When Lewis Gordon Pugh looks at an expanse of icy-cold water he begins to perspire. His body temperature rises over a 15-minute period and, as it does so, he begins to feel thirsty.
It’s hardly the reaction most of us experience when we dip a toe into a cold pool, but it’s what makes Pugh an extraordinary swimmer. This unusual physical response will help the 35-year-old record-breaking long-distance swimmer to handle his next challenge — swimming in Antarctic waters, with penguins, seals and icebergs for company, while being assessed by scientists. His 1km swim, on December 15, will take place below the 65th parallel and, if successful, will break the record for the most southerly swim. What makes it all the more astonishing is that he will dive in wearing just a pair of Speedos and a cap, eschewing even the Channel swimmers’ favourite accessory, goose fat.
Don’t imagine that Pugh, a maritime lawyer based in London, enjoys the cold. “I enjoy the expedition and environment but I hate being cold,” he says with a wry grin.
Pugh first became attracted to distance swimming in South Africa when, as a teenager, he swam 10km (6 miles) from Robben Island to Cape Town in 3hr 42min after his parents moved to the city. Since then he can lay claim to a number of records, including becoming the first person to swim around the Cape of Good Hope. He developed his taste for cold-water swimming in August 2003 when he swam around the northernmost point of Europe, North Cape, in Norway, going on to swim 204km down a Norwegian fjord a year later. In August he took the record for the first swim in the Arctic Ocean.
Pugh first noticed his ability to “turn on the burners” before the North Cape swim. Before stripping off, he stood looking at the water, psyching himself up for the challenge with his coach, David Becker. It was during this 15- minute mental preparation that he found himself becoming so hot that he wanted to take his clothes off. “I looked at the ice and started feeling hotter and hotter. I kept asking my team for water and becoming aggressive, almost dying to get in the water.”
Accompanying Pugh on the Antarctic expedition will be a sports science professor, Tim Noakes, from the University of Cape Town. He observed Pugh’s ability to generate heat before immersion during the Arctic trip and dubbed it “anticipatory thermogenesis”. He plans to use the Antarctic expedition to establish for certain that this happens and to gain a greater understanding of how the human body copes in extreme temperatures. “We want to understand how Lewis can generate heat before the swim and how he manages to maintain his temperature at above 36C throughout the swim. A normal physiologist would say that it’s impossible to come out of water this close to freezing after 20 minutes with your temperature that high.
“Before Pugh takes the plunge we’ll be monitoring his heart rate, core body temperature (via a rectal thermometer) and muscle temperature, through a needle inserted into his leg muscle.” One theory is that a surge in hormones causes his temperature rise, so these will be monitored, too.
Before the Arctic swim, Professor Noakes measured Pugh’s core-body temperature rise to above 38C (100F). That might not sound high, but it takes a runner 20 minutes of hard exercising to raise his or her core-body temperature to that level. Pugh believes that regular exposure to cold water has produced an almost Pavlovian response: when his brain sees cold water it knows it has to heat up his body. This gives him a huge advantage over ordinary swimmers, as it takes longer for his temperature to fall near the danger zone of 35C, which is classified as clinical hypothermia. When Pugh was pulled into his support boat at the end of his 20-minute Arctic swim his core temperature had dropped to only 37C and 30 minutes later it was recorded at 35C, as his organs continued to try to warm the by now chilly extremities of his body.
If ordinary mortals exposed themselves to water at this temperature they would be disabled within seconds and drown before hypothermia had a chance to set in. “You would hyperventilate,” says Professor Noakes “and this would make it hard to co-ordinate breathing and movement. What’s extraordinary about Pugh is that he puts his head under the water when he takes a stroke and is able to swim normally.” Yet he is not immune to the extreme water temperatures. “When the water hits your skin it’s like having an ice-cream headache all over. Then the cold starts to reach into your core. If your fingertips touch ice as you swim, it’s incredibly painful, like hitting a rock,” he says.
So how does he do it? Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology at Portsmouth University, conducted studies in the late 1990s into the response of human bodies to cold water. He believes that Pugh has habituated his body to such an extent that he no longer reacts to cold in the normal way. “Regular cold- water swimmers don’t have the usual cardio and respiratory difficulties normal swimmers would have in the water. They don’t get the ‘cold-shock ’ response. And Pugh’s body fat, his muscle and sheer bulk, will mean that his body temperature won’t drop as much as someone thinner or less used to very cold water.”
The only other swimmer to have attempted polar waters is the American Lynne Cox, a hefty swimmer with 38 per cent body fat to aid insulation. Pugh, by contrast, is tall and lean, even though he has been eating furiously to add bulk. He has 22 per cent body fat and weighs just over 15st (95kg). Professor Noakes laughingly refers to Pugh’s food regimen as the “see-food diet” — “He sees food and eats it”.
Despite his lackadaisical approach to diet, there’s no doubt that Pugh works hard at acclimatising his body to hostile conditions. He swims 5km daily, followed by a 10km run. Every other day he increases his resistance to cold water by swimming for 20 minutes in a pool which is gradually filled with half a ton of ice.
The most important part of his preparation, though, is mental training, which he does with the help of his coach. “We try to programme my mind to know exactly what it’s going to face and how to overcome it through visualisation.” He also reads inspirational books by explorers and listens to classical music. Just before the swim he has a more surprising choice of music. “I listen to Eminem and Puff Daddy because I want to feel angry and aggressive. You can’t dip your foot in first, you’ve got to plunge in.”
What drives a swimmer to plunge into ever colder water? “If you want to know why someone does anything in life go back to their childhood. I grew up listening to tales of explorers and dreamt of going to the poles. It’s taken 30 years of desire and I’m finally going to achieve it.”
For further information visit www.lewispugh.com
Highs and lows
- Normal body temperature is about 37C (98.6F),
which the body maintains either by directing blood away from the skin to conserve heat or by increasing blood flow to the skin surface to lose heat by convection or evaporation, such as perspiring. - Core temperature is considered to be the temperature of blood circulating the vital
organs, such as the heart and brain. Generally it does not change by more than a few tenths of a degree either side of normal. During exercise, however, it can rise to 39C. - If your body temperature rises to above 42C, your brain and nervous system will cease to function and death will follow. If it falls to below 36C, hypothermia will set in, and below 33C, the risk of death increases significantly.
- For every 1C fall in body temperature, your metabolic rate is reduced by up to 10 per cent.
