Lap The Lake: Jace Morgan Swims Around Lake Wawasee

In this episode of The Lake Doctor Podcast, we dive into the inspiring story of Jace Morgan, an ultra-endurance athlete with a growing passion for environmental stewardship. Earlier this year, Jace took on an incredible challenge — swimming the entire 17-mile circumference of Lake Wawasee in his event, Lap the Lake. What started as a test of endurance quickly became a journey of purpose and connection to the very waters he calls home. With each mile, Jace developed a deeper appreciation for the natural beauty and community that surrounds our lakes and streams. From struggling with hypothermia to facing his fear of weeds (or aquatic macrophytes!), Jace's story is one of resilience and strength.

But Jace’s story doesn’t stop at the finish line. Moved by the experience and the support of his community, he has found a new passion for Lake Wawasee and partnered with the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation (WACF) — ensuring that future generations can enjoy the same clean, vibrant waters that fueled his swim. Join us as Jace shares what it takes to push both body and spirit beyond limits, how the lake reshaped his outlook on stewardship, and why every effort can lead to waves of lasting change.

Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

Have a question we could answer on the podcast? Send an email to lakes@grace.edu or submit a comment below.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Jace And The Big Swim
• 1:55 Family Adventures And Boat Life
• 3:23 From Coach To Pro Endurance Athlete
• 5:02 Choosing A Perimeter Swim Challenge
• 6:13 Training Load And Cross-Discipline Prep
• 7:48 Crew, Kayak Pacing, And Logistics
• 9:03 The 14-Mile Miscalculation Moment
• 10:45 Mindset Reset And Community Energy
• 12:36 Fueling Failures And Battling Cold
• 15:05 Safety, Hypothermia Signs, And Spousal Veto
• 17:15 Temperature Swings And Fall Timing
• 19:22 Lake Physics: Mixing, Streams, And Springs
• 22:05 Weed Fears To Macrophyte Respect
• 24:40 Nutrients, Runoff, And Lake Health
• 26:30 Why Conservation Became The Mission
• 28:12 Community Partnerships And WACF
• 30:00 County, State, And Lake Collaborators
• 31:10 What’s Next And The Mental Game
• 33:00 Closing And How To Get Involved

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Thanks for joining us on the Lake Doctor Podcast. I'm Susie Light, and my co-host, Dr. Nate Bosch, is an official lake nerd.

SPEAKER_01: 0:08

That's true. I received my doctorate from the University of Michigan in limnology. That's like oceanography, only studying freshwater lakes. In today's episode, we have Jace Morgan. He's a professional endurance athlete who swam around the entire perimeter of one of our local lakes.

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

We are so excited about today's episode where a local guy laps the lake. The doctor's in. Tell us a bit about yourself, please.

SPEAKER_02: 0:59

All right. So I uh I'm a lake boy, born and bred. I grew up on Lake Wallisea. Um, I spent the first 25-ish years of my life on the lake, and I have recently accomplished my my biggest feat uh swimming around the lake. And this brought me into my my first year as a professional athlete. So this in 2025, I became a professional ultra-endurance athlete. And I just do uh really hard feats and travel all over to do interesting things. I am still in the area and going to stay in the area. I have a daughter and a wife, and I am looking forward to watching her grow up on the lake and get to enjoy the same thing that I did.

SPEAKER_00: 1:43

How old is your little girl?

SPEAKER_02: 1:45

She's 11. Just turned 11 yesterday.

SPEAKER_00: 1:47

Oh, and you and your wife went on an adventure with her a few years ago. Tell us about that adventure.

SPEAKER_02: 1:54

Quite the adventure. So we built a boat, bought an old boat, and then rebuilt it in our driveway on Lake Wallase. We lived on it for the summer and then we sailed from Lake Michigan, um, Michigan City, Indiana. It was the port we left, sailed to Chicago and then down the inland waterways, um, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, across the Gulf of Mexico in our sailboat, and then sailed down to the Florida Keys. So we spent two years on our boat traveling all over, and it was me, my wife, our daughter, who at the time wasn't in school. So she was four years old at the time, and our cat. Wow. And we we just took off, we sold everything we owned, and we just left.

SPEAKER_00: 2:34

Jace Morgan Adventure. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:36

That's really cool. So you see, well, let me quick jump in with a question. Do you see some parallels between yourself as a kid on Lake Wawassee and some of the things you enjoyed, and then seeing your daughter growing up and how she's part of some of these adventures as well? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 2:53

Yeah. It's really been a fun experience to try and cultivate these different opportunities for her to get to experience some of what I experienced. And uh she's not as adventurous as I am, which is good. She's a girl, and you know, she's a she's a little more mindful of what she's doing. I was a rowdy little boy, but um, we get to do a lot of really cool stuff, and and we're I'm always trying to cultivate these unique opportunities and let her see that she can dream big and do anything she sets her mind to. So that's so cool.

SPEAKER_00: 3:23

Yeah, so you've been a physical trainer and a coach. Um why did you launch on this epic adventure of Lap the Lake? Lap the lake. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02: 3:36

Yeah. So I've been a coach and a trainer for about a decade. Um, that's how I met my wife. Uh, she was came into the gym. I met her in the gym, and we've been together for uh well over a decade now. And I, as we kept doing more and more stuff, I was always chasing adventure. Obviously, adventure is kind of kind of in my blood. And we had done the sailing trip and had come home back to Indiana after a couple of years, and I really didn't know what I wanted to do next. And uh just thought, well, I'll run a marathon. And so I started running and and got into running and really fell in love with the sport. It helped me through some hard times in my life and and some different business ventures that I had going on. And I got done with the marathon and I thought, well, I surely I can go farther than that. So I tried an ultra marathon and I did uh I did a 50k marathon, then I did a 50 mile ultra marathon, and then started moving into like the 100 and 200 mile races. Oh way. And uh I did pretty well and I I had some really good uh performances and had the opportunity to take on some sponsors and and to do that kind of stuff. And I I talked to my wife and she said I could we try it for a year, and so I took on the sponsors and then I had to come up with what was I gonna do, and I wanted to really make my mark. I and 2025 was my first year as a pro in January. I went pro and um so I didn't know what to do. And I was watching YouTube one night, and there's this crazy guy, Ross Edgely, is swimming around Iceland. Oh, like you know, like I swam around the lake, swimming around Iceland, and and uh it was like a thousand miles, and I was just in awe that someone could swim that far. I I was a swimmer at Wallasea High School, I swam all through school, um, and it just sparked that maybe I'd I'd try and do a big swim. And I thought maybe I would swim like one of the ocean sevens. They have these seven big ocean swims, and I was thinking about it. My me and my wife were out paddleboarding one morning, beautiful morning on Lake Wallasee, paddleboard every morning, and we're out there with coffee, and I'm looking across the lake. It was just perfectly hazy. And I just told her, I said, I I know people have swam across this, but I don't think anyone's ever swam around it the whole way around it. Right. And we talked about it. And that night I told a couple of friends, I was like, What do you think about me swimming around the lake? They were like, You're the only person crazy enough to do it. And I committed to it that day.

SPEAKER_00: 6:09

How many miles would it is it around the lake swimming?

SPEAKER_02: 6:13

It's a good question. I thought it was 14 miles. Um, when we got ready for the swim, the day of the swim, I had told everyone that it was a 14-mile perimeter swim. I had mapped it a couple of times in a boat and and done some different things, but um, it is actually 17 miles. Oh. So I found that out at mile 14 when I was not done with the swim, that it is not 14 miles.

SPEAKER_00: 6:38

Okay. So I'm familiar with with professional athletes who need to prep for things. Our son is a bicyclist. Okay. And a hundred-mile bicycle ride, you know, he can do that in about six hours. How long did it take that guy to or how long did it take you to run a hundred miles?

SPEAKER_02: 6:55

Uh to do a hundred miles, it's like twenty five-ish hours. Okay. 25, 26 hours. There are people who are much faster than that, but that's the speed I move at and don't die. So good. We're going to hear. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

So in preparing for the lap the lake swim, and you're planning on doing 14 miles, what kind of regime did you have to do to prepare for that?

SPEAKER_02: 7:19

Right. It was five months of training, um, full time every day, about six, seven hours a day of training. Um, I trained at my home gym, the Columbia City YMCA, swam in the pool there. And uh, it was 30 to 40,000 yards a week, which is roughly 15-ish miles, something like that, 15, 16 miles a week. Um, but on top of that, I ran about a hundred miles a week and I biked about another hundred miles a week on top of that, just to keep my legs moving. And it was really a cross-training effort because you you don't just have to be able to withstand the swimming, which is mostly shoulders, but you have to keep your core engaged for that length of time. Um, nutrition and and getting food in was something I was really unfamiliar with. And I really went into the swim with, I had no idea what I was getting into. I just dreamed it up and told everyone I could do it, and then I had to figure out how to do it because I told everyone I could.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

So, in the training, what was the longest swim you had done before you then actually did the 17th mile swim when you were actually in the lake?

SPEAKER_02: 8:25

I did half the swim. So I I at the time I thought it was 14 miles. So I did a seven mile swim with my crew with me, with supplementation with all the food. We tested out a lot of things and and sorted stuff out. And I did seven miles, and that was about two months before the swim. So the water in the lake was very warm. Um, I was swimming in just a speedo, and I was very hot and I struggled. And that's when we decided to wait until the fall to do the swim because the water temperature became an issue for me. It was like swimming in a bathtub. And you know, if anyone's familiar with a pool, the pools are pretty cold. They keep swimming pools cool. And to go from that to Lake Wallace, which is my training ground, right? I would swim from the North Shore, kind of all the way out and around Johnson's Bay, which is uh about six or seven miles, and back home.

SPEAKER_01: 9:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 9:17

And um, so that that was my my training, and we learned a lot in those training swims. Those were imperative to the success of the whole mission because without my crew, without the support with me, I could I could make it about five or six miles until the wheels started falling off. And then it started to get really difficult.

SPEAKER_00: 9:35

So when you talk about your crew, what what did that consist of on the lake?

SPEAKER_02: 9:40

So I had a a boat that was with me all the time. Um, that was my personal crew, and then I had a kayak in the water right next to me, and that was to guide me around. Um, when you're swimming, a lot of times you sight. So you'll take a breath and you kind of look forward to see the next buoy so that I could keep my line. That becomes really hard on your neck after a whole day of swimming. And so I kept the kayak, had a little flag that stuck off the back of it, and the kayak stayed just ahead of me, and I just swam right next to my kayak. Okay. And they could, they could pace me, they could slow down. They had my water bottle with a little string tied to it. They'd toss it to me and I'd flip on my back like an otter and hold it, and I would drink as fast as I could, and then I would drop it and they'd pull it back in. And they were doing a live stream and we had media coverage. Um, it it turned out to be a lot more support than I originally thought, but that was my my true support crew. So I had uh four people on the boat, one in the kayak. My daughter was on the boat as well. Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_00: 10:44

Yeah, I can't imagine like your goal was 14 miles, and you get to that point and realize, oh, I got a lot farther to go. Um how did you mentally overcome that?

SPEAKER_02: 10:58

To be honest, I've had this talk a couple of times with a few different people. And to be honest, the the 14 mile realization where I I remember vividly looking at my watch, and my watch told me my distance, my heart rate, some of the other metrics. And I looked at it, and the crew asked how far I'd gone, and I was at like 13.75 miles. And I looked at it and then I looked up at you know what I still had to go, and I still had miles of swimming. And at that point, I was in my home training waters on the north shore at the 13, 14 mile mark. And so I knew how far I had left because I had swam that in training. And when I looked out ahead, I had 10 seconds where I was I pouted and I was really upset. And I just I was angry that I had made this big of a mistake. And then I went into I I just felt bad for my crew, for the people who were supporting me. I had led everyone to believe that this was going to be a seven or eight hour swim that was 14 miles, and then all of a sudden it's you know, we're eight hours in, and then I'm way past 14 miles and it's hot and everyone's struggling. And I did that for about two buoys. And then I just told myself, I you got one more buoy. You can sit with this, you can be mad, you can do whatever you want. But when you reach that buoy, new thoughts, something else. You got to think about something else. And I made it to that buoy, and and I just started thinking about all the boats that had come to support me and the people out on their docks, and I just changed the mindset and I I never thought about it again. I just I knew that I had to make it around the lake. It didn't matter if it was 100 miles or 14 miles. It was there was still more to swim, so I just kept swimming. Yeah, there's some good life lessons there.

SPEAKER_00: 12:44

Well, I was gonna ask you, Nate, have you experienced that kind of thing in your work here at the Lily Center where you you see the end of the race, but you got a long way to go?

SPEAKER_01: 12:55

Yeah, I think I I think oftentimes we we have the best available science or the best available um training, and we're ready for a certain thing that we anticipate, and then we realize that it's gonna be a little bit more than what we had thought. Maybe the funding's not quite there, or maybe uh the science is a little more intricate than we had originally thought, or the solution we thought was gonna work doesn't quite get us all the way there, and we need a little bit more to add on. Um but I think what Jace said is is really wise, where okay, we can be a little frustrated and we can sort of let that feeling sit in, but for just a moment, because we still do have that additional part, and it's too important just to sit and wallow in that sort of pity party. And so let's let's remember why we're doing it. It's important enough to give it the extra effort. And then I thought it was cool too from what you said about noticing the people that were around, right? And so we can we can be thankful for what we've already accomplished, and that can help propel us then to the finish line, then with that mindset, rather than being so focused on what still has to be done.

SPEAKER_00: 14:09

Good cheerleaders.

SPEAKER_02: 14:10

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they saved the day for sure. There were a lot of times where it was it was very hard, and the kids on the docks and the people who came out, they really they were the energy that that kept it going. So that was very cool.

SPEAKER_00: 14:23

That's so do you have a strict like diet regime that you follow?

SPEAKER_02: 14:27

That's the best part about being an ultra endurance athlete. I can eat anything I want. I just burn it off.

SPEAKER_00: 14:33

And when you were swimming, you were taking in fuel.

SPEAKER_02: 14:36

I thought I would, um, but I reached a point when I came into Johnson's Bay, which is a deeper part of the lake, a different area, and naturally fed the temperature. It was a, I think, a mix of I was about six hours into the swim. I was already depleted, I was tired, I was struggling with a few different things, you know, body issues that I was having. But I got so cold. I mean, shivering to the core. I could feel my spine shiver. It was, I couldn't close my hands, my feet hadn't hands had both been numb for quite a while at this point, and my stomach just stopped. Everything stopped. Every drink of water felt like I was gonna throw it back up. Um, I started to get a migraine. I I really couldn't take in the foods like we thought I would take them in. Originally, I was trying for 250 to 400 calories per hour was the goal. Um, but at the halfway point, I stopped taking in all fluids and all food, and I swam the entire rest of the way without any supplementation.

SPEAKER_00: 15:43

How many hours total?

SPEAKER_02: 15:44

Nine hours, 20 minutes. I swam for about five hours with no fuel. Um I got cold, and some support boats brought me bottles of hot water that they had warmed up and we poured those in my suit. That gave me some temporary relief, and then I drank one of them, and that warmed me up just enough to get me out of that spot of the lake. And once I came out of that spot, then the waves picked up, I had a new thing to worry about, and I just kind of got over the cold.

SPEAKER_01: 16:14

Now, how do you how do you you had the sense to know that your stomach stopped working? Like how does that how did that feel? Like, how did you was it just the fact that you would drink or eat something and it was like, oh man, there's no more room in there? Or what what how could you tell that?

SPEAKER_02: 16:29

So, from other ultra-endurance races that I've done, usually when you start to get into a spot where your body is shutting down, it shuts down the systems it doesn't need first. Okay. And so I was weary and watching my body as to how it was handling different things that were happening. And one of the things I noticed right before my stomach really started to not feel great was my heart rate dropped significantly. So I went from about 120 average heart rate, steady all day, you know, five hours of that, to I got cold and within maybe 100 yards, 150 yards, my heart rate was in the 80s. And I didn't matter how fast I swam, what I did, I just could not get it to come back up. And I was checking it on my watch. I could see it when I took strokes. And uh, that was my first sign that something was wrong, something was not working. Um, and my body was fighting, it was rebelling, and it wanted me to stop. It was, it was telling me that something, you know, was happening. Looking back on it now, talking to some nurses and talking to other people, they kind of told me that, you know, early stages of hypothermia, that probably is what was happening. Your body was just kind of shutting down systems. At the time, I thought that the cold was just I was just gonna get colder and colder and colder until I don't know, until I stopped moving. But I made a commitment to all the people and my crew before I got in the water that I the only way I was coming out is if they dragged me out. I was gonna finish, I was gonna leave my soul in that lake, and there was no one that was gonna stop me. And the crew knew, and when I got cold, they were like a well-oiled machine, like a NASCAR pit crew. We had people going every direction, and we had water, we had snacks, we had anything I needed, was right there. And uh unfortunately, all it was was I just had to keep swimming, I just had to get out of that spot that I was in.

SPEAKER_01: 18:28

Now, w as an ultra-endurance athlete, is there a certain point in an adventure that you're doing where you out of necessity to save your own life, where you would have to actually stop? And what would those signs and symptoms be?

SPEAKER_02: 18:48

Uh I have a pretty good relationship with my wife. She's been my pit crew, my crew chief for everything I've ever done. And uh before I do any of these big events, I I forfeit my ability to make any decisions on my own.

SPEAKER_01: 19:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 19:04

She's she is in charge of me. She knows me better than anyone. When she says it's time to stop, it's time to stop. Okay. But she's watching, like from the kayak, she could see my heart rate, she could see how far I was moving, how fast I had been moving. She trained with me for five months straight. She watched me in the pool, she helped me with my splits. She knew how fast I was moving and how I looked based off of that, that it wasn't at the point where I needed to stop. But if there was ever a point where we had to, she's the only person I'd listen to.

SPEAKER_01: 19:35

So she has veto power.

SPEAKER_02: 19:36

She has all the power. Yeah. And that in the team meeting before I got in the water, that's that's all we talked about. I just said, I'm giving my life to my crew, but my wife is in charge, and whatever she says is what she says. Until she tells me that I can't keep going, I'm gonna keep going.

SPEAKER_01: 19:50

After the after the the loop, did she say she was close to pulling you? She was worried. Was she really?

SPEAKER_02: 19:57

Yeah, yeah. The crew was pretty worried. I I was still moving forward, but the the shaking was worrisome and the heart rate became kind of a a real fear. But she I think she knows me well enough that if she would have made me stop, there would have been regret and and I wouldn't have done handled that well. So yeah, she was she was pretty good about it.

SPEAKER_00: 20:18

So in training, you were in a swimming pool that's cool, but when you were training in the lake, the water was warm.

SPEAKER_02: 20:24

Yep, all summer.

SPEAKER_00: 20:25

All summer. So you ended up postponing or waiting until fall. But then fall kind of set you uh a loop, didn't it? It did. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02: 20:34

Fall came in quick. It was, I don't know, this year was a weird year, and we went from you know, consistent 70 degree nights to all of a sudden we got this two-week cold snap. And I just watched every day, I just watched the surface temp go down and down and down. And from one week to the next, I went from being in just a speedo, shivering, or I'm sorry, hot swimming, to in a wetsuit and still shivering and couldn't control it. And I started to get a little worried that we were we pushed it back too far. We had a few few times where we had a conversation as a as a crew that what if we what if we went too far? What if we pushed it back too much? Because I went off historical data of the lake temperatures based on you know the perfect temp, which would be in the around the low 70s, okay, mid to low 70s, and um it looked like you know, mid-September to late September was going to be the ticket, but we got that cold snap and it caught me off guard, that's for sure. Do you remember what the water temperature was? I think it was in the low 70s when I when I did the swim, um, like 71, 72. But I hadn't trained in 71 or 72. And that is a a big mistake on my part. I should have spent more time in the water as it cooled down. Um, but right before the swim, so about two weeks before when that cold snap happened, I actually got pneumonia and I got a really severe respiratory issue that came up. And so I had to take the week leading up to the swim, I took off and I just stayed at home in a dark room and thought about my choices and just prayed that it was going to get better. Wow. And it did get better, but it was right to the bitter end. I mean, yeah, in the videos before I got in the water, I was coughing in my arm before I jumped in. And but there was there was so much on the line, and the community had showed up. There was there was no postponing it another another time or to next year. Everyone kept telling me, you know, you can do it next year, the lake will still be here. And but I had trained for five months and I was I was pretty committed.

SPEAKER_01: 22:44

Yeah, that temperature is it's a pretty narrow window, knowing Lake Wawasee, because summertime when you were training, it was probably in the mid-80s on the Fahrenheit scale. And then wintertime, then it's usually right around 32, especially when it's got the ice on it, it'll be a little warmer down below. But at the ice at the surface, it would be 32. But yeah, that that going from 80s uh down usually happens pretty quick. As you said, the the nights get colder and uh we have less intense solar radiation during the daytime, heating it up, and so everything kind of works. Usually by the time we get to November, Wawasee will be turning over from top to bottom, uh, which means that that water up at the surface will be going all the way 80 feet down to the bottom of Lake Wawasee and back up again. So the whole lake will be around 45 degrees then um as we get later into the into the year.

SPEAKER_00: 23:47

Chase, did you notice temperature difference in different areas of the lake?

SPEAKER_02: 23:51

Yeah, absolutely. And that's something I did not uh understand before I did the swim was that different areas of the lake would have different temperatures. In my mind, it's just one big body of water, it's just one big temperature, right? You know, it's all the same. I you know when you swim down deep, it gets colder. You understand that. But I thought I'm gonna be in seven to twelve feet of water average, probably. It's going to stay the same in that area. But there are springs and natural areas and deep areas and different spots where the water moves differently. And it was very humbling to figure out that uh the lake is not the same temperature while you're trying to swim long distance through it. Yeah. I mean, I could I could turn a corner in the lake and feel the difference. It was really that dramatic.

SPEAKER_01: 24:41

So there's so many dynamics going on with the water currents. I I'm really interested to hear kind of that that you notice that personally, because we have we've talked about top to bottom already uh on this podcast series where you have the epilumnian, the warm water at the top, and the hypolimnian, the cold water at the bottom during the latter part of the spring, all summer, and even into most of the fall until it starts turning over in November. But what we don't talk as much about is sort of the lateral changes, right? The horizontal changes in temperature. But we've got uh four major streams that come into uh into Wawasee, and we sample at all those and have stream sensors that are always measuring temperature. And when more of the water coming in the stream is from the groundwater, it's gonna be colder. And groundwater temperature here in Indiana is 54 degrees Fahrenheit. Whereas when there's more surface runoff, like from a thunderstorm in the heat of the summer, then more of that water coming in the stream is gonna be warmer water. And so the water coming into the stream is gonna be warmer or colder based on how the water is going into that stream in the first place. So the streams are all uh are all new factors, right? And then as you said, you've got the shape of the of the lake itself. We call that the shoreline development of a lake, and you have certain bays and peninsulas and and then you have the bathymetry, which is the topographic surface of the bottom of the lake. And that's gonna lead to, you know, as as water's coming around and winds blowing it, it's gonna divert in certain directions and you're gonna get different mixings. And and you mentioned springs as well. Yep. Uh, we did a research study on on Lake Wawase a few years back and found some of those springs uh at certain times of the year will be pumping in cold water. So that would be that 54 degrees Fahrenheit water. Other times those springs can actually reverse and they can become drains from the lake, and so water will be pulled down, and so then those areas will get kind of warm because you have the warm surface water kind of coming down towards that area. And so you have all of these factors all going on at the same time, which I don't know that you could ever really predict what the temperature would be at any one location because of all of these confounding factors, but you got to feel that. I felt it in real time. What do you recall any of the specific spots where you felt a really big temperature change in particular, and maybe what those locations were?

SPEAKER_02: 27:19

Yeah, the uh so it would be the east side of the lake by the DNR, the hatchery area, yeah, uh Griffiths marina area. Yeah, that area was fairly cold. Uh-huh. Um, it was it was a lot different on the bottom. So most of the lake was kind of open and clear. Yeah. This was mucky, weedy, really different types of weeds, thick weed beds. Right. Um, and it was pretty much it was shallow, but you could see the bottom was kind of like a a mud of sorts. Um, Johnson's Bay was the coldest. Yeah, it was absolutely the coldest. It was the whole time I was in that bay, I was freezing. Once I came around Black Point and went into Johnson's Bay, that turn, I could show you the buoy specifically, where I took a stroke and I just felt like I swam into a whole new body of water.

SPEAKER_01: 28:09

And it kind of takes your breath away when you get to that cold of water.

SPEAKER_02: 28:12

Yeah, and especially when you're already cold.

SPEAKER_01: 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 28:15

You know, you imagine you're kind of cold in the water and then you jump in an ice bath, it hits you pretty fast.

SPEAKER_01: 28:20

Well, that's interesting. So down in the the first area you mentioned, which was colder down in the southern part, so kind of south uh eastern part of the lake down there. So we've got uh Turkey Creek is an inflow there, right? And so if, like we were describing before, if we've got mostly groundwater coming into that creek, that's gonna make sense as to why you're gonna feel that. And it's kind of in a sheltered area down there with all of that water coming in. And then up in Johnson's Bay, then you could so there's not a stream that comes in there in Johnson's Bay, but you likely have a lot of groundwater uh pushing uh from around the wetland area up in that area. You also don't have as much chance for the wind to blow uh the surface uh water down in certain parts of the lake where you could have some warming for that reason too, because Johnson Bay is kind of isolated up there in its own little area.

SPEAKER_02: 29:13

So does the wave chop, the waves created on the lake, does that help increase temperature or no?

SPEAKER_01: 29:21

No, it wouldn't. So that wave chop on the top is is just in that epilumnian surface water layer. In in Wawasee, it might extend down uh 10, 15, maybe 20 feet at times, but but the the wave energy from that chop doesn't go far enough down in the water to actually pull up that cold water down there. Makes sense. The wave chop, if if if the air temperature is really cold, the more choppy the waves are, the more interaction the water is having with the air. And so the water is going to get cooler faster. Whereas if it's if it's perfectly calm and you have cold water. It's not gonna or if if it's cold air above the water and it's perfectly calm, it's not gonna get to be that same temperature as the air as quick, just because it's it's kind of sealed off more from the air than if it's all turbulent and moving around. But yeah, just it being turbulent itself is not gonna sort of increase friction or make it get warm by itself. Yeah. That's really interesting that that you noticed that as you were swimming across different parts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 30:28

For those of you who are only listening, you should have seen Jace's face when he mentioned weeds. So tell us about the weeds, Jace.

SPEAKER_02: 30:36

Yeah. So going into the swim, I was very vocal about this, and I talked to everyone that I am absolutely terrified of seaweed. Um, even as a boy, I was the kid. If we parked the boat to go skiing or tubing and there were weeds under the boat, um we're going to a new spot. I'm not getting in. I don't like, I don't want to jump in and feel anything. And uh I was super fortunate to uh partner with the WACF to start the swim. And they gave us uh the beautiful Henrich Henrich's park, I believe I'm saying that right, um, to start our swim at. There's a little dock that starts there. And I really faced my fear head on right from the start because it was weedy and mucky and there were reeds. It was it was not an ideal place to wade into the water. Let's just say that. If there weren't people on shore, I would not have gotten in that water. I would have really considered, yeah. But the 30 people on shore really gave me the boost I needed. But uh starting the swim, I was my heart rate got really high. Every time I'd swim through a weed patch, you can feel them on your, you know, your head and they're they're really gross. I don't like them. But really, by you know, over on the east side of the lake, the the weeds changed. They were they weren't tall and stringy anymore, they were kind of like bushes underwater. And that was the first point where I started to have the realization that nothing bad has happened to me yet. I've been in the water for a really long time. If something bad was gonna happen, it probably would have happened by now. And, you know, then they're not gonna kill me. They they're a gross, but they're it's okay. And by the end of the swim, I it was fun. I enjoyed them. I really I overcame that fear and I was able to fully get through it. Nine hours of complete, you know, just immersing yourself in your in your biggest fear will definitely help you get over it. But by the end of it, it was kind of intriguing to see, you know, different weeds in different parts of the lake. They're they're different everywhere. There are some spots they're thick, some spots they're real long and tall, some spots you can see down and it looks like they just go on forever. Some of them look like trees, some of them look like bushes. So it was it was unique and it was exp it was uh interesting experience, but I I would I would jump in the water in a weed patch now and I wouldn't think anything of it.

SPEAKER_01: 32:54

So, would you like to know some of the ecological value of these weeds? I would love that. So um, first of all, when we call them weeds, we're sort of putting on them a negative connotation. So I would appreciate if we could call them aquatic macrophytes. That's our technical word.

SPEAKER_00: 33:13

We can call them weeds.

SPEAKER_01: 33:15

So um so aquatic because they're in the water, macrophytes. We have microscopic phytoplankton, which we look at are tiny little plants in the lake too, but these are big enough to see or feel as you're swimming through, right? So one is they're gonna be really good habitat for a lot of critters, whether it's uh turtles, frogs hiding in them, fish, especially in some of the younger life stages for fish. These are gonna be great habitat. They also will help hold, uh, hold back erosion from some of our shorelines. So some of the boating that we do around our lakes can can create that sort of chop that you were mentioning before. That can start to stir up some of the bottom sediment and it can make weeds and other, no, I just said it right, weeds in other parts of the lake, or or even uh algae blooms, and that they could be toxic algae. And so we like to see some of those plants, those macrophytes kind of holding down and helping from erosion there. It's interesting that you would notice different types across different parts of the lake. And so I'm envisioning some of those were probably some of our uh like large, large leaf pond weeds, um, which would be kind of the taller, stringier ones with some broader leaves on them. Uh, the ones that were more bush-like under the surface of the water, that might have been one of our newer ones, starry stonewort, which has started to move in uh to certain parts of the lake. That's an invasive plant, and it can feel kind of like a brillopad almost. Exactly. Yeah, you like swimming through a mat. So you felt that. And and yeah, so diff different portions of the lake are gonna be better, different water depths. Weeds can only grow from so deep because they have to get sunlight to start to grow from the the macrophytes from the floor. Yeah. Did I say weeds again? Yeah, yeah. Oh man, so here I am admonishing you guys about this. And then I would sorry, Nate. Yeah, uh but uh those macrophytes are gonna be really important. Understood that they impede recreation, and so we have to do some management of those. But really, in the end, it would be best to limit the nutrients which feed those that overgrowth of those macrophytes in different parts of the lake.

SPEAKER_00: 35:27

And how are those nutrients delivered to those plants?

SPEAKER_01: 35:30

Yeah, so we've got a number of sources, some of which we've kind of already been talking about, right? We've got streams which flow in, and in Hua C's case, we've got those three or those four major inflowing streams that we monitor. Uh, also the outflowing stream, we monitor that as well. And so those macrophytes are being fed by nutrients coming in from the streams, which could be from agricultural area, uh, could be from golf courses or people's yards. And then you also have the homes directly around the lake, and uh there could be nutrients coming in from fertilizers or erosion of soils off people's yards. We're actually doing a uh a budgeting study right now where we're adding up all of those nutrient sources so we can kind of know what to tackle in the future with partners like like Huawei Sea Area Conservancy Foundation. Then you have sources of nutrients internal as well. So we talked about how boats can stir up the bottom, right? And uh, and also you talked about wind and sort of that chop and the waves and stuff. So those things can create a turbulence, which brings the sediment that's normally at the bottom of the lake back up into the water, and with the sediment from the bottom into the water brings nutrients as well. So all of those internal and external nutrient sources all come together to make the aquatic macrophytes to make the algae grow in the lake.

SPEAKER_02: 36:58

That sounds like a tremendous amount of stuff to monitor.

SPEAKER_01: 37:02

It is, it's a lot of work, but it's really important because we've just been talking about recreation in our lakes, and we want people to be able to enjoy those lakes with their kids and with different generations of people. So it's important work.

SPEAKER_00: 37:15

So in your Lap the Lake, what do you hope that that would your accomplishment is really a big deal? Thank you. What do you hope that that would do for our community, for your family? Like what tell us about your legacy with that?

SPEAKER_02: 37:32

Yeah. So when I when I started the idea for Lap the Lake, it was really just uh me swimming around the lake. There was nothing else to it. I didn't have any dreams or aspirations or anything about that. Um, but in training and swimming in the lake and spending five months, you know, in the water and in these long, I mean, we're talking half a day at a time. And and I got to spend a lot more time on the lake. I really, I really fell in love, refell in love with the lake, what I had once as a child. You know, when you have something, when you're little, you kind of grow up and you take it for granted, and you maybe don't realize what you had until you don't have it anymore. And um, I got to bring my daughter along to watch me do the swimming, and it really sparked this interest in me to make sure that that she had the same opportunity when she grew up that I had when I was a kid. Wow. And I feel like maybe I wasn't doing the best job in in kind of protecting the lake like I should have been. It was always uh the lake was just there. You know, you go out, you hop in the boat, you get on the wave runner, go tubing, you do whatever. You know, the lake's fine. You park the boat, you go inside, and you don't think anything else. You know, I never I never thought about the damage that that we were doing or that other people were doing. And I didn't I didn't really know that thinking that it's the biggest, largest or it's the largest natural lake in Indiana seems pretty impervious. You know, we're not going to ruin it. It's it's got it's been around forever. It's gonna be around forever. You know, it's here when my mom was a kid and it's here now. And and but in being in the water and and spending more time, I I really started to learn and to see some of the stuff. And what really sparked my interest for the conservation was in my training, we had uh, I believe an algae bloom that they closed or recommended that people didn't swim. And I'm swimming, and and so it it kind of startled me that well, I'm I'm supposed to swim five miles today. Should I be in the water or not be in the water? Is it safe to be in the water? And I I didn't know that that was anything like a risk that could happen. I didn't understand that. And it really kind of reiterated with me just how little I knew about the lake. And so that's when I reached out to the Wabasi Area Conservancy Foundation and tried to get a little bit more knowledge and understand some things, and it snowballed in the last month and turned into this. We had a lot of attention because I'm doing this big history-making swim. But the lake needs to be taken care of, and where is the next generation of conservationists at? And my friends certainly aren't doing it, and so I I didn't understand who is next. And I and that's something I asked the WACF when I talked to them, which who is going to step up?

SPEAKER_00: 40:25

Because you, buddy.

SPEAKER_02: 40:26

Yeah, right now it seems like my mom and her generation are the ones that are protecting the lakes. And you know, the the people at the WACF that are running the WACF, I went to school with their kids, they were in my class, and their parents are doing it. But when their parents are done, I don't see a big line of us waiting to step into that role. And and it it opened my eyes and really gave me the the push to try and take the the media and the attention that we got from the swim and to kind of redirect that attention to the lake and and what's happening and and what could happen in the future if we don't take care of the lake. Yeah. Because I would love for my daughter to dream big someday and want to swim across the lake or do something and to be able to jump in and not be fearful that the lake isn't taken care of, or something, you know, there's an algae bloom or something terrible happens. And and so I'm I'm excited to continue on using that and and leveraging the the social media side of things that I have and at my disposal and learn and I'm gonna try and share and inspire with the the younger generation to get them excited at least about the water because it's it is beautiful and it's a great place to grow up and and I took it for granted and hopefully I can make up for some lost time.

SPEAKER_00: 41:42

Well, what's that expression? When we know better, we do better, right? Love that. Yeah, love that you know your your whole mission is creating water literate citizens. Um how do you see that unfolding?

SPEAKER_01: 41:57

Well, I think it relates to what Jace was just talking about. First, people need to experience it and understand it, right? Um and so that's exactly how we do educational programs here at the Lily Center is it's hands-on, it's immersive, it's sometimes literally immersive with kids getting their hands wet and their their feet wet and uh sometimes falling in, maybe even. But these experiences create this awareness, creates an interest, creates a personal desire to do better, and then that stewardship ethic starts to take root not just in these individuals, but in our whole community. And so our vision then for the future is that we have water literate citizens who are in charge of organizations, uh business owners, city council members, and they're making decisions that are promoting the better care of these natural resources. And then that has a feedback then, because then we have healthier communities, more economic development, people value it more, and then it comes easier to steward it. And so we just cycle it over and over. And so we're so excited about that. And it's just amazing, Jace, here in you talk about there's so many parallels and relationships between your experience and uh and your great work in doing this and and what we try to do every day here at the Lilly Center as well.

SPEAKER_00: 43:36

So you launched your Lap the Lake at the Wabasi Area Conservancy Foundation. Um, and you've been learning from them. What else, how else are you involved with them?

SPEAKER_02: 43:52

Uh so we were blessed to have the opportunity to partner up with them for the start of the swim, and that was that was amazing. And we were able to do it from their main location, got to experience all of that and see all the work that they're doing. Um, moving forward in the future, I'm very hopeful that we can continue to have a a partnership and a friendship where we we as and me and my team can continue to do some amazing things and and try and inspire with athletic abilities, with with the other things that we're kind of have going on. Um and utilizing the work that the WACF has already done, because they have a long list of work and and great things that they've already done. I can't do all that alone, and I don't have the time to do all of that, but they have already done most of the hard work, and I'm hopeful that we can uh we can align and have a friendship where I can continue to to push people to understand and see what they're doing, and they can allow us the opportunity to learn and and to understand what's happening with the lakes. I I really didn't understand much of what was going on until I met with them that first day, a week before the swim. That's all it was before I met with them. It's pretty close. Um once you felt better from pneumonia, is that I was still pretty sick when I met with them. Yeah. But I had emailed them and reached out, and uh, you know, things slip through the cracks, and it's I'm one guy and sending cold emails doesn't always get to people, but I was persistent. I kept reaching out, and uh when I finally got the meeting and and was able to talk to them, they thought I was just some crazy guy walking into their shop. We looked at this big map and I I told them I'm very excited I get to see the map. I've never seen a big map of the lake and I'm about to swim around it. So it was cool and we got to talk and uh it was a a tremendous opportunity, I think, for both of us. We had uh over four million views on social media in 24 hours. And every picture that was posted about the swim, there's a giant WACF sign right behind me over my shoulder on the dock, um, start and ended at that location. It was uh it could not have been a better spot to really have the launch of it. Um we we hope to create some more things in the future, and we're hopeful that we can align with them and get on board with more cool stuff. I would love to find a way to create the same feeling I had taking a breath and seeing all these people on their docks and on shore and what my crew felt from the support of the community. Hundreds of people came out, people followed from all over the country on the live feeds online. Um, have people that came to my website and the blog and and jumped over to the WACF website and got to learn, people got to see it in person. So I'm I'm hopeful we can create or recreate something where I'm not the only one who gets to experience it. Hopefully we can create something where everyone gets to have that feeling because it was the community really rallied. It was unbelievable. And I think if there's anything we did right, that was it. We we got the community together for a day. For just one day, everyone was all about what we were doing, and and we weren't hurting hurting the lake, we were we were enjoying it and getting to you know use it for what we wanted and and what we needed, and everyone just really rallied up. That's great.

SPEAKER_00: 47:23

Nate, there are a lot of organizations in Cassiasco County that help our lakes for recreation and others. How do you work with those folks?

SPEAKER_01: 47:31

Yeah, so I would start maybe work looking at the state level. And so we work with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. So Jace was talking before about algae toxin levels and when it's safe to be in the water or not. So those levels are set by what we call I DEM, the with the acronym. Uh, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources is another one that will look at recreation from the boating safety standpoint, also from fishing and anglers who like to use the lakes. And we work with both of those organizations, both on the research side as well as on the management side. And then when we come to the county level, some organizations that I would think of would be uh the Soil and Water Conservation District works a lot with agriculture and how that influences water. Even the Natural Resource Conservation Service is another group that we work with, also on kind of that land side and with agriculture. And then the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation, as we've been talking about, is a good partner of ours, a similar organization a little further south in the county is the Watershed Foundation. Um, many of the lakes have lake associations. So on Wawasee, it's the Wawasee Property Owners Association. And so I just love it. That's that's one of the three work areas of the Lilly Center is collaboration. And so whenever we can work together, there's some synergy there. We can be more efficient, we can be more effective when we're working together. And so that's something we really enjoy.

SPEAKER_00: 49:02

So, Jace, what's next? What's your next big adventure?

SPEAKER_02: 49:06

The big question. I uh we're we're tossing around a few ideas, but um I I have had the itch for a long time to climb Everest. And I I think that if I play my cards right and I talk to my wife and get the okay, I think that that might be something in the future, maybe uh like late in 26 or 27, maybe. Um, I do have a couple of old more ultra marathons coming up. Um I might jump into a couple of Iron Man triathlons and stuff like that. But right now I'm I'm focused on uh writing writing a book about the swim and focused on kind of recovering and and enjoying some time with my family. It was a hard training block, and so I'm I'm focused on giving them the time that they deserve, but there's something big on the horizon. I I can feel it. My wife knows it's coming, she's just waiting for me to sit her down and have the conversation, I think. So I would love I would love to climb Everest. It's been a big goal of mine for a long time, but it's a it's a big ask.

SPEAKER_00: 50:08

So when you're doing these the super what'd you call them?

SPEAKER_02: 50:13

The the ultra endurance.

SPEAKER_00: 50:16

When you're doing the ultra endurance and when you did leap the lake, how much of that effort is physical and how much of it's mental?

SPEAKER_02: 50:26

Oh, good question. That's a great question. And to be to be honest, the hardest part is the mental part. The physical part, you can you can go train. I tell people it's like a credit and a debit card, right? You're when you go out on race day, you are using the money you have stocked away, the work you put in, the hours you put in, that's your that's your your money in so that you have enough to take out when the race comes around. And you you can under train and go out and run a race and finish a race, but if you're not mentally prepared for what you're going to encounter, you might as well not even step on the start line. These races, 100, 200 mile races, you know, some of them three, four days long at a time, no sleep, completely exhausted, non-stop effort. You hallucinate, you have you know, all the demons start coming out. The mental side is 100% the hardest part. The only way to train the mental side is to suffer in training. So the the byproduct of training hard and pushing yourself to the limits for five months straight is that you've already been through it. You've already seen these dark sides. I've already had those times where I thought it was three miles, but it's five, and I had to overcome it. So now when I get in the water and it's 17 instead of 14, I can I can process that, I can, I can deal with that. You know, lots of times in the water I felt like I couldn't keep going and I made it one more buoy or one more pier to the point. And that allowed gave me the I the confidence to know I could do it on on the day of the swim. It's uh mental is definitely the hardest part, but the only way to train mental is to go through it, and that's what stops a lot of people. It's it's hard to go out and do these huge physical endeavors because a lot of people can go out and slowly jog for a incredibly long time, but to do it time and time again, and when things go wrong and things happen and you're hurt, and that's that's where the real mental side starts to come together. And yeah, so mental all the way.

SPEAKER_00: 52:39

And we're looking forward to what your next adventure will be. We'll keep you in our prayers.

SPEAKER_02: 52:44

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 52:48

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor Podcast. You can share your thoughts or submit questions by leaving a comment or sending an email to lakes at grace.edu.

SPEAKER_01: 53:00

Listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakes.grace.edu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways you can make a difference on your lake.

SPEAKER_00: 53:16

We'll see you next time. The Doctor is in.