A quarter cup of hemp oil stands between
Annaleise Carr and conquering Lake Ontario.
Coach Lisa Anderson pleads with the 14-year-old to drink the greasy mix at 7 a.m. Sunday. Annaleise has been in the water for 13 hours, battling fierce winds and high waves throughout the moonless night. Her four-foot-10 frame struggled against winds nearing 20 km/h, blowing metre-high rolling waves into her face.
Anderson knows that if Annaleise doesn’t drink the oil, she won’t make it to Toronto.
“I don’t want it — it’s gross,” Annaleise says after a small sip.
Anderson promises her a square of chocolate if she takes two more big sips — enough to give her battered muscles the glycogen they need to keep going. The sun poking over the horizon offers slight reprieve.
Annaleise has just fought the battle of her lifetime and while her mind is still strong, her body is battered.
MORE: How we reported on Annaleise Carr's Lake Ontario crossing
“The worst part for me was knowing that she was never going to say ‘I want to get out,’ that it would have to be me making her get out,” Anderson says later. “I almost cried and she knew it.”
Annaleise isn’t even halfway by morning, and the coach is devastated by the distance still to go. The gains overnight have shrunk from nautical miles to nautical inches.
Annaleise sees a look of desperation has replaced the constant steely, determined look on Anderson’s face. She gives in and drinks some of the oil.
At sunrise, Anderson retreats to a nearby power boat, to mentally regain control of herself. She knows if she tells Annaleise how far away she is it will crush her spirit, but the duo have a rule — Annaleise is not allowed to ask how far remains. Anderson fears her silence says it all.
“I know something’s wrong. What’s going on? I can see Toronto,” Annaleise says.
“I know you can, honey. You just, you gotta drink this,” Anderson says.
The waves comeout of nowhere Saturday night. Lit only by the stars and spotlights from the Zodiacs, nobody knows how bad it’s going to get until the swells hit.
The members of the boat crew have been hand-selected by Dave Scott, the general manager of the swim. Scott, owner of the Norfolk Hub newspaper, has never been part of a lake crossing before, but he did participate in a 10-kilometre swim in Lake Erie last year from Pottahawk to Turkey Point, where Annaleise’s quest began. He is both a member and leader in the crew, with years of lake swimming, kayaking and boating experience.
The swim last August brought Annaleise and Scott closer and forged bonds between team members that paved the way for the Lake Ontario crossing.
Three days before the crossing, the group met in ground crew manager Bill Martin’s living room. It was a typical small-town southern Ontario gathering, complete with pizza and pop. Everyone towered over Annaleise as she sat rapt, watching Scott go through the plan in excruciating detail.
Downstairs, children of the crew members, some her age, played videogames.
The plan has to unfold flawlessly. The flotilla will consist of six boats, each with his own role and driver. Extra gas has been packed and each driver understands his place for the crossing. A Zodiac boat will ride on either side of Annaleise, close enough to talk to her but keeping a safe distance. The kayak will serve as her navigation aid and constant companion, but must stay at least three metres away to avoid any chance of accidental touching, which would bring the swim to a halt, according to rules established by Solo Swims Ontario, the governing body of the swim.
Jeff and Debbie Carr, Annaleise’s parents, followed along as Scott rattled off the itinerary. They must trust the people in this room with the life of their young daughter. The pair will not be on a boat, stepping aside to make room for more immediately useful crew members, like the pair of lifeguards and the pacers who will provide vital motivation Sunday.
The meeting was the culmination of months of planning. The crew first came together in February, members culled from the North Shore Runners/Swimmers — a group of outdoor athletes who adopted Annaleise as one of their own. She proved her mettle by pounding the surf. At last year’s 10-kilometre swim, she came in third, hot on the heels of Chris “Otter” Peters, the reigning champion and neck and neck with Scot Brockbank, a 44-year-old lifelong athlete.
Brockbank’s nickname is “Lightning,” given to him by Annaleise, who dubbed herself “Thunder.”
“If you do one thing for me this weekend, stay positive,” Scott said. “You can be mad at me on Monday.”
The crew’s faith is made ironclad by months of practice and planning; the word “if” does not exist in their vocabulary.
Kayaker Rob Smith, with his bushy soft beard and gentle smile, comes armed with years of kayaking experience, including whitewater work. Tyler Wilson, the second kayaker, is a champion rower from the University of Guelph with two national bronze medals under his belt.
“The minute she got in the water . . . she became my daughter. And I would do anything for my daughter to protect her,” said Smith, one of the two kayakers. “Everybody adopted her right then as their own daughter.”
These men will keep her going in the darkness. Through the night, the flicker of starlight in Smith’s gentle eyes and Wilson’s reassuring voice will keep her fighting against the waves and loneliness.
Annaleise has thesupport of her crew, but the real battle is with her own mind and body.
A competitive swimmer at age 4, her body, though still young, has been shaped and crafted by the waters. She was told to put on a bit of weight for the swim, but with a naturally high body temperature she doesn’t need much to keep her warm. Her meals shifted from typical eating to an athlete’s diet of many small high-calorie, high-protein meals.
Training focused on tether work rather than weights because of her age, training philosophy and to avoid aggravating a shoulder injury. Annaleise’s coach would tie her to a block with an elastic cord and make her swim for hours. The training conditioned her muscles, but also her mind by forcing her to work for hours without moving a centimetre.
“People used to ask me: ‘Is it more a physical challenge, or more mental and emotional?’ ” said Vicki Keith, a woman who has made five crossings along the same path Annaleise will take. “My answer was always it’s 100 per cent physical and 100 per cent emotional.”
Throughout her training, coach Anderson worked on a visualization exercise. Annaleise was told to make two short movies in her mind.
The first was to be of the gates at Camp Trillium. The wooden rainbow sign. The moving vehicle gate. Log fences on either side. The sound of cars churning up a gravel road. Flocks of kids, smiles on their faces, waiting for her to finish.
The second was to be of Marilyn Bell Park. Her family waiting on the wall. Her hero, Marilyn Bell, cheering her on. Friends clapping and watching.
Anderson had Annaleise go through these images at every practice, forcing her to draw in more details, more people to motivate her. Even in the pounding surf and darkness, they would stave off thoughts of quitting.
“During the night, I thought about getting out, because in the water it’s dark, it’s cold; you’re all by yourself in the water,” said Annaleise. “When the waves were that big you couldn’t see anyone.”
So she pressed play on her two mental movies.
The waves beginas small chop on the surface — the tips, shards of obsidian glass. As the southward winds blow in her face, chop turns to rolling swells. The darkness permeates everything. To her coaches and supporters looking on, Annaleise becomes the blue light on the back of her goggles among slick black waves.
Night turns Annaleise Carr from a bubbly 14-year-old girl into a warrior. Her small hands tipped with pink nail polish slice through the waves, trying desperately to make progress against the swells.
Her parents watch from the Harbour Castle Hotel, their view only a blip on a map as the GPS updates her location remotely. They have scant information — cellphone reception cuts out halfway across the lake. They barely sleep.
On the lake, a ship captain’s drawl comes over the VHF radio. “This is the Captain Henry Jackman,” he says, alerting boats travelling nearby that the 222-metre ship he has captained from New York is passing through on the way to Hamilton, carrying a load of stone.
“We’ve got a swimmer in the water here,” says swim master John Bulsza.
If the Jackman were to pass too close, it could churn up cold water, dropping the already frigid lake by measures of up to 10 degrees. The wake from the ship could add to the already high swells pushing Annaleise away from her goal.
“Is that the young girl swimming the lake there?” Jackman’s captain asks . “I heard about her on the news.”
The captain, wishing her luck, slows his vessel down dramatically and curves his path, passing far to the northwest of Annaleise. His move neutralizes a challenge that has plagued other swimmers as they move through the busy shipping path of the lake.
Then the sailboats come.
Despite a marine notice broadcast to every ship on the lake, a regatta of nine-metre sailboats races towards the flotilla. Bulsza frantically gets on the radio and the Zodiac crews flash their spotlights towards the boats.
It doesn’t work. About five sailboats careen on a collision course with the main Zodiac boat. At the last minute, they notice the chain of lights and adjust their course, passing within metres of the Zodiac accompanying Annaleise.
As the sun glows on the horizon, Annaleise’s pace flags and she thinks only of when a pace swimmer will enter the water. Pacers will swim alongside her, giving her motivation and company, but they can’t enter until morning, when swim master John Bulsza can clearly see into the water.
Annaleise is in trouble. She is undernourished from the night and is nodding off in the water. Every stroke is a mammoth effort. Each kick shoots pain through her legs.
“My thought was ‘she’s exhausted,’ and I was, nobody would say it but everybody was wondering, ‘is this the end of it?’ You could just see the look on everybody’s face,” Smith said.
“I could just see her looking at me with her eyes saying ‘why aren’t you getting in?’ ” said Nancy Norton, who was waiting on one of the Zodiac boats.
Norton had been selected as the first pacer because she could provide exactly what Annaleise needed — love and lightness after a pitch-black night alone.
Each of the three pacers has a special relationship with Annaleise. Norton runs and swims with the girl regularly. A 35-year-old single mother of two, Norton takes a nurturing approach to Annaleise by making faces at her under the water and goofing around.
During training, Annaleise’s mother would come to Norton’s house early in the morning and watch her kids while Annaleise and Norton trained together.
When Norton is finally allowed in around 5:45 a.m. Sunday, Annaleise’s spirits pick up but her body won’t follow suit. The goal with feeding is to give Annaleise 50 grams of carbohydrates and 12.5 grams of protein per hour, at roughly a 4 to 1 ratio. The coach slowed her feedings down overnight out of concern for her body temperature, which drops whenever she stops swimming. That had been a mistake, Anderson said afterwards, and they had to catch up.
But Annaleise doesn’t want to eat. She chokes down two bites of a chia seed pancake around 6 a.m. before throwing it in the water. Each pancake contains 280 mg of fast-absorbing potassium, which combats the build-up of lactic acid in muscles and replenishes electrolytes in her system.
At this point, Norton is just trying to get her to move her arms and legs.
Pacers have the tricky job of staying close to the swimmer, but never touching her. It is against the rules of Solo Swims Ontario for Annaleise to touch any person or boat. One false move could blow the whole swim.
Scot Brockbank is next to get in, and what he sees shocks him.
“You didn’t know what to expect — I thought I was getting into a situation where I’d see Annaleise Carr, our regular smiley girl full of energy and spunk. I got a different Annaleise Carr, one that’s tired and just been through hell and back,” said Brockbank.
Annaleise is buoyed by Brockbank’s presence, but more regular feedings have started to rebuild her glycogen stores. The digestive system converts sugars into glycogen, which powers muscles. As exercise continues, the body’s digestive system competes with the muscles for blood flow, said Dr. Greg Wells, an expert in extreme human physiology. Proper protein intake supplies enzymes that help the body create glycogen.
Chris “Otter” Peters, 47, pushes Annaleise the hardest of the three pacers. When he gets in the water, her head goes down and the strokes pick up noticeably.
“I was the third one and she was just struggling. I said to her, ‘Annaleise, we’re going to look in each others eyes . . . we’re going to swim our swim and we’re just going to keep in stride,’ ” Peters said later.
Donations keep rolling in for Camp Trillium and with each milestone the crew cheers loudly, giving Annaleise updates when she pokes her head up. With every new announcement, she quickens and her resolve intensifies.
Her pace picks up throughout the day Sunday, but one of the biggest challenges is yet to come — just 5 kilometres out from shore, water temperatures drop and winds pick up, worsening an already heavy current from the Humber River.
Annaleise Carr hasalways had a spot in her heart for the downtrodden. Her valedictory speech thanked one person by name — Jordan Naggy, a boy who suffered severe spinal issues, prompting a surgery that threatened his life and left him confined to a wheelchair. She praised his perseverance for making it to graduation despite the pain.
Naggy and the children at Camp Trillium are in her mind’s eye as she pushes through the pain of the swim. Marathon athletes often exhibit the same signs in their body as people who go through chemotherapy. Around 6 p.m. Sunday, just a few kilometres from shore, her body has already been pushing itself for 24 hours. The water temperature drops to a low of 62°F.
Thanks to an electronic sensor the size of a vitamin that she swallowed four hours before the swim, crew doctor Mark Ghesquiere is able to remotely monitor Annaleise’s core temperature. Crews on the Zodiac boats hold a sensor within a half-metre of her stomach and the transmitter, sitting in her small intestine, relays a temperature reading.
When there is a distance of about 13 kilometres left, Dave Scott, who swims Lake Erie with Annaleise, pulls up beside her.
“Annaleise, it’s only Pottahawk left; it’s just Pottahawk left; you can do it,” he yells to her.
But cold water mixes together with confusion for Annaleise — the lead navigational boat, Ceilidh, is taking her far westward, well beyond Marilyn Bell Park. Annaleise protests, wondering why they are going past the park.
Chuck Wagin, a powerboat in the flotilla, had been sent ahead hours before to measure currents in three separate locations. Northward winds help move Annaleise toward shore, but also compress and strengthen the current coming from the mouth of the Humber River. While the course appears to take them far from the destination, Marilyn Bell Park is now squarely in their sights.
Annaleise starts tohear the cheering when she is about a kilometre from the park.
The crowd of more than 1,000 starts chanting her name. Cold and pushed to her limit, Annaleise swims faster still.
The breakwall comes into sight and the cheers grow louder.
At the park, dozens of kids sit on the edge of the wall, their feet dangling over the water as they wait for Annaleise, the girl who grew up on a farm in Walsh, Ont., and is here to make history. Parents have brought the kids here to be inspired; to see that youth, rather than being an obstacle, is an opportunity.
The current forces her eastward as the crew watches, hoping she makes the narrow gap in the breakwall. Television lights shine from shore, blinding her. But it doesn’t matter — she has seen the wall a hundred times throughout the night in her mind. She has seen the people waiting, cheering her on. She has seen the faces of her parents, Jeff and Debbie, and her grandparents, Ken and Sharon, as their hearts fill with hope.
The crowd has flocked to see her complete a challenge that has broken people twice her age, left them adrift in Lake Ontario. Today, a 14-year-old girl with a toothy smile who loves deep-fried Mars bars turns hero, a warrior who bested the lake.
The din is deafening now, metres away from the wall where nearly 60 years ago Marilyn Bell started it all. Now it’s Annaleise’s turn.
At 9:04 p.m., history is written.
She touches the wall, bringing a 27-hour swim to an end.
After 50.5 kilometres, she decides to add an extra few strokes by swimming back to give her teary-eyed coach a hug. In the end, she
raises more than $135,000 for Camp Trillium.
An exhausted crew exchanges high-fives and hugs on the shore. The bonds built on this crossing will not be easily broken. Annaleise’s grit and determination kept her moving through the water, but the determination of dozens kept her afloat.
Ahead of her, beyond the throng of cameras, lie the challenges of life. A sea of trials — high school; dating; driving lessons; making her way in the world.
Behind her stands a crew with a love as deep as a lake; a second family who bore witness to a will 10 times too large.
