Are You Ready for an Alcatraz Swim?

The San Francisco Bay is honest. You should be too.

Co-Owner Pacific Open Water Swim Co., USCG Master Captain, Ultramarathon Swimmer - Sylvia Lacock; January 1, 2018 New Year's Day Alcatraz Swim.

I did not learn to swim until I was in my early 30s. Sure, I played in the water as a kid, but no formal swim lessons. My first Alcatraz swim was in 2003, and before I ever got in the Bay I had to put the work in the pool. There were no shortcuts.

That experience, along with training for marathon swims, has been the foundation of everything we do at Pacific Open Water Swim Co. For the last eight years we have been professionally piloting open water swims, including over 100 Alcatraz swims each year as USCG-licensed Master Captains who own and operate a dedicated fleet of vessels setup exclusively for swimming. We work with swimmers at every level from first-timers to elite ultramarathon swimmers.

23 years of swimming in the San Francisco Bay. We know what prepared looks like. We know what unprepared looks like. We know what the Bay does to both.

What You Need to Know in Three Lines

• Know your 100-yard (or meter) pool pace. If you don’t have a timed number, get it this week.

• A 2:30/100-yard pace or slower in the pool is a serious red flag for this swim.

• Being underprepared does not just risk your race or swim. It puts everyone else in and on the water at risk.

Every year, the same pattern plays out.

Registration opens months in advance for events like the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. People sign up, life takes over and training waits. Or training on the bike and the run is more appealing. Then May arrives. Our inbox and voicemails have some version of the same message: “I need swim lessons. I’m racing the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon in three weeks. I need a practice swim. Can you help get me ready?”

Sometimes the answer is yes. The person just needs help taking their already trained pool technique to open water and they participate in one of our many Alcatraz swims each month. They’ve done the work and are looking for finishing touches.

For others, on such short notice, the answer is not what people want to hear.

Writing a check does not do the work for you. Neither does ego. Signing up for a race months in advance is not a training plan, and no amount of money spent on entry fees, wetsuits, or last-minute lessons or clinics changes what your body can actually do in the water in a couple of weeks.

This post is for people who need to hear it anyway.

Start Here: Know Your Pool Pace

Before you do anything else, you need to get your base pace time in the pool. The pool is a controlled and measurable environment. Open water can be influenced by tides, currents, wind, etc.

Knowing and understanding your pool pace is a non-negotiable. Your 100-yard pace as outlined below tells you everything about where you stand as a swimmer and what is realistic in the time you have left.

=> Understanding and Calculating Your Pool Pace (with diagrams)

• Pace time must be from the pool, not open water. Pace is not your fastest 100-yard (or meter) time, but your average time when swimming a non-stop 1,000-yard freestyle in the pool or 10x100’s with 10 seconds rest in between and including the rest time.

• Enter your total time for a 1,000 yard freestyle (or 10x100 including rest time) into the swim pace calculator to view your 100-yard pace.

• Use the wall clock or a simple timer for this exercise, do not rely on a smartwatch.

If you are unable to complete 1,000 yards nonstop freestyle or 10x100 in the pool, this is a red flag.

The Alcatraz Escape swim measures 1.85-miles in distance but with the ebb giving an assist in free drift, it swims similar to 1.25-miles (shortest distance) or 2,200 yards.

Here is a rough guide:

• Under 1:45/100-yard pace - Solid base. Open water skills and cold water acclimation are your focus.

• 1:45 to 2:15 per 100-yard pace - Manageable, but open water experience matters. Be sure to get in the open water with similar water temperatures for two to three 45-60 minute sessions before the big swim. Swim in varied open water conditions. Swimming only when it’s sunny and flat may not prepare you for Mother Nature doles out.

• 2:15 to 2:30 per 100-yard pace - Much of this comes down to conditions on the day of your event. Can a swimmer of this pace make it across? Yes, it’s been done. Jump time and a swimmer properly navigating on sighting locations is key. Calmer conditions help; more wind, waves and chop will punish the inefficient (slower) swimmer more.

• Above 2:30 per 100-yard pace - This is a real conversation. Not a discouraging one. An honest one. There is work to be done.

If you do not know your pool pace, you cannot accurately assess your readiness. That is the starting point for everything else.

Swimming Is Built in the Pool

One lesson will not make you a swimmer. Showing up and slogging out laps without working on technique will not make you a swimmer either.

Think about it this way. One piano lesson does not make you a concert pianist. And simply sitting at the piano banging on the keys does not make music. It takes structured instruction, consistent practice, and time for new muscle memory to form and become automatic.

Swimming works exactly the same way.

We covered this in depth in All Good Open Water Swimmers Are Built in the Pool. Technique builds efficiency. Efficiency builds endurance. Endurance builds speed. That progression does not happen in 2-3 weeks and it does not happen in open water. It happens in a controlled environment, at the wall, with a clock, under the eye of a qualified coach who can see what you cannot feel.

You apply what the pool has taught you in the open water. If the pool taught you nothing, the open water will expose this immediately.

Adding volume to a broken stroke is not training. It is practicing doing something wrong, repeatedly, and cementing a bad habit.

Booking a swim lesson a month before a swim or an event you signed up for months ago is not preparation. It is damage control.

Open Water is Not a Pool

Swimming for 60 minutes in the pool is not the same as swimming for 60 minutes in the open water.

Currently, the water temperature in the San Francisco Bay is running between 57-60F depending on the day. That’s enough to shorten your breath and seize your stroke up a bit. There is no wall or lane line to rest on and no black line to follow. The tides and surface currents can pull you off course. Now add in a bevy of people hyped up on adrenaline in the water at the same time and churn it into chaos fast.

Experienced open water swimmers know this and have the skillset and readiness to adapt. They can adapt because the core foundations of their stroke - built in the pool and honed in the open water - are solid enough to hold in the cold, chop, and frenzy.

New swimmers feel all of this at once and can go from mild nervousness to panic quickly. Add in a poor or inefficient stroke (slower swimmer) that cannot override the situation and settle in to make forward progress and that is when situations become serious.

Experience is built by layering. Layering the solid work in the pool and practicing in the open water. In San Francisco, we’re lucky to have a number of resources to help swimmers safely get into the open water.

• Open water swim clinics

• One with the Ocean nonprofit hosts free Saturday morning group swims in Aquatic Park & Crissy Field

• San Francisco Triathlon Club Membership includes weekly Sunday morning open water swims in Aquatic Park, access to two coached pool workouts each week, helpful coaches and mentors, clinics, training programs, track workouts, group runs, training rides and much more. $145.00 / 12-month membership.

• Golden Gate Triathlon Club Membership includes Tuesday evening open water swims in Aquatic Park, access to coached pool, bike, track workouts, clinics, training programs, group rides and runs. $175.00 / 12-month membership

What Happens If I’m Too Slow for the Alcatraz Swim

…but choose to jump in anyway

On large events such as the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon, Alcatraz Sharkfest Swim, and the South End Alcatraz Open Swim, race organizers work with the SFPD Marine Unit who patrol the course on jet skis with sleds. Part of their job is to collect swimmers who are not making enough forward progress or are drifting too far off course to safely finish or who exhibit signs of distress.

It happens more than people expect.

When a swimmer falls behind, they are pulled from the water, relocated on the course, or in some cases transported directly to the finish or to shore if they cannot continue. The tide and current do not wait for you to figure it out. Once you are too far off course, there is no swimming your way back.

This is not a failure of race organization. It is a safety system built specifically for underprepared swimmers. It works. It also means trained officers, boats, and personnel are occupied with a preventable situation instead of being available for a genuine emergency elsewhere on the course.

At Pacific Open Water Swim Co. we conduct smaller-scale swims and our escort vessels with swim ladders and safety equipment are next to the swimmers at all times for support and navigation. Because we are not racing, a swimmer is welcome to re-board the vessel at any time for a rest and re-enter the water when ready.

This Is Not Just About You

Here is the part that does not get said often enough.

Coach Meg Tobin at TMT Coaching recently published a piece on Ironman swim safety that every triathlete and swimmer should read: What Can Make Ironman Safer? You Can. Her framing is direct and applies here as much as it does to an Ironman-distance event.

Triathlon, Tobin writes, has followed the same arc as running marathons. What was once a serious athletic achievement requiring years of dedicated training has become a bucket list item. That growth has brought more people into the sport, which is genuinely good. It has also brought people to the starting lines of events who have not been fully honest with themselves about their skillset and readiness.

Her bottom line is hard to argue with:

“When your wetsuit is the thing keeping you afloat, you aren’t ready to race. That is not a judgment. It is a safety truth - and one our community needs to be willing to say out loud.”

Ego is a large part of why people end up in that position. A triathlon carries social weight. The Alcatraz swim carries social weight and bravado. Signing up feels like an achievement. But the registration fee is not confirmation of your skillset and readiness.

For an Alcatraz swim, the San Francisco Bay does not care what you paid to jump in.

When a swimmer gets into trouble, personnel on the water respond. Volunteer kayakers, jet skis, support boats communicate and coordinate in real time. Every preventable incident pulls resources from people who prepared thoroughly and still found themselves in trouble through no fault of their own. A cardiac event. An asthma attack. Eyes diverted for even a few seconds can cost someone precious time.

Showing up underprepared is not a private decision. It is a selfish one. It affects the person next to you, volunteers, race personnel, first-responders, and the person who genuinely needs help.

The Question Worth Asking

Do not ask whether you can finish. Do not ask for probabilities. Do not ask your family and friends if they believe in you.

Ask whether you have genuinely prepared through disciplined work in the pool, building your open water skills, and properly acclimating to the San Francisco Bay water temperature and conditions for an Alcatraz swim.

If the answer is yes, go and thrive in the swim.

If the answer is no, do not simply hope to survive the swim.

Alcatraz and the San Francisco Bay will be here when you get to a “yes”.

Pacific Open Water Swim Co. runs USCG licensed pace-matched swims year-round in the San Francisco Bay, including over 100 Alcatraz swims.

See upcoming Alcatraz swim dates or request a future date.