Jeff Rake - Our Founder
Our founder, Jeff Rake, as he struggled with addiction, and now as an accomplished open water marathon swimmer!!
Reflecting back on my college experience, I probably didn't drink like other people. I drank to get drunk every time and when it was time to switch off of party mode and into study mode, I didn't have the ability to change gears like many others. Despite this, I got through college more or less OK (despite a couple of outstanding electives that I always intended to finish), I managed to start a career in sales, transitioned into marketing, met a woman, got married and started having kids. Despite my propensity for the bottle, by all appearances I was holding it together - but I was always drinking just a little more than everyone else and a lot more frequently than most. I had very few consequences, though I did recognize a small problem, and tried to quit a couple times - to no avail.
Fast forward to my early forties. It was the Great Financial Crisis of 2009 and I had recently transitioned into a career as a hotel broker. Just as I was getting my feet under me in that role, the bottom fell out and no deals were getting done. My pipeline of deals dried up and I was left in need of steady employment. I remember sending out a dozen resumes by 10:00 am on most mornings and thinking that I had done as much as I could for the day, I may as well reward myself and/or drown my sorrows with a few beers.
For the next decade, I would engage in ventures that would fail and I took a couple of jobs which I considered below me, which I ultimately found my way out of due to underperformance. At the end, I was driving for Uber and for a black car company. After an accident in one of the black cars due to impairment, I was lucky to have not been discovered and prosecuted. However, I did ultimately lose that job due to a couple being aware that I smelled of alcohol while driving. That was my first - and only - job loss that occurred as a direct result of my alcoholism (the others were certainly indirectly caused by such).
It was during this period of "professional" driving that I began to try to get sober. I started attending AA meetings around 2014, but I just couldn't get sobriety to stick.
In 2013, I had been diagnosed with Pulmonary Sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease affecting my lungs which impeded my ability to breathe well. I ended up on Prednisone for 2 years and Methotrexate for 2 more. In about 2018, as I had been able to achieve longer and longer (yet still brief) periods of sobriety due to my involvement in a 12-Step program, my health started to improve, my breathing was improving, I was getting into better physical shape due to swimming and working out and I began to lose some of the weight brought on by long-term prednisone use. I started to see a glimmer of hope in my life. However, I still wasn't able to completely curtail my drinking.
Finally, in November of 2018, things came to a head. My wife found me passed out in my car when I was supposed to be taking my daughter's field hockey gear to her practice field. She had had enough and gave me an ultimatum. It was time for inpatient treatment. I had long since learned that I could not recover on my own, thanks to the rooms of AA, but my wife kept insisting that I needed to find more will power and a greater desire to quit. Now that she was on board with the rehab option, I was all in.
And my life changed drastically.
I was discharged from Mirmont Treatment Center in Media, PA shortly after Thanksgiving, 2018. My sarcoidosis was in remission and I had never felt better. I was sober and experiencing what is often called a "Pink Cloud" of new sobriety which I can only describe as hopefulness, optimism and confidence. I had dropped 30 pounds and was continuing to swim more and more. I had ambitions of learning to rock climb, learn to play the guitar, finish my degree and try a marathon swim...
I did learn a few chords on the guitar, but my feet were too wracked with arthritis for the rock climbing and my finances were too short to finish my degree just yet. However, I could swim. I swam my whole life, and now I was discovering an ability to swim progressively further and further. I swam a couple of 5-milers with my oldest brother back in 2001 and 2003 - I wondered if I could go 50% further here in 2019?
I met other marathon swimmers and got advice from different directions. I started swimming at least 1 workout of 10,000 yards or more each week and I registered for a 12k, or 7.5-mile race in Quebec. La Traversee du Lac Tremblant. I had no idea as to whether or not I could complete such a distance, although it was only slightly further than my longest training swims. I had no idea if I could even finish with the pack, but there I was, based on my workout interval times, seeded with the elite group just behind the pro swimmers. Surely, I had made a mistake in reporting how fast I thought I could finish. But, at the end of the day, I would finish 2nd for men over 50, get up on the podium and receive a medal! I belonged in this community of swimmers and there was no turning back now.
I began to research swimming the Cook Strait - the channel that separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. That sounded a little more exotic than the English Channel and was a few miles shorter and one or two degrees warmer. The Covid Pandemic put an end to that aspiration for the moment, but I was undeterred. There was of course, the Catalina Channel. This was in my "home waters" of Southern California. Nearly as long as the English Channel but with warmer ocean temps, that was the ideal goal to get me on course for my "real" marathon swimming career. But in 2020, the Catalina Channel was also shut down for out-of-state swimmers due to the pandemic. But there was another option that would provide a natural progression to that 21-mile distance: The 11.5-mile Swim Around Coronado.
Since all the pools were closed during the early months of the pandemic, I resorted to strapping a resistance tube to a nylon belt and would engage in "stationary swimming" in my mother-in-law's residential pool. As soon as the water temps were warm enough, I visited the beaches of the Chesapeake Bay and the Jersey Shore. When the pools opened back up, I was at it with renewed determination, swimming greater and greater distances each week. 30,000 yards, 40,000 yards, 50,000 yards. And it was also at this time that I started coaching other adults at French Creek Racing as well as children at the Y
In September of 2020, I set to once again swim longer than I'd ever swam by far - a circumnavigation of Coronado Island. This qualified as a true open water marathon swim with recognition in the form of a ratification form the Marathon Swimmers Federation (MSF). And I was successful! Due to a tidal assist, I finished in just over 5 hours! I was ecstatic, but I wasn't done. Next up, the Catalina Channel.
Continuing my training, I started visiting the San Diego area more often. Every time travel plans took me anywhere west of the Mississippi, I would plan a side-trip to San Diego. This place where I swam only occasionally in my college years became my new obsession. It was also valuable in allowing me to expose myself to colder water and acclimate my tolerance to swim for long periods of time in the cold. I would swim in 55* - 60* water for an hour or two and shiver violently for just as long afterwards. But with continued exposure, it got easier and easier. I would set up feed bottles at either side of the bay between the La Jolla Cove and La Jolla Shores and get out after each mile to hydrate and nourish.
Finally, in September 2021, I was scheduled to swim the Catalina Channel. It did not start - or finish - well. My primary coach was not available to support me on the kayak, so I engaged another kayaker who provided some bad advice and also backed out on the day of the swim due to a family emergency. The ocean conditions were so bad on the night of my scheduled attempt that we had to abandon and try again the next night. That next night I was sleep deprived, without competent leadership, in water temperatures I believed could affect me adversely and my crew was inexperienced. I was not as mentally prepared to overcome these challenges as I had hoped and after 3.5 hours of swimming, I called it quits.
That event haunted me for the next couple months and into the following year, and I was determined to make it back. I kept training longer than ever. I engaged my primary coach, Dan Simonelli, to write me a training plan. I continued to expose myself to cold water swims and soaks. I took only cold showers. I shoveled snow in my flip-flops. I worked harder than ever.
In September of 2022, I got another chance. This time, my mental preparation was better, but so were the conditions and the water temp. Dan was kayaking for me along with my nephew, who took a 4-hour shift in the middle of the night. I started on Catalina Island at 11:00 pm Pacific Time on September 19, 2022. As I looked into the clear but black night time waters, seeing my hands & arms, but nothing more as if I were swimming in outer space, I thought about song lyrics, scenic drives and the 12-Steps - oh and every once in a while, I would think about working up a pee... As the sun began to lighten the sky after 7 hours of swimming, I knew I was going to make it. I started making jokes with my crew during my brief feed stops (30 seconds or less of treading water while being thrown a bottle of liquid nutrition or hydration). And make it I did. We fought against a nasty current for the last 2 hours, which lengthened my swim by about an hour, but there was no stopping me.
As I got my legs under me and wobbled on to dry land, I looked back at Catalina Island and noticed how far I'd come. The island looked more distant than the 20-some miles away it was, but I had come a lot farther than that.
Afterwards: During this whole marathon swim odyssey, since swimming La Tremblant in 2019, I decided to raise money for a recovery-based charity, and as I researched, I found that the Herren Project was something I could get behind. Started by former NBA basketball star, Chris Herren who had endured his own famous downfall, this foundation provided Treatment Scholarships, Preventative Education for School-Age Children and counseling services for families affected by addiction. It's a great organization and to date, I have funneled around $12,000 their way.
I also created the iSwim4 Foundation. At first, it was just a way to raise some money to offset the expenses of my swims, and I would give back by coaching people in our Fitness in Recovery fellowship. Then I started reaching out to see if there were more people that I could help. This was due to the fact people who addressed their physical well-being were better able to maintain their mental and emotional well-being, which in turn served them to maintain their chosen program of recovery, thereby strengthening and lengthening - and enhancing their sobriety. Also, we maintain the belief that there's something extra-therapeutic about swimming.
So now, the iSwim4 Foundation endeavors to help individuals in Recovery to engage in a program of physical well-being through swimming. We teach the principles of goal setting and simply create a safe and friendly, active community. We demonstrate what's possible in Recovery to others who still struggle and to those in society that think we are simply a community of losers who have made bad decisions and now suffer the consequences. And finally, we highlight our value to society by giving back to myriad causes - not only recovery charities, but charities that advocate for the environment, animal welfare, healthcare & disease and more. We are expanding on both coasts with meet-ups to introduce novice swimmers to the joy of swimming and to re-engage experienced swimmers into an activity they may have long since discarded. We hope to provide access to aquatic facilities and the safety personnel and coaching staff to properly engage our swimmers on a program. Whether or not they stick to swimming, we hope to instill a sense of purpose, community, goal-setting and physical well-being that will strengthen their sobriety even if they don't take to swimming for the long term.