Swimmer Jaimie Monahan finds focus in icy waters

Jaimie Monahan CRACKING THE ICE

This New Yorker has a unique approach to sightseeing—submerged in icy water, with only a swimsuit and cap for protection.

Jaimie Monahan insists her swimming isn’t about being the fastest or breaking records. The 41-yearold ice, winter and marathon specialist says it’s simply about finding personal challenges that make her feel strong and creating memorable experiences. Perhaps it’s just coincidence, then, that those goals have led Monahan to conquer some of the world’s coldest feats of open-water swimming in just a standard suit and silicone cap.

The New Yorker has been a swimmer since her school days, but it was the promise of world travel that saw her dip a toe into icier water. In 2017, she was awarded a Guinness World Record for being the first person to complete the Ice Sevens challenge: swimming a mile on all seven continents, in water below 5°C (44°F)—including one “Ice Zero” mile at below 1°C.

When Monahan found herself stuck at home in 2020, it pushed her to find new challenges to fit around her full-time day job in banking recruitment. She used her August vacation time to swim the iconic 28.5-mile Manhattan Loop on seven consecutive days. Then in September she became the first person ever to swim a “quadruple” of the loop in one mammoth continuous 114 mile, 45-hour effort—a feat that saw her dubbed “Queen of Manhattan.” “I think I was looking for a way to feel strong after being cooped up for months,” she says. “I look back on 2020 and it’s probably one of the years I’m most proud of.”

the red bulletin: How do you handle these challenges?

jaimie monahan: A lot of things in life have taught me that you can only control yourself, not your environment. The water is always in charge. So it’s about just being aware of the power of the water, and that we’re minnows in comparison.

What are your techniques for managing the cold?

It takes a mental shift—you get in and your body almost immediately rebels. Your breathing tenses up, along with all your muscles, and you go into that fight-or-flight response. Even if you’re very experienced, you still have that initial reaction. I always say that if I count to a hundred while I’m swimming, by the end of a hundred strokes I’ll feel good and have stoked that inner fire just through activity. For a longer distance, you have to keep a lot of checks on yourself: Look at your skin color—is it normal? I like to flex my hands and feet. And I check in with my breathing. If you feel too good, that’s usually a sign to get out. You can almost get a warm, euphoric sensation, and that’s one of the signs that maybe hypothermia is setting in.

In what ways does swimming in ice differ mentally from marathon swimming?

For me, they’re on opposite sides of the spectrum and yet also two sides of the same coin. In the ice, you have to be so intensely focused—if you lose sight of what you’re doing, you really can fall into some bad places. I’ve seen it where people have a vacant look in their eyes and later you hear crazy stories of the pain they felt, or they blacked out the memory entirely. You have to take your ego completely out of it. It’s a constant matter of checking in with yourself. On the flip side, a marathon swim is almost a moving meditation, where I just let my mind go wherever it wants to. For me, it’s important to give myself free rein. Some people count, some people pray—you have to almost disengage and let your mind wander. We are so connected in this world, especially virtually. We’re getting emails all the time, checking social media, bombarded by all these different subsets of life. But in the water there’s a break from that. I don’t want to downplay how difficult it is to swim for 45 hours! But it is, in some ways, a mental break.

Have you ever pushed too far?

I haven’t. You never want to end a swim [in a state] where you’re not in your right mind. You always want to be the one to pull yourself out of the water and walk away. I always want to get out five minutes before I absolutely have to.

What’s your favorite swim?

My answer always changes. I have a dual nature. I live in Manhattan, surrounded by skyscrapers, and our waters here are some of my favorite places to swim, because you’re in the midst of this big city but there’s also wildlife. At the polar opposite, I’ve been fortunate enough to swim in Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, and any place where there are ice formations is so special to me. These glaciers and icebergs are thousands of years old and they almost give off their own energy. You feel the cold that they generate when you’re in the water with them—it’s intense. That’s such a thrill for me.