water swimming, or swimming generally
Spencer: I like all of them [different swim sports], I mean, they’re different sports… it’s like pool swimming is like running on a track, and open water swimming is more like running on a trail, because of the unpredictability of it. And that’s part of the challenge. Whereas in the pool, it’s a different challenge… and the other thing that I do is cold water swimming… no wetsuit, and just do as much as I can do, and that’s yet a different kind of sport… it’s more of an extreme sport, that’s kind of like mountain climbing I guess.
Mike: When you go on an open-water distance swim, you're kind of forced to be your own coach, essentially, in your own brain. How would you describe the way that you coach yourself? How are you speaking to yourself?
Spencer: Yeah. So that's a great question. How I speak to myself. It varies… I can't think of too many swims I've done where I didn't have punishing thoughts, difficult thoughts, very negative thoughts. And it will take me a while to recognize them. I mean, they always happen. And yet I don't recognize them for a while, because they're always a new one like oh, you know, “you're going too slow,” and everyone's faster. And what kind of stroke count do you have? You're thinking too much, and you're thinking negatively. And you know every sort of negative thought will come up, and I can't think of too many swims where it hasn't come up. And it takes work and patience till you can break through that… usually I'll be able to pull out of that and then appreciate the accomplishment… [I] have been able to say, “let's just keep going…” They have an expression in long distance swims: shut up and keep swimming… just drive through… have been able to do is to say, let's just keep going… at the recent Dawgpatch swim to Block Island, I had some very, very positive feelings of real gratitude, and pleasure that I hadn’t really had before in such sustained moments… I’m so lucky.
Mike: What were the waves of thoughts, feelings, and emotions like throughout?
Spencer: Yeah, it was great, because there was time in between [each swimmer]. So the way we did it was that we had 4 swimmers including myself… it was very emotional for me, because I had tried to swim across Block Island across Block Island Sound 7 years ago… I had tried to do the swim, you know, many years ago, and I pretty much gave up on it because… it's a very technical swim. It's very difficult. You have to get all the currents right. You need a crew. And you know, Drew was very much supportive of doing this, but we could never really find the right time, and the right crew and the right way to do it. And I think Drew felt that this was the year it was gonna happen we were gonna make it happen. We found the right boat, and so I felt enormous support… I was lucky enough to have, you know, Drew, the Dawgpatch…we couldn't have done it without these other swimmers. or the boat, each little component was necessary. So it wasn't just for me, I mean, it was for all of us. But I felt it. I felt a lot of it, and how it affected me, and because I was able to achieve this goal that I had… it made it all the more poignant for me because I had tried it before, and I had this wonderful support, and then I was able to support everybody else. So it was very nice.
Mike: Describe your perception of what it’s like to swim over 100+ feet of water
Spencer: I don't think it's any different, you know. I can't imagine it. What is that? That's like a hundred, 20 feet. That's like 12 stories or a 12 story building, you know something like that. I'm not even thinking about it. It's no different than you know… I can't see. You know it could be 6 feet. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. There's a lot going on down there. I try not to think about it. There's a lot of animals. I mean, there's a whole world down there. It's very complicated. I would imagine some people could get into a meditation about it… What's the difference? I mean you're floating. What's the difference? I mean, there's no different feeling… Here's the other thing. When you do these swims, you have a boat right in front of you, or next to you, and we had Nick on a paddle… having that person right next to you made a lot of difference… that is not something that scares me, the depth of the water. I have other fears that I have to deal with… one of them is getting too cold and that one I have overcome by practicing a lot in cold water… So when I become afraid of it, I just go back to well, “you can do this, Spencer; you've done this before.”
Mike: How do you work with emotions like fear or worry when out in the open water?
Spencer: What I am afraid of is jellyfish, and I just try to keep it out of my mind. You know, if it happens, it happens they suck. They really hurt and they're scary. But you know again, that's the choice that I've made. This is a sport that's gonna have that… there’s nothing you can do about it.
Mike: What are you doing in your downtime when you aren’t swimming? How are you resetting/recovering? And after a swim like this, what do you do to soak it in?
Spencer: I like to cross train… I'll do weights and stuff like that. I ride my bike, I walk a little bit… planning swims is usually with other people and I’ll get inspired by looking on Instagram and seeing what other people do… I usually have pizza that night, I like to treat myself with pizza… and ice cream is good… I try to just revel in the moment and think about what I accomplished, and usually those are good times also to think about the next one because you're in this good head space, you say. Oh, well, I did that shoot. Let's try another one. And then, you know, life kind of creeps back. I used to like, try the next day to swim or do work out, and that's just not a good idea. Because you could injure yourself if you don't let yourself recover. You really have to let yourself recover.
Mike: What’s next for Spencer?
Spencer: I’m thinking about doing a multi-hour swim… I haven't figured it out. I'll start thinking about that… I do want to start paddling because I know that’s probably the next direction. So I need to really start learning how to do that… I’m gonna write another book. I wrote a book a few years ago… life is kind of like a process of trying to figure yourself out, you know, and it's a good process. To say you figured yourself out is really limited, and is very depressing. Or to say that you have to figure yourself out is also very depressing, because it's just you can’t. and people who tell you should should go f*** themselves. Pardon my French, I mean I just feel very strongly about that… Thank you, Mike. I appreciate it. Such a pleasure to be here. I'm honored. And these were amazing questions and heavy duty… It's very helpful to me, and I hope it helps other people. I appreciate you putting words to things that I do. It does also help to build like, the community of like, you know, we're all the same. We're all only human, you know. It's human nature. So gee! You know, let's all have a little bit of togetherness on this. It's a very healing thing.
Check out the full Block Island Swim write-up here.