The Long Swim

Marathon swim momentos

2012-01-23T03:12:00.001-08:00

I have just opened up a new page on my research website, showcasing marathon swim momentos. At the moment, it's got some swim tattoos, including this one from Julie Farrell, plus a lovely block of wood housing pebbles collected from Channel swims.

I'm going to be adding more as they come in - do get in touch if you have an interesting picture to add.

From an aesthetic perspective, I think they're beautiful and fun; from a research perspective, I think they're significant because they show not only how meaningful how marathon swims are to some individuals, but also that the swims (and their momentos) have a wide range of meanings and are deeply personal.

Calling all Channel swimmers...

2012-01-21T03:30:00.000-08:00

Have you swum the English Channel? Or another marathon swim? Did you memorialise it in some way? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

As part of my research, I'm working on a paper about what marathon swims mean to people, and am looking for examples of different kinds of swim memorialisation and commemoration. I'd love to hear about (and get pictures of, if possible) tattoos marking successful swims. I know that some people have bought jewellery or had pieces made - I'd love to see them, and hear about why you chose that design etc.

Also, what did you do with the pebble you collected from the beach? And your swim chart?

Are there other forms of commemoration that I've not thought of?

You can e-mail me at k.throsby@warwick.ac.uk, or post comments below. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Moving and shaking

2012-01-13T07:38:00.001-08:00

The Long Swim has been in hibernation for a month or so, but is now back! I'm not quite sure what happened and why I stopped blogging, except that I went away for a glorious week in Lanzarote over Christmas, then locked myself away to get some research writing done until term started again last week. The consequence of this was that the blog went quiet, but I have just submitted my first article from the swimming research to the journal, Feminist Review, which feels like definite progress. There's absolutely no guarantee of publication at this stage, and the usual practice is that papers are sent out for peer review and then based on the feedback, it will either be rejected (I hope not, but always possible....), accepted with various degrees of changes, or accepted as it is (never happens...or not to me, anyway). So, fingers crossed.

On the training front, things have been a little hit and miss, but ticking along. Following Ian's tragic death, I had sort of decided to go it alone on the stroke correction, drilling in what he had taught me, but then in Lanzarote, I managed to do a lot of sea swimming and realised that my stroke collapsed almost immediately into my old habits as soon as I started doing any distance. So, last week, I went to see Keith at the Swimshed, and am back on the case. Plus the running is ticking along nicely - I'm up to a weekend long run (well, when I say 'long'....) of 4 miles, and am signed up to run a 10k in March. So some progress there too, however unspectacular.

The other point of note was the recent publication by Steve Munatones of a men and women's list of 101 'movers and shakers' in open water swimming....and who would have thought it, but there I am. A mover and shaker, apparently. Of course, these kinds of lists are always arbitrary, but what I thought was great about them is that they demonstrate the breadth of involvement in open water swimming in all aspects of the sport, without necessarily focusing only on the elite end of things. It was nice to be included, though, and prompted a lot interest in the project and website, which was very encouraging for me. Of course, given my hiberating blog and my very poor show with training recently, there's not been much in the way of either moving or shaking from me of late. Must do better.

Joining the club.... fantastic video

2011-12-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

I love this new video, made by my friend, Jamie Goodhead, who has to go down as one of the unluckiest aspiring Channel swimmers out there - if you listen to the narrative about his different attempts, you'll see what I mean. Plus, he's put his finger perfectly on the splendid irrationality of Channel swimming, as well as the compulsive lure of it.

Enjoy.

Sports Personality of the Year

2011-11-29T09:51:00.000-08:00

So today, the shortlist of 10 candidates for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award was announced....shortly followed by a big media flurry about the news that there were no women on the list. Don't get me wrong - I think it's offensive and stupid that women's sport has been so egregiously excluded. But it's really not that surprising, and nor is it the worst offence against women in sport at the current time.

Firstly - let's think about how the shortlist is drawn up....by sports journalists from publications including Zoo, Nuts and the Sun - all with excellent credentials for including women (as long as they don't have any clothes on at the time and are performing sexual availability to their predominantly male readerships). Secondly, let's look at sports reporting itself, only a tiny proportion of which covers women in sport (c. 5% according to the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation). Just as an example, the Guardian was quick to join the debate about the shortlist, but a quick look at its sports pages shows that it includes a human interest story on Taekwondo world champion Sarah Stevenson (reflecting on the challenge of the upcoming London Olympics in the light of the recent tragic deaths of both her parents from cancer), and two further articles relating to the shortlist story (one using an image of Keri-Ann Payne, and the other showing Crissie Wellington). There are no stories on the webpage that actually report on women's sporting events and performances - not a single one that I could find. Is it any wonder, then, that the journalist "experts" that were invited to nominate sports people for the award could muster so few women for their nominations when women's sport is so far off their radar in the first place?

That a bunch of sexist editors excluded women from their nominations, then, is a news story, I suppose, but not a very interesting one; what's more important is what it signifies - that women's sport is consistently marginalised, not only in the media, but also in terms of the distribution of both public and commercial resources. For example, women's elite sport receives only 0.5% of the sponsorship market, making a professional sporting career impossible for many women in many sports which are awash with funding for men, especially if they are unwilling or unable to trade on their sexualisation within mainstream sporting and commercial culture. The effect of this to deter women and girls from engaging in sport because they are figured within the sporting world at best as visitors, and at worst as impostors.

The desperate attempts by the media today to demonstrate their outrage at the men-only shortlist through shocked opinion pieces and alternative women-only shortlists is all very well, but this fails to recognise the broader and more serious problem of the marginalisation of women and girls in sport at all levels - something which is much more serious, and depressing, than their exclusion from this particular popularity contest. There are some tremendous sportswomen out there, but there should be more, and we should hear about them more.

Sleeping like a swimmer....

2011-11-27T05:22:00.000-08:00

I've never been a great sleeper, and my insomniac tendencies always get worse during the academic term when it becomes harder to contain teaching and writing responsibilities within a reasonable working day. Consequently, in spite of a carefully managed routine of hot drinks, light reading, herbal sleeping pills and a light that simulates the sunset in an attempt to trick my body into sleep, I am often awake in the early hours, my mind racing and my body fidgety and unsettled. As anyone who has trouble sleeping knows, it's a vicious cycle once it starts - feeling tired during the day makes you anxious about getting a good night's sleep, which makes it harder to get to sleep.

But then along came the distance swimming, which completely transformed the quality of my sleep. I've done other endurance sports - marathon, triathlon - but while I've found these exhausting, I've never really found them restful. But swimming....well, that's a different thing altogether. As my openwater training escalated in 2009, I noticed a distinct dropping off in my novel reading, going from reading several books a week in bed before sleep, to barely a few pages each night before falling asleep, often with book in hand. I knocked my sunset light off the bedside table accidentally one day and it broke, but I didn't replace it - I was no longer awake for long enough to even remember to switch it on. After long sea swims, I started to experience an utterly delicious, fully-body tiredness that made every surface look like I could curl up on it for a nap. Even in the middle of the intensifying pressures of work, I slept more profoundly than I could ever remember.

Fast-forward to the present. The stroke correction programme I've been following has been engaging and productive, but it's not "swimming" - not enough to produce the lovely easy sleep of long distance training. And I've been running, but only 3-4 miles a few times a week, and in any case, running just doesn't work in the same way for me. And so, as the stresses of term have intensified, my quality of sleep has declined; the herbal sleeping pills are back, and I had to buy a new sunset light. But then, last week, I decided that it was time to reintroduce swimming (as opposed to just drilling) into my training, and have started doing sets on top of my daily drills - only 2-3km at a time for now, and always trying to swim mindful of my stroke corrections, but swimming, nevertheless. And lo and behold...my swim-sleep has returned - something which has been aided by my fairly poor swim-specific fitness, meaning that I get nicely tired even at relatively low distances. Bad news for my hopes of keeping up with contemporary fiction; but great news for my general well-being. Here's to sleeping like a swimmer.

Farewell to Ian Smith

2011-11-24T09:12:00.001-08:00

I was shocked to receive the terrible news this morning that Total Immersion swim coach, Ian Smith, passed away on Monday. As regular readers of the blog will know, I've been working with Ian over the past few months to improve the efficiency of my stroke. These most recent sessions continued a coaching relationship that extends back several years, over which Ian has helped me to tame my wayward stroke and maximise my skills as a swimmer. Ian was a consumate professional - focused and knowledgeable, with an incisive eye for efficiency-damaging swimming quirks and an armoury of drills and strategies to sort them out. Ian communicated a passion for the sport through his coaching, regardless of whether he was dealing with a speedy youngster with competitive ambitions, or a plodding long-distance swimmer like myself.

My heart goes out to his family, whose loss is unimaginable. For myself, I will miss him enormously.

Training toys

2011-11-14T15:30:00.001-08:00

I've been oh-so-good about working on my wayward stroke out; for ten weeks now, I've been drilling, drilling, drilling 4 or 5 times a week, and foregoing the pleasures of the longer, absent-minded swim that I used to end my day with. And there are definitely signs of improvement - improved pace, less waggling in the head area, a less frenetic hurling of the left arm through the recovery. But I was getting bored, so I decided to buy myself some toys to keep me entertained.

The first of these is a swim snorkel that I've had for a couple of weeks now - mine is made by Finis, and is splendid...or at least it will be once I've finally got the hang of not inhaling large quantities of pool water up my nose. And yes - I know it doesn't make sense because I don't inhale underwater through my nose when I'm swimming without a snorkel. It's obviously just a co-ordination demand too far sometimes. But when I'm not snorting water, this is a fabulous little gadget for giving me time to think about particular elements of the stroke without the distraction of turning to breathe. I don't use it too much, since being able to turn to breathe seems pretty important, but a portion of the session with the snorkel on helps me to get the feel for those bits of the stroke cycle that I'm having trouble holding on to, making it easier to keep everything in place when I'm back to full stroke. Be warned, though - it is a spectacularly foolish-looking piece of kit, and you will be very hard to take seriously when wearing it.

The second new toy is these funky Finis PT paddles...or anti-paddles, really. Unlike conventional paddles, these are specifically designed to completely prevent any purchase on the water by the hands. This forces the swimmer to make full use of the forearm in the catch and pull phase of the stroke - a bit like fist gloves, except the hand is kept in a more natural swimming position. At first, they were really frustrating to swim in because of the lack of grip on the water, but after a while, you start to really feel for the water with the whole forearm. In turn, this has been really helpful in terms of getting my arms into a better, high-elbowed catch position. And, when you take them off, you feel like you are flying.

Anybody else got any good suggestions for training kit that you can't live without and that might keep me entertained in my drill sessions?

Catalina Channel Swimming Federation banquet

2011-11-12T10:10:00.001-08:00

Last Saturday was the awards banquet for the Catalina Channel Swimming Federation - a chance to celebrate the year's successes, plus the contributions of pilots, kayakers, crew, family members etc. It goes without saying that I would have loved to have been there, but time and money, plus the fact that I think I've already left a pretty hefty carbon footprint this year, meant that I had to watch from afar. From the reports and pics that I've seen, it looked like a fun affair.

It was nice to see the list of successful swims....although I have to say that I felt ever so slightly embarrassed at having taken quite such a long time, relative to the majority of swims. My poor crew!

Well done to all the swimmers, and to the CCSF and all those involved for another successful year of swims.

In the mean time, although I'm absolutely determined not to do another long swim next year, I'm starting to cook up some plans. That's what the winter's for - pool training and plan cooking.

Progress?

2011-11-04T08:19:00.001-07:00

Okay...so last night I tried a little experiment at the pool.

I've been concentrating on drilling, drilling, drilling, with no sustained swimming. Even when I am doing full stroke, at the beginning of each length I select what I'm going to focus on, then stop at the end, choose the next thing to focus on, and off I go again, working my way through the different elements of the stroke (right breathing, right arm catch; right breathing, left arm catch....and so on). This has been going on for two months now, and it's starting to come together, sort of, although at the same time, my swimming fitness has gone through the floor because of the absence of sustained effort. Anyway, feeling a bit frustrated with all the drilling, and desperate to burn off some energy after a difficult day at work, I finally cracked last night and decided to have a bit of a swim, up and down, up and down, just to see whether I could sustain my new work-in-progress stroke. Not too bad, though I say it myself.

And then, right at the end, I decided to try a 100m sprint, just to see. Previously, I have always struggled to break 1.30, and have certainly struggled to do so consistently. Plus, on the occasions when I have dipped just below 1.30, it has been at full-welly, pass-me-a-bucket, spots-behind-the-eyes effort. So, how did I do? Well...I was amazed to hit the wall at 1.25....and that was without being anywhere near max effort. I realise that breaking 1.30 is hardly going to shake the swimming world and there's probably no need to alert the swimming authorities, but for me, this is a big moment - to break it so clearly, at a much lower intensity than previously, and at such a low level of swimming fitness surely bodes well for what I might be able to do after more drilling, rebuilding my swimming fitness and working at full effort.

I'm starting to think there's something to this technique business.

Small adjustments...

2011-10-29T03:45:00.000-07:00

The work of stroke corrections continues - a slow, frustrating but absorbing process of abandoning deeply entrenched habits and learning new, more efficient technique. My body is annoyingly intractable at times, resisting the small but significant adjustments and quickly falling back into comfortable (comforting?) old habits of movement as soon as my attention wanders. But there are also moments when I hit it right, and suddenly, momentarily, I see what Ian's getting at. And then it goes again. But there is some progress, as you can see below, although evidenced only by the smallest adjustments in posture, position and movement, and not, as yet, by any increases in endurable speed.

The first problem that we are focusing on is my waggly head, which lifts out of the water on each breath, exposing virtually my whole face. To support this, my opposite arm drifts out sideways contributing very little, and forward propulsion is doubly interrupted by my drag-producing head and my drifting arm. It also tends to produce a rather "ballistic" (to use Ian's term) recovery, with my hand travelling above the elbow, and then crashing into the water on entry.

Still a work in progress, but here's a snap from my most recent session - note the head is much more in line with the body, with only one goggle lens exposed. Plus, I've managed to keep a higher elbow and a more relaxed recovery.

The second problem was my lack of an effective catch, with straight arms drifting out and down, especially on a breath, and not catching until my hand was almost directly below my shoulder.

But slowly...oh so slowly...my straight arm is learning how to do this...a high elbowed catch that enables me to get a proper grip on the water.

In tandem with these changes, perhaps the biggest change I'm trying to make is to move from breathing every three to every two strokes. This is hard, firstly because I was very attached to the idea of breathing every three as a way of balancing out the strain on the body over a long swim. And secondly, the rhythm of threes has become really central to my strategies for keeping going...I like to count to four, but emphasising the breathing strokes, creating a nice syncopated rhythm - ONE two three FOUR one two THREE four one TWO three four...and so on. As I get back to longer swimming, I'm going to have to work on something to replace what for me is the core soundtrack of the long distance swim.

But I remember on our Channel relay in 2009, Marcy Macdonald (our official observer) advised me during a particularly hard-push bit of the swim to breathe every two, doing, say, 6 breaths on one side, then six on the other to achieve balance. It was too big a change to implement during the swim, and afterwards, I quickly settled back into my habitual threes, not wanting to do the hard work of changing those ingrained habits at the same time as training for the Jersey swims and the Channel. I think that I chose to ignore this piece of (expert) advice for the same reason that I never really did the speed work before my Channel swim that I had been advised to do....somehow, I thought those things only applied to the faster swimmers, and that as long as I could plod on forever, I'd be fine. But now I want to be a better swimmer too, so at last, I'm finally starting to take this advice seriously. An extra incentive to sort this out comes from Ian, who is absolutely adamant that breathing every three will create inefficiencies through oxygen debt, and that breathing more often, combined with a breathing technique that doesn't interrupt my stroke, will speed me up over distance. So, that too is on the daily list of things to work on.

I miss the solid effort of a good 5-6km training session, but for now, am determined to stick with the attentive swimming of the stroke correction process. And in the mean time, I'm still running...and equally incremental process, but satisfying in its unspectacular way. Inching up in quarter mile chunks, my longest run each week is now 2.75 miles. I don't think Paula Radcliffe is going to be losing sleep just yet, but when I complete each new increment in distance, I feel full of joy at my progress.

Florence Chadwick - What's My Line?

2011-10-26T04:50:00.001-07:00

I saw this circulating on Facebook and couldn't resist. It's from a 1955 episode of "What's My Line", and features the wonderful open water swimmer, Florence Chadwick - a four times English Channel swimmer who broke Gertrude Ederle's world record in 1950, crossing in 13 hours and 20 minutes. I love the fact that the panelist eventually guesses based on her having "the beautiful wide shoulders of a wonderful swimmer", although they get distracted at first by the assumption that she must be famous because of who she married!

Florence Chadwick was a true pioneer and an inspirational woman in whose footsteps I am proud to tread (in my own far less impressive way). Today's women swimmers owe her, and the other early female swimmers, an enormous debt for the work they did in opening up new possibilities for women, both in and out of the water.

Enjoy.

20,000+ blog views

2011-10-21T07:24:00.000-07:00

Time to celebrate - my little blog has now had over 20,000 views since it started. Who'd have thought it! Thanks to everyone who stopped by.

Swimfit - when is weight loss talk not about weight loss?

2011-10-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

So, further to my concerns about the Swimfit use of the "pinch an inch" image on the Shape Up and Tone section of their website, I wrote the following e-mail to their complaints address:

"I am writing to complain about the problematic image used to illustrate the 'Shape up and tone" section of your front page, and then again, for the "how does your sport compare?" box. The image shows a very slim torso, with the flesh being pinched =, presumably to evaluate fatness. The "pinch an inch" test has long been discredited as offering any meaningful information, especially when conducted by untrained individuals. It is healthy to have pinchable flesh on the body, and it is disappointing that the website is so flagrantly focusing on cosmetic issues while purporting to be promoting health and well-being.

I am an experience and passionately involved long distance open water swimmer (English Channel 2010, Catalina Channel 2011) as well as a sociologist researching long distance open water swimming and its relation to what constitutes the "fit body" (among other aspects). In my view, your website needs to be very clear that weight in itself (and especially having pinchable flesh around the torso) is in no way a predictable measure for health. This is an incredibly impoverished view of what swimming has to offer, and presents the view that less body fat is always better."

To their credit, they got back to me pretty quickly, but the reply was frankly baffling:

"Hi Karen,
The website shows this picture for the Shape Up & Tone programme, which is not any suggestion about weight. it is simply to tone your body whatever shape it may be. None of our programmes have mention of weight they are simply to encourage people into the water, get them swimming and enjoy themselves while following our programmes. The Shape Up & tone programme encourages strengthening of more muscle groups to tone the body but has no mention of loss of weight. Of course, if someone writes to us asking how to lose weight with swimming we can help them but that is not the aim of the programme".

If we set aside for a moment the ways in which words like "toning" and "shape up" are codes for weight loss, what's most striking about the reply is the extraordinary claim that none of the programmes mention weight / weight loss. Take, for example, this extract (my highlights added) from the front page of the Shape Up and Tone section of the website:

"Shape Up and Tone is for you if you are seeking to bring about some changes in the way you look or considering using swimming as part of a weight management programme.

This may be maintaining your current weight but achieving a more toned appearance or as part of a weight loss programme. And there are some great reasons why you should be swimming to achieve this.

Did you know even a gentle swim can burn over 200kcal in half an hour and a fast front crawl can burn as many calories as an 8mph run? True.
And the because water is about 800 times denser than air, you can work harder, and burn more calories, in a pool than out of it? Again true."

Not only does the text slip easily between mention of "toning" and direct reference to weight / weight management / weight loss, but also, the only "great reasons" that are offered for using swimming both concern calorie burning (an obvious reference to weight loss). If the strengthening of muscle groups is the goal of the programme (as the Swimfit representative suggests), then a "great reason" to do it would be evidence of improved muscle strength and its effects in people following such a programme. The number of calories presumed to be burned tells us nothing about this. I can only return to my original conclusion that the section is actually about weight management....which brings me back to the image as fundamentally, and problematically, about weight. It is frankly disingenuous to say that the programme doesn't mention or refer to weight, since it evidently does so, both implicitly and explicitly.

And while I'm on a roll....let's take a moment to think about the "Choosing the right swimwear" section (also in the Shape Up and Tone section. There's a section each for men and women, each with lists of body shapes and parts matched to style advice about what shape of costume to choose to distract the onlooker's eye from flaws and draw it towards more "appealing characteristics". I'll save my comparison of the male and female advice sections for another day, but suffice to say that the women are given more possible problems to worry about, and the advice is more elaborately oriented to very specific body parts, rather than "builds", as is the case predominantly for the men. But anyway....my real objection is this....The section for "pear shape" women begins: "A pear shape has often been a plague for women, but it no longer needs to be." A plague? Really? Women are on the receiving end of plenty of devastating problems - domestic violence, lack of reproductive freedom, unequal pay, sexism - but plagued by a body shape? Only in the eyes of those who prioritise how women look over what they can do could this sentence make sense. As soon as you focus on "flaws", you make them matter; as soon as you offer advice about how to hide them, you make it difficult for women to feel anything other than ashamed of their bodies. If the Swimfit programme is about getting people into the water, rather then teaching women to surveille and discipline their bodies for public consumption, then why does this section not simply say, "It doesn't matter what you wear - as long as the costume is comfortable, you're good to go!"?

Phew. Glad I got that off my chest.

Pinch an inch?

2011-10-14T06:15:00.001-07:00

I was browsing the British Gas Swimfit website today and was really frustrated to find this image, which is used to illustrate both the "shape up and tone" section of the site, and this box which takes stroke, intensity and duration and gives you the calorie expenditure estimated to be involved, plus a comparison with other activities such as walking or running.

I have so many problems with this. Firstly, the person pinching their flesh is very lean, but it is still not clear whether this is representing the identification of a problem or the demonstration of the "good" body. Either way, the "can you pinch an inch?" mode of body assessment is highly discredited, not least because healthy bodies are supposed to have flesh on them. Furthermore, the association of the image with calorie counts draws a straight line from calorie intake to targeted fat loss - a move that conveniently skips over the well-recognised complexity and unpredictability of energy balance and the impossibility of targeted body fat loss as a product of intake reduction.

And secondly, while I'm having a bit of a rant....talk about how to suck the life out of swimming. I can't think of anything more impoverished than the measurement of swimming's benefits through the miserly counting of calories. Interestingly, while the other non-competitive sections of the Swimfit programme (Health and Fitness) offer evidence of tangible health benefits from swimming (e.g. reduced stress and depression, greater physical comfort while exercising for those with mobility difficulties or joint problems, improved range of motion), the Shape up and Tone section only offers estimated calorie usage with changes to body size and composition assumed. Where is the evidence of actual health-related improvements to support this aspect of the scheme? In this model, the increase in energy output is always presumed to be desirable because it is presumed to lead to weight loss (which is also deemed to be always desirable) - it's actual relation to health and well-being is unclear, and the "pinch an inch" picture sends a confusing and offensive message that health can be measured directly off body composition.

You only have to look at the average Channel swimmer to know that the relationships between health, fitness and body fat is far more complicated than that.

Waggly head and ballistic arm...

2011-10-08T02:55:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Ian Smith at Swim Shack as part of my project to revamp my swimming technique and speed up a bit, as well as trying to avoid any further injury problems with my shoulder and hand. There is nothing like being videoed from multiple angles in an endless pool and then having it played back to you immediately to bring home the vast gulf between how your swimming feels and how it looks in practice. In particular, the first thing that Ian homed in on was my waggly head, which lifts out of the water at an angle on each breath. Looking back at pictures from my Catalina swim, for example, you can see this very clearly:

One of the effects of this, especially when I breathe to the right (where the problem is more pronounced), is for my left arm to shoot out sideways in search of leverage to support my tilted head. It then tends to drift, straight-armed, downwards, not getting any real catch until it's well down my body. It's obviously something that's really slowing me down, because when I tried just swimming without taking a breath, with the flow of the endless pool at the same rate as before, I immediately smacked into the propulsion unit and the flow had to be increased quite considerably. Most notably, my arm doesn't drift and sink when I keep my head down. So, this is what I've been working on....breathing by keeping my head in line with my body, rather than tilting upwards. It sounds really easy, but like all embodied habits, it's a tough one to change and I can still only execute a breath properly for just a few cycles before my head pops back up again. Work in progress.

The second big issue was what Ian describes as my "ballistic" left arm. My arm tends to fly out of the back of the stroke and over my hip before hurtling forwards with the hand well above the elbow, and smacking into the water. I thought that it was connected to the breathing problem (which it probably is in the holistic sense), but I still do it when I swim without taking a breathe, so it's also an engrained habit in its own right. Ian reckoned that this is almost certainly what is causing my shoulder problem, and, rather ominously, remarked that we'd need a whole separate session to deal with that! So, I'm not concentrating on that for now and am trying to focus on my waggly head. I'm going back in two weeks, so hopefully I'll start to be less "ballistic" very soon.

I'm swimming three or four times a week, just for about 45 mins or so.... hopefully I'll be able to increase this a bit once the beginning-of-term dust has settled. Mind you, I have to say that I'm enjoying having a break from the hard swimming - I think a fallow period will do me good, and by next Spring, I'll be dying to get back to it.

In the mean time, I'm also pursuing my parallel project of adding in running and strength and conditioning training to my routines. The S&C is one of those things that it's hard to measure progress in, except that I'm slowly increasing reps and exercises. The running, however, gives a much greater sense of progress, however unimpressive in the context of the wider running world. After a month of preparatory walk-running, I've moved on to Hal Higdon's novice 5km programme, and am now comfortably running 1.5-1.75 miles four times a week at roughly 10min / mile pace. This is a distinct improvement from when I started this project when I couldn't run for more than a few consecutive minutes without turning bright scarlet. I sometimes feel quite frustrated by all this, and cross with myself for so thoroughly letting my running fitness go - only 7 years ago, I ran the Barcelona marathon in 4.20, which is not fast by any means, but was a decent performance for me at the time. But I have to keep reminding myself that you have to start from where you are, not where you wish you were. And I do have a good fitness base on my side from all of the swimming, so I'm sure that's helping. And if there's one thing that Channel swimming has taught me to make good use of, it's patience.

So there we go...incrementally advancing S&C and running and a work-in-progress stroke correction.

Plus, I'm now analysing the swimming data and am in the very early stages of planning out the writing phase of the research. More about this later when I have something to show for it.

British Swimming....how to organise a dog's breakfast of a ticketing process

2011-10-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

So... like many people who failed to get Olympics tickets for the swimming, I excitedly pre-registered myself for priority booking for the British Gas Swimming Championships, 2012 - the GB trials in the new aquatics centre. The fact that British Gas are involved, even only as sponsors, should have given me a heads up (anyone who's tried to deal with what they laughingly call "customer services" will know what I mean), but this was just a spectacular dog's breakfast from the outset. The ticketing website, accessible through an individualised link, was supposed to open at 9am today, and I was duly online at 9.05, ready to book my tickets before my morning of meetings. But no...it wasn't up yet. I don't know what time it opened, but I checked briefly at 9.50 and it was working, but I had no time before my meeting, so I started again at just gone 11am....What a mess. The system was slow and clunky, repeatedly timing out. Eventually, I managed to reserve two sets of three seats for a session of finals, and for some heats. Result....or so I thought until I finally crawled my way to the checkout, only to have the site repeatedly crash, and then to time out, wiping off all of the tickets I had reserved. Aaargh.

Off to another meeting, then back to try again....except this time, most of the tickets had already gone. I give up.

I accept that not everyone can have the tickets that they want, and I think it's great that so many people are into swimming. But exclamations on the part of British Swimming that they had greater demand than anticipated ring pretty hollow, given that all they had to do was count up the number of people who had purposefully pre-registered - a pretty good indicator of how many people would try to buy tickets, I would have thought. And also, how can it be acceptable to have such a feeble system in place to manage that demand? All British Swimming had to say for themselves was to "keep trying", but this isn't good enough - I don't think it's too much to ask to have a system in place with enough capacity to process applications, or efficiently display non-availability. What a waste of time.

The Longest Swim...

2011-09-25T07:17:00.001-07:00

Today was the awards ceremony at Swan Pool for the Sandwell Lifesaving and Channel Swimming Club...and for the second year running, I won the trophy for "the longest swim". This was for the Catalina Swim - I may not be fast, but I can plod for hours with the best of them! Seriously, though, I love the fact that the club has a prize for this, and that more broadly, that it has found a good balance between recognising the amazing achievements of some of the scarily, impressively fast members alongside those of us who will never break records or win races, but who go for it in our own ways.

Many thanks to Dan Earthquake for running the Swan Pool sessions all summer... a quiet volunteerism that is hugely appreciated. I'm done for the year now, but will be back down there in May, ready for my early-season shivers.

Wetsuit or no wetsuit...?

2011-09-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

There's been a bit of chat in the OW swimming world over the last few days following an article by Scott Zornig, President of the Santa Barbara Channel Swimming Association, in which he (among other issues) sets out his own strongly held view that wetsuits have no place in marathon swimming (with some exceptions such as swimmers with disabilities). He is very clear in the article that these are his own views (although they are presented under the SBCSA logo) and while I don't fully agree with him, it's an issue around which there is a lot of controversy within the community and one worthy of discussion. So I thought I'd throw in my penny's worth.

I should start by saying that in many ways, I agree with Scott Zornig - I think that to say that you have swum the Catalina Channel or the English Channel is to say that you did it without a wetsuit and in accordance with the fairly standardised rules that the governing bodies of most marathon swim organisations use to regulate their swims. I also agree with him that most people, with sufficient attention to training, acclimatisation and body fat can eventually make themselves able to swim in open water without a wetsuit. Indeed, I often find myself encouraging people to abandon the neoprene, just because of what I think is the enhanced pleasure of non-wetsuit swimming. But I also feel that not everyone wants to do that for all kinds of reasons, and that this too is a legitimate choice - it's supposed to be a leisure activity, after all. Such a person will never swim the Channel (in the conventional, regulated sense), but they might swim it with a wetsuit on. This still is a fabulous achievement and one which only a tiny proportion of people could even contemplate attempting; it will require hard training, and will still probably be a massive and significant event in that person's life. Scott Zornig argues that the title "marathon swimmer" does not apply to this individual because it is not a "swim". Instead, he proposes describing it as a "Water Adventure" or a "Water Exhibition" in the hope that this will stop people "raining on the parade of true marathon swimming accomplishments."

And I think that it is here that I think we start to see the real source of tension between wetsuit swimmers and non-wetsuit swimmers - the problem of self-misrepresentation. It seems to me that the problem is not that people do these marathon swims in wetsuits, but that some people are not entirely straightforward and open about having done so. Without wanting to name any specifics here, we are all aware of high-profile, media hungry swims that have been extremely quiet about their use of wetsuits whilst at the same time presenting them in such a way that people will assume they are done without one. My reading of Scott Zornig's articles is that he feels that the label "marathon swim" facilitates this misrepresentation, and he wants to reclaim it for non-wetsuit swimming to protect the category. But I'm not so sure that this is the way to go. It seems to me that this title could easily be rehabilitated to include a wide range of impressive swimming achievements, if this occurred alongside the standardised inclusion of wetsuit / non-wetsuit status; I think that we should broaden the definition rather than narrow it. And perhaps the only way that this can be done is by being more accepting of wetsuit swimming as one part of our amazing sport; making people feel ashamed of swimming with a wetsuit (by likening it to illegal doping, for example) will only make it harder for people to be straightforward about the kind of swim they have chosen to do, and to celebrate those swims. Even with the wetsuit, a long swim is a long swim, and I am uncomfortable with the notion of a "true" form of marathon swimming to which everything else is subservient.

It's also worth noting that misrepresentation is not confined to the wetsuit issue. I know of plenty of people who list a Channel swim on their sporting CVs without also noting that it was a relay crossing; I also know of someone from this year who has told people that he completed the Channel when in fact he was pulled out 2 miles from the French coast. These are irritating moments, not least because lying is always irritating, but also because, in most cases, the misrepresentation is entirely unnecessary - the vast majority of the non-swimming (and swimming) population consider a Channel relay to be just as outlandishly difficult and impressive as a solo, or quite rightly consider a solo Channel swim that takes you so close to France to be an awesome achievement by any standards.

I don't know what the answer to all this is. To those who are misrepresenting their swims - either because of wetsuits, or whatever else - I would say, get a grip and be a grown-up. And to those who see wetsuit swims as a threat to non-wetsuit swims, I would ask what is at stake in maintaining that distinction so thoroughly, and what might the consequences of that be in terms of alienating potential new members from taking up the sport? I want more people in the water, not fewer, whatever they're wearing.

Back to basics

2011-09-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

My return from my fantastic trip to California marked the end of this year's serious swimming challenges. It's been a splendid summer all round, but now it's time for a change of pace. I am taking the next year off from big swims in order to both recoup my dwindling finances and have a chance to do some other fun things - Peter and I are going on a surfing course in Lanzarote over Christmas (did I say recouping my finances...?), and have plans to do some walking, and maybe even some cycling. Plus, we've just bought a cottage in Bath (where Peter now works), and we want to spend some time getting to know the area and generally not having our leisure time governed so thoroughly by the demands of training.

I'm very excited about all these plans, but at the same time, feel quite flat and demotivated - the inevitable consequence of the end of an exciting season, but also the loss of focus that having a swim booked for the next year provides. I've also been struggling with a niggly back injury - the result of that fall at the beginning of my Catalina swim - which has been a bit demoralising....although things are definitely improving on that front, slowly but surely.

So....what to do? I've decided that it's time to go back to basics.

Firstly, I've started a programme of Strength and Conditioning to try and improve my strength, stability and flexibility throughout my body. My shoulders, upper body are pretty good, and my core strength isn't bad, but particularly my lower body is not terribly stable, which can't be good in the long term. I'm steadily building a programme of exercises, starting slowly with foundational ones, and then, eventually, moving on to swimming specific ones. It feels like a long job and I'm frustrated with how hard (and unrewarding) I'm finding some of it, but I need to give it time....and if you'd seen me trying to do some of even the most basic exercises, you'd appreciate the need for some of this basic bodily work and general maintenance.

The second element of the back to basics is a cautious return to some running. I've been running on and off for years, but also have a touch of arthritis in my knees and am far from gazelle-like. However, I love running, and find it quite therapeutic and physically satisfying, even at my very modest level. But, in the interests of building up gently after a long period of not running (plus being wary about my back), I have returned to the very beginning and am following Hal Higdon's introductory 30/30 programme - 30 days of 30 minute sessions involving 1o mins of walking, 15 mins of walk / run, then 5 mins of walking. Then I'll move on to a 5km programme, with a hope of completing some kind of event by Christmas. As I said, back to basics, but the most important thing is that it has to be sustainable and I don't get injured. This, combined with the Strength and Conditioning, is pretty much all that I've been doing for the last week or so since I came back from the States.

And very shortly, I'll move on to the next step - back to swimming basics. I know that with a decent amount of training, I can do the long swims, but I am also locked in to a plod-pace and I think that I can be a better, faster swimmer if I spend some time now working on my technique - especially my weedy left arm catch, and whatever weird thing I'm doing with my right hand to cause the recurrent tendon problem in my right wrist. All my bad habits are thoroughly ingrained, so I'm about to start a programme of careful drilling to try and relearn that muscle memory. I'm going to have some video analysis to guide the process, and plan to work on the drills five times a week, for 30 mins each sessions through to Christmas. Then I'll re-evaluate, but hopefully, I'll be ready to start building in more sustained swimming by then to consolidate what I hope will be an improved technique. This is not simply about enabling me, for example, to do a faster Channel swim; it's more about that extra pace opening up new, and even more challenging, possibilities in terms of swims that I could attempt but which I wouldn't necessarily want to try at my current pace.

All of this, however modest and unspectacular, takes me some distance out of my comfort zone. I'm a very inattentive swimmer who simply loves swimming - this makes me very good at being in the water for a long time, but not great when it comes to developing my skills and increasing my speed and efficiency. I don't particularly enjoy the detailed work of breaking down a stroke and building it back up. But I'm hoping that, in the long term, this will be time well spent. Indeed, one of the most common practices shared by many of the most accomplished and enduring swimmers that I have met in the course of the research is their insistence on regular drilling, as well as strength and conditioning work.

So, those are my three key areas of focus for now: (1) foundational, and then, swimming specific strength and conditioning; (2) modest but regular running, building up to the 5km, and maybe 10km, mark for cross training and a change of pace; and (3) to work concentratedly on my technique in order to improve speed and efficiency in the water.

I'm still working on what comes next in terms of marathon swimming goals. I'm stewing on a few possible ideas but prefer to keep those to myself until I've got a firm plan of action in place. So for now, it's back to basics for me - a new challenge.

Radio interview

2011-08-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

I did a little radio interview for BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire yesterday. I spoke to them before and after the Channel swim last year, and one of the producers has been following the blog and got in touch after the Catalina swim. They're really nice and friendly, and it's always a fun thing to do. You can listen to the interview here for the next few days....I'm on at 2.04.35.

Bridge to Bridge

2011-08-24T12:08:00.001-07:00

I just got some photos back from the Bridge to Bridge swim - this time taken by Suzie Dods from the safety kayak. The brightness of the day comes through really beautifully in the pics, as well as the gorgeous SF skyline.

I don't know what the three of us were doing here...probably dawdling about looking at the view.

Happy memories of a lovely swim.

And now....back down to earth with a thump, and I'm back in Coventry in a fog of jetlag, with the beginning of term only a month away. But I'm also thinking about what to do over the next year and will start writing more about this over the next few weeks.

Swimming cupcakes

2011-08-24T07:58:00.001-07:00

At the very end of my US trip, I popped back to Santa Barbara for a final evening with my friends, Scott and Debbie, and their daughter, Quinn. To say thank you for all their help with the Catalina swim, and their splendid hospitality, I ordered a special batch of swimming cupcakes from the wonderful Crushcakes Cupcakery. We liaised over the phone and by e-mail and I pretty much left them to their own creative imaginations....and look what they came up with!

Particular favourites were the octopus...

And the swimmer...

And they were delicious too.

Alcatraz

2011-08-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

The day after the B2B swim, I rejoined Leslie Thomas and a group of Swim-Art swimmers to swim from Alcatraz to Aquatic Park. Fantastically, this was the swim that I won in the raffle at the CS&PF dinner last year, and which Leslie had kindly donated, so it was an extra special treat.

The 15 Swim-Art swimmers were joined by 45 triathletes from a local club - they travelled out on a different boat, but we shared the corridor of safety kayaks and ribs that led us into through the entrance to the sheltered waters of Aquatic Park and the beach finish.

The jump-off at the start showed the differences between the two groups - we jumped in in an orderly manner, one at a time, before starting to swim, while the triathletes piled overboard, lemming-like, forming a churning mass of swimmers. But eventually we all straggled out anyway, paddling our way through the very rough conditions, aiming to the left of the cove mouth in order to account for the ebbing tide flowing out under the Golden Gate Bridge. I was quite relaxed for the first half of the swim, enjoying great views of the GG Bridge when I breathed to the right, and the Bay Bridge to my left. But at some point I found myself with a couple of swimmers around me who were obviously racing, and try as I might to ignore them, I ended up joining in and really pushing for the last 15 mins or so. It's not a long swim (about 1.5 miles), but it's iconic and fun.

Interesting fact of the day....according to my guide book, they used to make the prisoners have hot showers so that they would not be acclimatised to cold water and be tempted to swim for it.

And with that, my San Francisco trip comes to an end and it's back to the UK I go.

Bridge to Bridge - San Francisco

2011-08-16T11:26:00.001-07:00

I have been having a fantastic time in San Francisco, meeting swimmers, doing lots of interviews, and generally (believe it or not) getting a lot of work done. But then again, all work and no play....So, on Saturday, I did the Bridge to Bridge swim, courtesy of Swim-Art and the wonderful Leslie Thomas. The swim is from the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge - a distance of about 6 miles, but with a strong tidal push to help us along.

After a briefing, we boarded the "Lovely Martha" and motored out to our starting point - the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a stunning edifice, but I have to say, it looked a little bit moody in the early morning fog...

The water was looking a bit angry too, especially around the bridge pilons, and as the flotilla of safety kayakers make their way over to us, it all looked a bit grizzly....but still very exciting.

It was windy and chilly on deck, and I wondered what kind of swim this was going to be...

We were given a 5 minute warning, and readied ourselves to jump off. I was cutting my usual glamorous and elegant figure.

And then it was time to jump...

And then we started swimming - I was paired with Graham, plus the wonderful Suzie Dods in the kayak, and we swam very happily and peacefully along the coastline at a well-matched pace throughout (plus we were later joined by Chelsea, who had outpaced her original group, and we all continued to swim on merrily together). And after about half an hour, joy of joys, the clouds lifted, the water flattened, and we were treated to a beautiful, sharply-defined view of the city.

I've been lucky enough to do a lot of fabulous swims, but this was one of the most exhilerating and enjoyable swims I've ever done - perfect conditions, great views, good swimming companions, and a nice distance - enough to know you've had a good swim, but not so much that you need to lie down in a dark room afterwards. I wanted to stay in forever.

But all too soon we had reached the Bay Bridge, passing through the shadow that it cast on the water, and hearing the rumble of traffic as went swam beneath...and then over to the boat. I retrieved my bottle and waterproof camera from Suzie, sticking the bottle in my mouth so that I could use both hands to shove the camera up the side of my costume before climbing up the ladder. Thanks to whoever it was on the boat who captured my triumphant (and once again, elegant) finish!

The mood on the boat was wonderful - lots of excited talk and awash with the satisfaction of a good morning's swimming in perfect conditions. All in all, an excellent day. Many thanks to Swim-Art for running such an excellent swim - I'd recommend them to anyone who fancies a dip in San Francisco Bay. And special thanks to Suzie Dods who kept us safe from the kayak.

We were lucky enough to have Karen Drinkwater, a professional photographer, on board, who took some beautiful photographs of the day. She took all of the photos shown here, except for the shot of me with the bottle in my mouth, and the picture of the kayakers in the fog. (I pilfered these off the Swim-Art Facebook page and don't know who the photographer is, but will happily credit them if they get in touch). Thanks for the beautiful pictures, Karen.

Goodbye La Jolla, Hello San Francisco

2011-08-07T22:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I finally had to prize myself away from gorgeous La Jolla and headed north to San Francisco to start the next (and final) phase of my trip. I felt a bit overwhelmed and confused by SF at first, but spent a productive few hours today walking around and getting my bearings. My key discoveries are that (a) the city is highly walkable in size, which is good news, given the somewhat congested nature of the public transport system....this is tourist season, after all; but (b) that San Francisco is really hilly. My legs don't know what has hit them after a day of tromping around the streets.

But the highlight of the day was meeting up with Suzie Dods for my first introduction to the Dolphin Club at Aquatic Park - a splendid wooden structure which is home to a boathouse, club rooms, and impressive changing facilities .... including a sauna! Anyone, like me, who has spent their summer weekends on the beach in Dover, shivering in the wind and trying to hold on to a towel (and a final scrap of modesty) whilst changing before rushing off to a car / cafe to warm up with a faint moustache of silt still clinging to your top lip will understand just how luxurious this sounds. And it is utterly spendid! These people really do swimming well.

We went for a shortish swim (just under a mile, I think), pausing at the mouth of the harbour mouth. Suddenly clear of the pier, right in front of me was Alcatraz, and off to the left, the Bridge, looking amazing in the late afternoon sunshine through the mist, hills in the background. I couldn't help but think how lucky I am to have had the chance to visit all these amazing swimming spots, and meet all of these fabulous, water-loving swimmers. Life is good.

Catalina Channel swim video

2011-07-27T23:12:00.001-07:00

I've put together some bits of video and some stills from my Catalina Channel swim. Enjoy.

Swimming with the seals...

2011-07-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

I went for another lovely swim today, this time with a group of regular morning swimmers. We did a gentle mile or so, pausing at the buoys to enjoy the scenary and to let any stragglers catch up. A gloriously social swim, punctuated by various wildlife sightings - first, a bat ray, gliding smoothly below us, and then, a playful harbour seal. It "bumped" a couple of swimmers, then frolicked quite happily around us. I put my head under to watch, and found myself face to face with it and couldn't help but laugh. As we swam back towards the beach, it was tailing me, nudging my feet.

Later on, I wandered along the sea front, looking at the piles of seals lazily sleeping on the rocks, stopping to take some pictures. Cute, cute, cute.

After the morning swim, I went for something to eat with a very long-standing member of the La Jolla Cove swimming community, Bob West, who gave me this beautiful, hand-made Gariboldi fish to hang in my car. Gorgeous, and it will make the perfect addition to Bob when I get home.

Everyone's been incredibly kind and hospitable, plus I've got several research interviews set up already, so it's all going really well.

Let's swim over to where the sharks are....

2011-07-26T21:03:00.000-07:00

"Let's swim over to where the sharks are". This isn't a sentence that I ever thought I would be pleased to hear, especially while in the water, but by the time Anne Cleveland uttered it during my first dip in La Jolla Cove, I was feeling positively blase about the whole wildlife thing - after all, you have to trust local knowledge about what's safe and what's not...and how often do you get to see a nursery of (perfectly harmless, but still very sharky-looking) leopard sharks? We swam in to the shallows where they are known to hang out, and I was still trying to get my head around the warning not to put my feet down because there were stingrays on the sea floor when the figure of a leopard shark, probably about 4-5 ft long, drifted lazily along the sea floor below me. I have to confess that I felt a momentary jolt of fear when I saw it - I am of the generation for whom "Jaws" was the primary reference point for ocean swimming in the US after all - but it was also incredibly beautiful, and I suddenly found myself scouring around hoping to see more. Who would have thought it?

We then finished our swim by heading through some caves and arches, passing between two stone platforms, each with a slick pile of sea lions on them, barking and craning their necks upwards, trying to look impressive and intimidating to their competitors. Below the surface, bright gold gariboldi fish, about the size of a hand, bobbed about lazily among the weeds and rocks, along with a host of other less strikingly coloured, but equally numerous fish.

I am starting to see now why the local swimmers don't have that fear of aggressive wildlife that I arrived with - they know about the possibility, of course, but their everyday experience is of this fairly benign aquatic menagerie. For me, it was a revelation to be able to be around sea life without feeling afraid (albeit accompanied by knowledgeable and confident locals). An amazing swim.

Catalina Channel - Part II

2011-07-26T08:10:00.001-07:00

And so...after a difficult few early morning hours, everything got better and I started to feel much more like my old self in the water. The feeds started to slip down more easily....

And the water flattened out beautifully, enabling me to swim peacefully alongside my two hardworking kayakers, Beth....

And Scott....

During Scott's kayak stint, I suddenly noticed that everyone was lined up along the side of the boat looking out to sea. Before the swim, I had asked everyone not to stand and point if they saw wildlife because I would be worried about what was heading my way. Instead, I asked them just to give me a thumbs up to let me know that it wasn't anything scary, and then to enjoy. Anyway, they were all amazing and once I'd got the okay signal from Scott, I felt absolutely fine about it as they discretely snapped away. I assumed that it was dolphins, but no...a blue whale. A BLUE WHALE!! It was a brief visit, and this is the best picture that we've got of it - the black stripe on the picture is its back arcing through the water. I know it's not a great image, but trust me....it's a blue whale! How amazing is that. (I didn't see it, and to be honest, I'm glad that I didn't as I was happier not thinking too much about the wildlife....but I'm so glad it came to join us).

And then, gradually, the coast came into sight and now feeling happy and strong, I upped my stroke rate a little to speed things along (from 58 in the first half of the swim, rising to 65 towards the end). I gave in to temptation and took a couple of naughty peeks at the coastline, and at one point protested to the crew that the land mass seemed to be reversing. But in spite of this, we gradually crept closer and closer to it, until I felt the distinctly colder waters of the coastline. In previous years, this has been in the 50's, but I was lucky, and it was only about 62 degrees, which I was more than comfortable with...plus I knew that it meant that I was getting close.

And suddenly, there was a flurry of activity on the boat as the swimmers on the boat (Ranie, Scott and Jen) got ready to swim in with me. Then I heard them swimming up behind me, and I felt a rush of elation as I knew that I had made it.

After a few more minutes, I could see the rocks below me, and then I was pulling myself over them into the shallows. I had made it....except for the final challenge of getting out and clear of the water. I managed this with an inelegant combination of crawling and staggering...

Until finally....I was there!

I could hear everyone cheering and clapping, andI was almost in tears with relief that, in spite of the difficult start, I had made it. And then I turned round to see this...

Completely unbeknown to me, Scott, Debbie and Quinn (who I'd been staying with) had been cooking up a surprise for me, and while Scott was on the boat with me, Debbie and Quinn drove down to San Pedro and were waiting on the beach with this beautiful banner (having recruited a passing stranger (the woman on the right) to help hold it up while Deb took photos). I couldn't believe it when I saw them - what a perfect surprise.

I plonked myself down on a rock and just took it all in - the beautiful cove, new and old friends all enjoying the moment with me, bright blue sky. Perfect.

And so it was done - I swam the Catalina Channel in 14 hours and 11 minutes. A good day on the water.

As with all long swims, the swimmer's name goes on the list, but behind them stand a whole host of people without whom the whole venture would be impossible. It was an amazing team effort, and I am enormously grateful to the many people who made it all happen:

Scott, Debbie and Quinn, who provided boundless hospitality, logistical and material support, and the most beautiful swim crate and congratulations banner any swimmer could hope for.

Ranie Pearce, Jen Schumacher and Denise Devereaux who, along with Scott, were my fantastic support crew on the boat. What a team.

Beth Barnes, who kayaked for hours.

The two official CCSF observers, Rob and Don, both of whom were enormously helpful and supportive throughout.

The captains and crew of Outrider, who got us all there safely.

All my training companions in Dover, Jersey and the Midlands, plus, of course, Freda Streeter and the whole beach crew down in Dover.

And Peter, who sadly wasn't able to come out for the swim, but who has been endlessly supportive and enthusiastic about this project and who I know was watching from afar.

Thanks for a great day everyone.

Catalina Channel - Part I

2011-07-25T23:04:00.001-07:00

Well....believe it or not, I made it. On Wednesday 20th July, I swam the Catalina Channel in 14 hours and 11 minutes. As usual for me, it's a bit slower than the average crossing time, but I got across, and that's what matters.

Like my English Channel swim, this was very much a swim of two parts. However, while my Channel swim had a good start and a difficult finish, this was very much the reverse. And the reason for this... more problems with boats and seasickness. Anyone who reads this blog regular will know that I am rubbish on boats, and that all the drugs and wrist bands in the world can't fend off the inevitable. And so it was with this swim, which unfortunately began with a three hour boat ride through rolling waves over to Catalina Island. The rocking and dipping of the boat, combined with midnight tiredness left me overwhelmed with waves of nausea, even after the boat had pulled into Doctor's Cove - the starting point for our swim. I felt dreadful as I got ready, and if it hadn't involved a three hour boat ride, I could quite happily have called it a day right there and gone back to the mainland and to bed. But I had lots of help getting myself prepared, and could only hope that it would pass once I was in the water.

At least the concentration required to control the seasickness took my mind off my barely contained fears about sharks in the water - in fact, I hardly thought about it at all until, right before I jumped in, something lept out of the water and then splashed back below the surface, right in front of me. I asked what it was, and Don, one of the official observers, told me it was a seal, but then, seeing that that didn't make me feel much better, said that it was probably a flying fish, and I decided to settle on that as appropriately harmless. (In fact, I later learned that it was a seal chasing a flying fish, and that, having caught it, the seal actually tailed me for quite a way). And then I found myself standing on the edge of the deck, preparing to jump in to the inky black midnight water. I still felt seasick, but this was now combined with a momentary surge of fear at jumping in. The backs of my hands and neck prickled with tension and there was a long, quiet pause, which I eventually broke with a quick, quiet count to three and IN. I let myself go straight down deep before surfacing, enjoying the familiar feeling of being in the water. I was pleased to feel how warm it was (about 68 degrees), and suddenly felt much calmer and more confident, able to focus now on the immediate task of swimming in to the beach, guided by my kayaker, Beth Barnes, and with the cheers of my crew ringing in the background. I ducked under a buoy line and then staggered ineptly up the rocky beach, clear of the water. I waited for the signal, then hobbled back into the water....but not before toppling over gracelessly, whacking my side in the process. From my prostrate position, I slithered into the water, all hope of dignity and grace now lost anyway, and swam back alongside Beth to begin the swimming.

However, whereas in the past, being in the water has resolved the seasickness, this time, my innards were too churned up to recover. Soon into the swim, I took a small mouthful of salt water by accident, and that was it...I was soon coughing, heaving and puking prodigiously - a sight / sound which my poor crew had to sit quietly through, offering up the occasional word of encouragement as I puked some more. Not the best start to a swim. Once I'd stopped being sick, I went straight back to swimming, but it was here that I made a series of mistakes. What I should have done is taken some time to get myself together, had a drink of water, and perhaps some mouthwash, and then restarted, gradually building up the strength of the feeds until I was back to normal. But instead, I panicked firstly about the loss of time / rhythm so early in the swim, and secondly about the loss of nutrition. So instead, I pressed straight on in a bit of a flap, determined not to waste any more time. The consequence of this was that when it came to the 1 hour feed, I forced down my regular 300ml of Maxim, eager to refuel after the sickness. However, this did not sit well on an already churning stomach - a problem which was now compounded with a new problem - acid reflux. So, for the next 6 hours, I was burping up most of the feed I was taking in; plus, every feed brought a burning pain in my chest and throat from the acid reflux. It was a tough few hours in quite choppy conditions with a five foot swell in parts, and I was worried that if this problem didn't resolve, I wouldn't get enough energy to complete the swim. But I decided that the only thing to do was to press on, and I chose to ignore the problem instead, including not telling the crew and keeping up as positive a demeanour as I could muster. Sometimes, denial really does work...although for future swims, I will definitely make sure that I've got some antacid on board in my drug box.

So, it wasn't the best start to a swim, and the sickness early on had quite far-reaching effects in terms of my digestive system, and I really feel like it slowed me down quite a bit in those early hours. But nevertheless, it was nothing that couldn't be ridden out, and eventually things started to get better as the water flattened out, the sun came up, and my insides started to settle (helped along by a water-only feed that I should have asked for hours before). At 7.5 hours, I was told that I was over half way, and even though this was a slower time than I had been hoping for, this gave me a huge boost. It was time to put that difficult start to the swim out of my mind once and for all, knuckle down, swim hard and get myself to that beach.

Greetings from California

2011-07-16T07:00:00.001-07:00

I'm finally here in California, hanging out with my lovely friends, Scott and Debbie, and their daughter, Quinn for a few days before we head down to LA on Tuesday evening for the swim. I had my first dip in the Pacific yesterday - a gentle hour along a line of buoys, set out for swimmers along a beautiful beach. I have to admit that I found the first half hour a bit challenging - there were long, dark strands of kelp reaching up to the surface and I was having trouble keeping my imagination in check...both when the kelp brshed againts me unexpectedly, and also when the dark shadows they cast under the water caught the corner of my eye. I was swimming with Scott, which really helped, and then he got out and I carried on for another 30 mins, by which time I was feeling much calmer and happier. Lovely.

But the most important bit of news is....look what I got! Waiting for me when I arrived was this swim crate, perfectly decorated by Quinn. How could I fail to get across!

Happiness is...

2011-07-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

Happiness is....a bit of banana, a cup of Maxim and some long-awaited sunshine. Thanks to Nick Adams, who took this fun pic of me last weekend looking very pleased with my feed.

Feed-related pleasures aside, it was another successful weekend, with some wonderful, calm and sunny weather. I managed a couple more 6 hour swims....although one of those was split into two because it was the Dover Festival and we had to get out for a bit over lunch time while the lifeboat and rescue helicopter came to do a display. A good weekend.

That's more like it

2011-06-29T11:33:00.001-07:00

That's more like it. After the previous weekend's rubbish couple of days of swimming and generally feeling unwell, I returned to Dover last weekend to have another go at getting some decent distance done. Throughout the week, I'd been consuming super-nutritious foods, guzzling supplements and generally trying to bolster my struggling immune system, and happily, by Friday, I felt full of beans and ready to go. The weather forecast was pretty decent too....the only blot on the weekend's horizon was the large box of bright orange exam script booklets I'd had to bring with me - marking that had to be finished by Monday, and which I picked up from the office en route.

I woke up in the middle of Friday night to the sound of rain hammering on the roof of the van and I have to confess that my heart sank a little, but by the morning, it was a bit grey, dull and blowy, but not too bad. Down on the beach, I signed up for 6 hours, and headed down to the water's edge...not exactly keen, but at least determined. I felt like a different person compared to the previous week, and did the 6 without any real problems at all. Several of the others were doing 8 hours, and I was tempted to stay in, but I decided to err on the side of caution - both because I wasn't sure whether I was fully recovered from whatever bug I had, and also because I knew that I had several hours of marking to do that evening. So, back to the campsite I went, ate, marked until I could barely stay awake, and then slept like a log.

Sunday had been forecast to be an absolute scorcher, but I awoke to thick, thick fog. Like everyone, I expected it to burn off by mid-morning, and as I hobbled my way over the stones into the water, I was excited by the thought of a good, sunny swim, even though you could barely see the harbour walls, and the cliffs were completely shrouded. But it continued to roll, cold and heavy, over the water, making it a rather chilly and monotone swim. But then finally, at about 1pm, the sun finally won through and almost without me noticing, we were left with bright blue sky and lovely warming sunshine. The harbour was almost unrecognisable, compared to the Champion of Champions weekend.

The sea was so flat in the harbour that the swimming was almost boring, and I allowed myself to zone happily out and just enjoy being in the water. Lovely. And once I was out, I was able to enjoy a delicious post-swim ice-cream.

So, that was my weekend - two six hour swims without any real problems, and a good recovery each time. Plus, I got all my marking done, and squeezed in a research interview too. A good weekend.

Many congratulations to Dan Earthquake, Julie Ryan and co for their successful relay crossing on Sunday night, and to Marcy Macdonald, who swam the first successful solo crossing of the season on Sunday...most of in the thick fog. Well done to everyone - fantastic swimming.

Some weekends it's just not to be...

2011-06-21T03:56:00.000-07:00

Off to Dover this weekend - my first trip of the year - for the BLDSA Champion of Champions, an annual set of three races (5 miles, 3 miles, 1 mile). This, it has to be said, was not my finest day in the water. I'd been under the weather all week with a stomach bug, plus have been working all hours recently, so felt quite exhausted by the time I arrived at the campsite at the end of what turned out to be a ridiculously slow 7 hour drive (I hate the M25). Not the best start.

Anyway, with forecasts of winds up to 40mph by lunchtime, we all pitched up ready to go first thing. There was a bit of a delay while the organisers adjusted the course to better accommodate the conditions (making a long, thin half-mile triangle course that gave us more shelter from the pier wall, rather than the usual 1 mile square), and we were finally ready to be counted into the water, instructed to do 10 laps. I felt fine for the first few laps, although not exactly full of beans, but as the swim progressed, I started to find it pretty hard going. This was partly the conditions - quite lumpy water, moving around all over the place - but partly just me being a bit out of sorts, I think. And then, as I finished my fifth lap, I looked at my watch - 1.39!! At my usual pace, I would have expected to be on around 1.20, so either I was being horrendously slow, or the course was long (which most people later agreed it was - probably 6+ miles in total). Anyway, I found this a bit soul-destroying, not least because it meant that the whole thing would take me about 3.20 to finish, which for me, is quite a long time to swim without nutrition. And then, to distract me, along came some of the most spectacular weather I've ever experienced in the water - a 10 minute hail storm that was so relentless that it flattened the water, and causing a band of white spray to rise off the water from the force of the hailstones. It looked absolutely extraordinary, and I couldn't help but just stop and look around me in wonder (also sparing a thought for the poor kayakers).

Anyway, I eventually floundered my way up to the finish boat in 3.17 and swam back in to shore, feeling pretty grotty but okay. I changed and then took myself off the van to refuel with a protein shake, soup and a bagel, but was struggling to find the energy to face the second swim. So, I have to admit to being slightly relieved when I heard the news that the 3 miles had been cancelled and that they were moving straight on to the 1 mile. This went off without a hitch, although I only managed to muster a rather mediocre 31.49. So, overall, I completed the event in about 3.49, coming 12th out of the 15 women who completed both events - not great, but I was pleased that I'd managed to finish.

Many thanks to the organisers of the event, and to the many volunteers who provided kayak and other safety boat support in some pretty gruesome weather. Thank you for keeping us safe and allowing the event to go ahead, even in such difficult conditions.

I went back to the campsite and decided to make the most of the evening to refuel, rest and get myself sorted for my planned 6 hour swim the following day, and happily, I woke up feeling quite refreshed after a good night's sleep and headed down to the beach full of optimism. However, it was not to be. I started to get a headache quite soon after starting, and pretty soon, my head was thumping. I decided to ask for ibuprofen at the 2 hour feed, but into the second hour, I starting to be hit by bouts of horrible dizziness where everything would spin about for a few minutes before settling down again. I'd had some problems with this the day before, but only when I got out of the water, so thought it was just the shift from horizontal to vertical. But it just got worse and worse, and in the end, I decided that even if I felt able to stay in (which I didn't) it probably wasn't safe to do so. I bumped into Thomas by the harbour wall and asked him to swim back with me to the beach (thanks for that, Thomas!), and got out. To be honest, I was relieved to be out of the water, but part of me felt gutted at not completing a swim so close to Catalina. I felt sorry for myself for a bit, but then went up to the campsite and ate and had a shower, then went back down to the beach to chat, help out with feeds and watch the others complete their swims - always inspiring, and especially since the wind was back up and the sea was looking pretty angry for the last couple of hours. And on a positive note, getting out early was also a really nice chance to catch up with old friends I haven't seen for ages, and to meet some new ones.

So, not my finest weekend of swimming, but just one of those things. I was worried that it's because I've not done as much training recently as I would like, but realistically, I think I'm just not 100% at the moment and wasn't up to it on the day. So now I'm concentrating on getting myself fit and healthy ready for next weekend, when I'll go back and get those 6 hour swims done - good training, plus it will hopefully restore my confidence for Catalina.

Well done to everyone in their swims this weekend - and let's keep everything crossed for some decent weather very soon (not least because the first swims of the season are due to go this week!).

Thinking too much about wildlife

2011-06-16T10:18:00.000-07:00

As my Catalina swim approaches, I find myself getting more, not less, anxious about the wildlife issue - I had hoped that the opposite would be true and that I would start focusing on the swimming, rather than what might be swimming with me / near me. Of course, this is mostly about sharks, which I tell myself are technically present, but actually hanging out elsewhere. But then I read this on the Facebook page of the La Jolla Cove Swim Club (San Diego):

"Beautiful flat water this morning. Comfy temperature of about 62. Lots of bat rays swimming out past 1/2 mile buoy. Large schools of barracuda fish. 9 foot + 7-gill shark at 1/4 mile buoy."

Now .... that, to me, is a lot of wildlife for one swim. I'm sure it's absolutely amazing to see, but I'm really not sure how I would react. And let's be honest, if you don't know your sharks, one dorsal fin looks pretty much like another, and I'm certainly not going to be waiting around counting gills (this is one of the many harmless varieties that hang out in those waters, apparently). So, I just don't know. I'm hoping that once I'm in the water, I'll just slip into happy swimming mode. And hopefully, once the swim is over and I'm into the research phase of my trip, some of the locals will take me out to some of these amazing swim spots and help me learn how to be in the water alongside these beautiful creatures that I've never really even seen before, never mind been up close to.

And the goggle search continues...

2011-06-16T08:40:00.001-07:00

A while back, I reviewed my shiny new Speedo Futura Ice goggles that had come as a free gift with my first copy of H2Open magazine. I was pleased with them (and still am), but unfortunately, I think that these may not be the goggles for my night time Catalina swim. They have a slight tint to them, and when I wore them for the night swim in Jersey, my vision was pretty impaired. So back to the drawing board....And now I'm trying out the clear version of the Speedo Speedsockets:

So far so good. The socket is much smaller than the Futura Ice, and also the mirrored Blueseventy goggles that I usually use, and I'm still experimenting with how loose I can have them before they start leaking. But...so far, they get a (cautious) thumbs up. With only a month to go before Catalina, I really hope that these are the ones.

In the mean time, a heavy marking load at work has meant that training has been very up and down, and I was disappointed not to be able to make it down to Dover last weekend because of my out of control marking pile. But order has been somewhat (if only temporarily) restored and I'm heading down tomorrow, ready for the Champion of Champions (5 miles, 3 miles, 1 mile), and then a long swim on Sunday (this depends on what Freda has in mind for me, but I'm imagining another 6...my first this season in Dover. With not long to go, I really need to get these under my belt. But it would be nice to have some kind weather, just to make it that bit easier...

Jersey swim camp 2011

2011-06-05T13:43:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a fabulous week in Jersey, helping out on Sally Minty-Gravett's swim camp...plus enjoying quite a lot of time in the water while getting some serious training in for Catalina.

As I've said in other writing about the various training camps, in my view, this camp is an excellent opportunity for those who are relatively inexperienced in sea swimming, but who are planning a long swim, to build their skills and confidence and to start notching up some time in the open water. It's a good chance to learn how you deal with the cold, the movement of the water and the various discomforts and sensory deprivations of longer periods of swimming...as well as to start to experience some of the many pleasures of open water swimming. This year's camp was no exception, and there were quite a few participants in precisely that situation, most of whom quickly found their feet (flippers?) and were clocking up multiple hour swims by the end of the week and walking out with barely a shiver. Inspiring to watch - well done everyone (and many thanks to Sally, and everyone else involved in the camp, for making it such a success).

In addition to the everyday training, we also had a fantastic night swim in St Catherine's bay...I just loved the sight of all the light sticks, tucked under goggle straps, bobbing around in the water. Everyone should try this once - it's hilarious.

As for me, towards the end of the week I started to do some longer swims, trying to get some distance under my belt in preparation for Catalina (which is now only 6 weeks away!). I just love swimming in Jersey - the water is beautiful, and after a winter of swimming pools, and my usual early season of laps at Bosworth and Swan Pool, it's just wonderful to be in the sea. In the first few days of the camp I did 2-3 hours a day across two swims, and then I did four hours on both Thursday and Friday...a plan which happily coincided with some gorgeously sunny weather.

With the exception of an absurdly pronounced swim hat head stripe, I was remarkably unscathed by these swims, so on Saturday, decided to go ahead with my original plan to do a 6 hour swim.

Sadly, the good weather didn't last and it was howling a gale on Saturday morning, and St Catherine's bay was very lumpy and whipped up when we arrived. But that's no excuse, so in I went anyway. It has to be said that the first couple of hours weren't very pleasant, but happily, as the tide turned and started to ebb, it flattened out a little; and then, just as my mood was beginning to drop and my shoulders were starting to ache, the sun finally broke through, lifting my spirits and turning the water a delicious turquoise. I later found out that poor Sally had tried to join me in the kayak after a couple of hours, but had been unceremoniously tipped in by the waves, forcing her to retreat to dry land until the conditions had improved! Nevertheless, in spite of it being a rather grotty day, especially earlier on, I was supported from start to finish by Sally, and many other of the local swimmers who dropped in to offer an encouraging word during feeds or to join me for a dip. Amazing. Many thanks to everyone.

Having done 14 hours of swimming in three days, and still being in reasonable shape at the end of it, I feel much better now about Catalina, and am confident that with a few Dover sessions over the next few weekends, I'll be good to go when the time comes.

Next stop....Dover.

6 hours at Swan Pool

2011-05-23T02:49:00.001-07:00

I woke up yesterday to the sound of the wind buffeting the side of the house, and knew that didn't bode well for what was to follow - my first 6 hour swim of the season, at Swan Pool lake. My second inkling that it was going to be a tough day came when I was driving to the lake, and at an unexpected exposed point on the M6, the van got knocked sideways almost into the next lane by a gust of wind, forcing me to drive the rest of the motorway stretch at a cautious 40 mph...wipers on as the rain started to fall.

When I arrived at the lake, the wind was whipping up the water, creating white-crested waves that were smacking against the quay. Lovely. But you don't get to choose the conditions, and so, with briefing done, food box set out, suncream on (a triumph of optimism over reality) and vaseline applied, off we went.

It's been a good while since I've done a long swim, and my fitness, while okay, is not as good as it was this time last year, but I was still reasonably confident that I could stay in for the six hours....although I was less confident about how far I would cover. The water was bouncing all over the place at the bottom end of the lake - it was blowing a gale, and the chop was smacking into the quay and then bouncing away, creating slappy, unpredictable waves and generally making life difficult. It was better at the top end, although the strong winds were chilly across the shoulders and were still making enough lumps and bumps to make sighting the buoys difficult. There is something weird about the light at Swan Pool, and when it clouds over or the sun starts to set, it becomes very monotone, and hard to distinguish water from shore from sky - I seemed to spend a lot of time peering about looking for buoys, which in turn caused me to get cramps in my hip abductors after a few hours.

The first few hours were hard going, and I abandoned my original plan to feed every four laps (c. 2 miles, or roughly every hour), and did five laps between the first couple of feeds - having got myself going, I didn't really want to stop and let myself ponder how hard I was finding it all. On my stops, I guzzled down maxim and the occasional jelly baby, which worked their usual magic. I did make one mistake though - I'd got a bit bogged down beforehand in the idea that it would be cold, so had made up half-filled bottles of double-strength Maxim that I planned to dilute with warm water from a pump flask (like I did in the Channel). In hindsight, this was a mistake...firstly, because it made me think about being cold, and secondly, because it was just too much of a faff. I should have just stuck with bottles of ready-to-drink Maxim, which would have been fine.

As the day progressed, the number of swimmers in the water diminished, and various relay swimmers came and went, until only Rachael Cadman and I (both in the pic below) were left. Rachael is training for the Enduroman Arch to Arc this summer - running from Marble Arch to Dover, swimming the Channel, then cycling to Paris. Unimaginable!! Swimmers are allowed to wear wetsuits for the event, which is why she is wearing one for this - her successful qualification swim. Well done, Rachael.

SLCSC President, Richard Davies, handed out certificates at the end - always a nice moment, knowing that the job is done. In the end, I managed c. 12.5 miles (25 laps) in the six hours, which is pretty what I managed in the previous two years - I may be a bit of a plodder, but I'm nothing if not consistent.

I generally love doing long swims...there's something very appealing about starting the day knowing that, for that day, I'm not going to do anything else except swim. No work, no juggling commitments...just swimming. This swim was not quite so pleasurable - a combination of not being quite as fit yet as I would like to be (it's still pretty early in the season), plus the difficult conditions made it quite challenging. I had to dig in a bit during the middle hours of the swim, and although the conditions settled down towards the end of the swim, I was still counting down the laps and looking forward to getting out.

But on the plus side, it feels really good to have done it, and it's nice to have my first 6 hour swim of the season under my belt nice and early.

Many thanks to Dan Earthquake for organising the event (and whose pics I've pilfered for this blog), and to the Birmingham Lifeguards for keeping us safe.

Next stop...Jersey.

Cold water kit

2011-05-15T05:54:00.001-07:00

Many of those who have been on Swimtrek's long distance training camp in Malta will have benefited from Nick Adam's really useful seminar on the kit that he takes on a Channel swim. But after the amusement that's been caused down at Swan Pool recently by my little patch of carpet, I thought I'd introduce the contents of my everyday open water kit bag - something which I've refined over the last couple of years and which enables me to get dry and start warming up as quickly as possible. This might be helpful to newer swimmers who are still experimenting with their kit and post-swim routines.

Starting with the bag - I use my Coventry Triathletes bag, which is roomy, water-resistant and generally robust.

This has a separate section in the base which is intended for wetsuit storage, but which is the perfect place for my crocs (easy to get on when cold; easy to identify on the beach in Dover among 30 other pairs); vaseline and latex gloves; sun screen; and most importantly, my little square of carpet...perfect for when you're changing on gravel paths (Swan Pool) or stoney beaches (Dover). It may look a bit daft, but it's a nice bit of comfort.

At the bottom of the main part of the bag, I keep some goggles, hats and a spare swimming costume... I can't be the only person to have driven an hour to the lake after work only to realise that I haven't brought a costume! So now, I always keep a spare in there, just in case. Plus, it's always good to have some spare goggles in case the light conditions change from what you expected, or a pair start leaking or just feeling uncomfortable for some reason.

And next...a woolly hat. Any regular open water swimmer knows how important it is to keep your head covered when you get out. This is a key part of the "routine" that people learn with Swimtrek, and down in Dover - swim hat off, give your hair a quick rub, then woolly hat on. (Then you change your top half completely, adding on all your layers, followed by your bottom half - it should all be done as soon as you get out - no standing around chatting etc). I like this one because it covers my ears too.

Some other bits - a whistle (at Swan Pool, you have to carry one down your cossie in the water in case of emergencies), plus a bottle of water to sip on before and after a swim. I also carry some wet wipes and some anti-bacterial hand gel - in general, it's better to warm up slowly rather than hopping straight into a shower after swimming (plus a lot of venues don't have showering or changing facilities), but I prefer to wipe off vaseline, suncream, and any weedy lake-gunk, at least off my face and neck, and if I'm going to be eating post-swim (which I usually do), I'll use the gel on my hands (although given how much I've probably already ingested, this may be something of a futile gesture...).

My final bit of everyday cold water kit is my padded jacket. It packs down into a nice small stuff bag - about the size of a micro-sleeping bag - and easily squeezes into the bottom corner of my bag.

And then it opens out into a light, warm jacket that really helps with the warming up process. It was quite expensive, but worth every penny - I don't go anywhere watery without it.

There is one more piece of cold water kit that's worth mentioning, although this is something of an indulgence rather than a requirement.....Bob, our campervan: a place to change out of the wind; an endless supply of hot drinks and snacks; plus, a duvet and a place to lie down should you need it.

So that's it - my cold water kit. The important thing is that you know exactly where everything is that you need, and that you can access it quickly and easily. I've found that the more you can get those routines in place, the easier it is to recover especially from colder swims, and the more you can focus on the swimming itself.

Injury uncertainty....

2011-05-11T06:55:00.001-07:00

I've been having problems with my right wrist / thumb since I did Jersey to France in 2010. It comes and goes, mostly depending on how much swimming I'm doing, but I experienced a real flare-up of the problem while I was away with Swimtrek at the beginning of April, and it's been quite achy ever since. I was starting to get a bit concerned about it as the hard training phase for Catalina approaches, so finally made an appointment to see my local sports physio. He did a whole series of range of motion and resistance tests, and all of them were negative - the only obvious problem emerged when he poked the little square at the side of the wrist, sort of where the thumb ends (the "snuffbox".... named because that's where people would place snuff to sniff), which hurt like hell. He said that when I first told him about the injury, he thought it was maybe de Quervains - a tendon problem, which, to be honest, is more like the kind of thing I was expecting. But since the tests didn't seem to support this, he settled on the notion that it may be a stress fracture of the scaphoid. He is writing a letter to my GP to get me referred for an MRI to check this. But when I posted this tentative diagnosis on Facebook, a couple of people, including a hand surgeon who undoubtedly knows her stuff, said that this was extremely rare and an unlikely cause of the problem. So now I'm not sure what to do or think about all this.

In a way, it doesn't really make any difference, in that it's not (at the moment at least) bad enough to stop me from swimming, so it probably wouldn't change the course of action (rest where possible, try to work on my hand entry problem anyway, and press on with the training). But it's frustrating not knowing what's causing it....and there's always the worry that it will get worse and start affecting my ability to swim.

So, my plan of action for now is to speak to my GP next week (when he's got the letter from the physio), and maybe think about getting the MRI done privately if it's not too expensive if the NHS one is going to take ages.

I've been pretty fortunate overall in terms of injury, so I can't really complain. But I don't like uncertainty, and much preferred my previous strategy of being in total denial about the fact that it was hurting!

Finding my swimming head...

2011-05-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

At last, I had one of those swims yesterday. I've been swimming regularly, churning out two hour swims and enjoying the improving water temps, but it's not been feeling particularly easy - I've been feeling quite tired and have really had to concentrate during some of the swims to make myself stay in. And then suddenly, yesterday evening, I had the most glorious swim at Swan Pool. The previous day, I'd done 7 laps in 1.45, but then yesterday, I did 8 laps (an additional 800m) in the same time. Everything felt like it was working well; I felt co-ordinated and strong; I had my swim head on. Lovely.

It helped that the water was very calm and the weather mild. Except that when I got out, the guys on the shore told me that they'd been trying to get a photo of me with the lightening in the background!!

Dan Earthquake, who runs the sessions down there, took some great photos on the previous day - lots of wind and chop on the lake, but lots of people down there having fun. There's more photos from the session on Dan's website, Cold Water Culture.

Amazing picture

2011-05-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

This amazing picture was taken by Michael Ellis and posted on the Channel swimmers' discussion forums. With his permission, I've copied it here because it's just such an extraordinary image. You can see Dover harbour in the bottom of the picture (by the plane's engine), and in the top left, you can see the French coast. It looks so close!

Thanks for sharing this, Michael. I bet every Channel swimmer will have this on their laptop and phone for inspiration before the end of the day!

What a difference a week makes...

2011-05-01T05:44:00.001-07:00

It turns out that we had been lulled into a bit of a false sense of security by last week's toasty-warm water, and even though the weather has been unseasonably nice over the last week, lower temps, plus a brisk wind, meant that the water at Bosworth and Swan Pool has dropped back down a few degrees, hovering around 13-14. Not unmanageably cold, but certainly brisk. Nevertheless, it was the first open triathlon session at Bosworth on Saturday, and over 200 people went in during the two hours...although most only went in for a relatively short time, so it wasn't too crowded. An impressive amount of neoprene was on display - not just wetsuits, but hats, bootees etc. I'm not mocking - it's better to be in the water wearing whatever makes you comfortable than not being in at all. But I have to turn a bit of a blind eye, especially at the beginning of the swim - seeing people get all rubbered up makes me think about the cold too much. I did my two hours, followed by breakfast in the van with Peter, Penny and various others dropping in as soon as they spotted that we had pastries and coffee on board.

This morning, I drove over to Swan Pool for another 2 hours...but it was a tougher swim than yesterday - a bit cooler than Bosworth, as always, plus quite a stiff wind blowing across the top of the lake, chopping the water up and blowing cold across the shoulders. I managed the first hour just fine, but then had a bit of a dip - I felt tired, and then really cold, and then generally a bit sorry for myself and was even thinking about getting out. Whatever next. I reminded myself that there are no emergencies in long-distance swimming, and there's nothing so pressing that it can't bear a 30 minute wait and review....so that's what I did. And time speeded up, the sun shone and all was well. So, that's a decent four hours this weekend ... a good start, ready for the May build-up (and warm up, hopefully).

It was great to meet the swimmers from the Big Rick's Channel Swim Team, who are training for a relay this summer. They're aiming to break the record for the fastest relay with an average age of 40+, and are a pretty speedy bunch with impressive swimming pedigrees. They lap me every so often, but I don't take it personally. Check out their website. I was delighted to see my square of carpet feature in last week's blog.... You may mock, guys, but you know you want one.

And finally, many congrats to everyone who did the insanely hard 2Swim4Life challenge - 24 miles in 24 hours, with each mile starting on the hour. Brutal. Well done to Mark Robson and everyone else who completed the event in Guildford, and to Donal Buckley, Lisa Cummins et al who did a parallel swim in Cork. Deeply impressive.

Second time around....

2011-04-26T02:18:00.000-07:00

Exciting news... I just booked another Channel swim.

I've been thinking about it for a while, but watching everyone do their six hour swims in Malta made me realise how much I wanted to have another go at it. So, somewhere around the 15-20 July, 2013, I'm off for a second time around. I'll be swimming with the same pilot as last year - Paul Foreman, and have a number 2 slot.

And why do it again? Well...I loved last year, but the whole business also had a huge amount of anxiety attached to it. I'm not suggesting that I'm going to stroll blithely into this one, but I'm hoping that now that I've got more experience, and more confidence, I'll be able to enjoy the build up to the swim more and really capitalise on how much I love the swimming itself. This is not about trying to "beat" my previous time (16 hours and 9 mins) - every Channel swim is different, and I just want to see what it's like on a different day...and just to see if I can do it again or whether this was a one-off. But mostly, I just love having that goal there to structure my training, and by extension, my working life too.

I picked an earlier date for this swim than my first one. When I booked my 2010 swim (in 2008), I was very concerned about the cold, but since then I've learned that this isn't really a huge issue for me, so I can tolerate an earlier swim (I think). Also, last year, I allowed the swim to completely consume my life, and while this was part of the fun of it, it's not necessarily sustainable in the long term... and one of my core goals now is to find a sustainable way to stay involved in the sport whilst still having a life outside of it. By swimming earlier in the season, I'm hoping that I can basically sustain my winter training as it currently is (20-30km per week in the pool, plus some running, gym work, core etc), and use May and June to build time in the water and get some back-to-back long swims in. Then Peter and I will still have August / Sept to do some trips together that don't involve him sitting in a boat feeding me jelly babies.

We've also set aside 2012 as the summer of leisure when neither of us will do an all-consuming challenge - a chance to do some walking, cycle-touring etc, as well as some shorter OW events (for me) and bike events / triathlons (for Peter). I'm even thinking about detouring back into triathlon for a change of pace - I'm shockingly bad at it, and a disgrace to the sport, but it's quite good fun, as long as I can find a suitably sedate (and short) event.

So...that's my plan. Of course, Catalina is far from done yet and I don't want to get ahead of myself, but the long timeline for booking a Channel swim means that I have to start thinking about this now.

All very exciting.

Open water weekend

2011-04-26T00:28:00.000-07:00

At last, the open water season really gets going...and what a weekend. Unlike this time last year, when unseasonally cold weather had left the water barely in double figures when the local lakes opened for swimming, a week of glorious sunshine meant that both Bosworth and Swan Pool (my usual local haunts) were around the 16 degree mark and ready for some decent swimming...and without so much as even a post-swim shiver.

So, on Saturday morning, I went to Bosworth and did 90 minutes, followed by a splendid breakfast in the van with Peter, who had cycled over, and Penny, who had been swimming as part of her Ironman training. To be honest, this wasn't my finest swim - I felt tired after about an hour and bit out of sorts, and I didn't feel like I was swimming very well. Perhaps I was just out of practice - I know from previous years that it has taken a while to get back into the mind-set. But it felt good to get the open water phase of the training going.

Then, on Sunday, I went to Swan Pool and did another 90 minutes...although this time, I absolutely loved it and the time flew by. The water was crisp and relatively clear, since even though it's been warm, it's too soon for the weed to have come up (although I did have a rather odd coating of green slime trapped under my costume when I got out). This was a much better swim, and I felt more like my old self again, happy in the water.

On Sunday night, Peter and I drove down to Lechlade in the Cotswolds in the campervan, where we joined Neil and Jessica, and Neil's parents, on a campsite right next to the Thames. Lovely. We had originally planned for Neil and I to swim on Monday, with Jessica paddling for us, but unfortunately, Neil had come down with a bug, so in the end, I swam with Jessica in the canoe, and Neil, his parents, and various dogs following alongside on the Thames path (although we lost them at one point when they were lured away by a riverside cream tea). The swim was just glorious, and the higher up the river we went, the more deserted it was. At one point, I thought that we were going to run out of swimmable water as it was getting quite shallow, reedy and muddy, but then suddenly, it opened back out and deepened, and we spent a happy half hour in glass flat, tree-sheltered river completely uninterrupted by anything other than the occasional duck. Perfect.

I had a wonderful couple of hours of swimming, and by the end of it, felt like I'd relocated my distance-swimming head and could have swum for hours. I'm still not in anything like the shape I need to be for Catalina, but this was a great first step....plus a wonderful way to spend a sunny bank holiday. Many thanks to Jessica and Neil for a great day.

In the mean time, Peter was doing a 107 mile bike event around the Cotswolds - a long, hot, hilly day as part of his preparation for cycling the Etape this summer (a mountain stage of the Tour de France). It was fantastic to see him cross the finish line (and in remarkably good shape too).... another step towards his goal.

So, a fabulous bank holiday weekend - wonderful weather, lots of time doing activities that we love (swimming for me and cycling for Peter), and a chance to charge up our batteries ready for the beginning of term.

What seasickness looks like...

2011-04-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

This is what seasickness looks like....

Courtesy of Julie Ryan, this was taken on the boat in Malta on our play day to the island of Comino....and the wind howled and the boat rocked...and my inner ear gave up trying and I spent hours wanting to die. I am genuinely very rubbish on boats, but I really wish I could find a way to stop it - not least because I'd just love to be able to help out on Channel swims. Ho hum.

Technical problems

2011-04-17T11:11:00.001-07:00

As regular readers might already know, I have a weakness for small electronic gadgets, and especially those that monitor, measure and record various sporting activities. This has been a great source of frustration for me in the world of swimming, since the opportunities to acquire kit are fairly limited. However, watches remain one area of possibility. I wrote a while ago about my Poolmate watch, upon which I am heavily reliant to keep count for me in pool training. However, splendid though it is for the pool, it is quite big, and the screen visibility is not great, so I prefer not to use it outdoors. So...enter my lovely little blue Timex Ironman ladies watch, which Peter bought me for my birthday in January - small, good screen, and nice to look at.

I took it to Malta with me, but sadly, for all its prettiness, it turns out that it's not sufficiently waterproof, and on day 4, it died a sudden death and couldn't be revived. I knew the game was up when I pushed one of the buttons and water squirted out. All very disappointing.

I really needed a watch for the trip, so asked my dear friend, Julie Ryan (who was coming out to the second Swimtrek week) to pick me up the cheapest thing she could find that wasn't too big, didn't look like it had been made in the 1980's, and promised to be waterproof. And this is what she found - for the princely sum of £17:

It's not beautiful, but it's small and light, and it ended up surviving multiple dunkings, underwater button-pushing and general abuse and lack of care. So... my new policy is to avoid the expensive sports watches for OW swimming, and stick with the cheap ones. At least if this one breaks, it won't cost a fortune to replace.

Malta

2011-04-17T09:05:00.001-07:00

I just got back from a couple of weeks working for Swimtrek on two of their long distance training camps in Gozo, Malta. These were my first guiding trips, and I was on a pretty steep learning curve but a few things stand out. Firstly, I only learned to drive a powerboat on a weekend course a couple of months ago, so becoming more comfortable with boat handling was a top priority. I was a bit like a driver who has just passed her test - basically safe, but lacking the spontaneity and embodied comfort that comes with familiarity and practice. So, I was assigned lots of boat time to get my hand in, and after just a couple of days, was feeling so much more comfortable and confident at the helm - a nice feeling after the awkwardness of the beginning. One of my tasks was to pick up the buoys out of the bay at the end of the swims - the perfect chance to practice pulling alongside an object (or person) in a controlled manner without mowing them down. However, necessarily erring on the side of caution, I didn't always get it quite right first time, requiring some very undignified leaning and reaching...on this occasion with a camera-wielding audience!

But when I wasn't dabbling about with the buoys, I was pootling around the mouth of the bay in the gorgeous sunshine, keeping an eye on the swimmers. Glorious.

When I wasn't in the boats, I was helping out with feeds, offering encouragement and occasionally helping to shepherd wavering swimmers back into the water. I loved this part of the trip - it's quite inspiring to see the swimmers really pushing themselves to stay in and complete the swims.

It was also amazing to see how much support the swimmers gave each other, and I lost count of the times that other swimmers paused to encourage a wavering swimmer to keep going, or when swimmers who had already got out jumped back in to do a few extra laps alongside someone who was having a wobble. I think that one of the finest moments of the entire trip was the sight last week of four women swimming the final hour of the six hour swim together, all side by side in a line, supporting one swimmer who had already far exceeded her own expectations of herself that day but who was starting to struggle a little. From my position on the boat, it was utterly inspiring to watch.

And perhaps my favourite moment of the whole trip - our little jaunt out of the bay and along the cliff base during the six hour swim in the second week. Sadly, the conditions had been too rough in the first week to do this, but for the second group, the weather was blissfully calm and they were able to enjoy two hours of glorious sea swimming, free from the more psychologically challenging task of swimming round and round the bay. The scenery and conditions were just breath-taking as you can see below (I'm in the little white boat you can just see in the middle of the picture).

Sadly, it wasn't all plain sailing, and a relaxing day-trip to the island of Comino in the second week proved to be something of an ordeal for me. The wind was howling, and the hours on a rocking boat took its toll on me so that by the time we were heading back through the swell, I was virtually incapacitated by seasickness, unable to focus my eyes or move. It's so frustrating, and embarrassing, but I just can't find anything that stops it happening. All suggestions gratefully received.

But hats off to all the swimmers over the last couple of weeks for their hard work and fantastic swims. And thanks to Mia, Nick and Freda for their support and advice during the trip.

And now, it's back to training...and with just 3 months to go, I need to pick things up a bit and get some serious work done. Exciting, though....especially now that the open water season is about to start. Let another summer of swimming begin.... plus, I may have some news soon about exciting future plans which I'm currently cooking up...

Goggles review

2011-03-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

Goggles are one of those things that people get very attached to. I'm sure that most makes of goggles are pretty good, but it all comes down to face shape, habit and idiosyncratic preference....and anyone who spends any time in the water will know that once you find a make of goggles that work for you, you stick with them. I am a die-hard fan of mirrored Blueseventy Element goggles - on my Channel swim, I put a pair on at hour six, and didn't have to touch them once for the next 10 hours. But I've never really found a pair of clear goggles that I really like, so I was interested to try out the Speedo Futura Ice goggles that came free with my first issue of H2Open magazine.

I've been using them in the pool, and so far, I'm pretty impressed. They're comfortable, close-fitting and I haven't had to keep fiddling with them between sets; plus the blue tint is very light, giving good pool visibility, and the anti-fog is working a treat so far. My only two slight complaints about them are: firstly, that I've found that I need to have them tighter than I would ideally like in order to stay in place and watertight; and secondly, that if you end up with a drop of water in them, each socket is quite big, and the drop tends to bounce all over the place. This is the same objection I always had to mask-style goggles, although it's nowhere near as bad with these. So, have I finally found a reliable make of clear goggles? Possibly. I'm doing a longer pool swim tomorrow (3.5 hours), so I'll see how I get on.

Virgin Dublin to Holyhead relay

2011-03-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

The OW discussion forums are buzzing with the news that Richard Branson and Ronan Keating are headlining a relay team of 10 people planning to swim the 51 miles from Dublin to Holyhead in order to raise £1 million for Cancer Research UK. There's a bit of scepticism floating about - mostly because they are claiming that this would be a world record when in fact much longer relay swims have been accomplished (and without the aid of wetsuits) - see the Daily News of Open Water Swimming for an even-handed discussion, and some good links to other ultra-relay swims.

The publicity materials for the swim reference the presence of sharks as part of the challenge, but as many of the forum discussions have pointed out, a much bigger threat is the lion's mane jellyfish and the harsh conditions... plus Ronan Keating has already stated that he's not much of a swimmer. Hmm. I think it's a shame that they've talked up claims for the swim that aren't strictly accurate, but I'm sure that this was the result of inadequate research rather than purposeful misrepresentation; we also know that 'big talk' is necessary to drum up the hype necessary to raise significant sums of money. From my perspective, the much bigger challenge is that it will involve being on a slow-moving, reeling boat for hours and hours - the very thought makes me want to reach for a bucket.

So, I say, hats off to them for taking this on - you couldn't pay me, for one, to try such a thing (and, to be honest, no-one who's seen me in action on a boat would). Hopefully they'll amend some of the rhetoric to reflect other ultra-relay achievements - I don't think that they need it to be a world record to still be an ambitious and impressive swim, whatever the outcome. And such a high profile event can only be good for the sport of open water swimming.

Better at last and back to training

2011-03-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

At last, after two weeks of croaking, wheezing, spluttering and generally becoming quite difficult to live with, my chest infection has finally retreated, my energy levels are back up and I'm back into training. I'm trying to ease in gently, but it's just so nice to be able to get back to it - not least because I tend to suffer from insomnia, especially when work pressures are high, and the swimming really helps with that. But also, Catalina is only 4 months away and I'm a long way from feeling ready to start the serious build-up to that when the open water season starts.

I'm off to Malta to guide for Swimtrek at the beginning of April, and I'm expecting that to be a pretty full on couple of weeks, with not too much time for swimming. But hopefully I'll have chance to dip the occasional toe in and to remind myself how great it is to be in the open water after a long, chlorinated winter.

Sick, sick, sick...

2011-03-18T03:50:00.000-07:00

It's two weeks since I've been able to get in the pool, and I'm still struggling with a chest infection...although I am finally seeing some signs of improvement and have managed without having to have antibiotics. I feel really wiped out though and still have a rattly chest and croaky voice. It's hard not to worry about the lost training and fitness, but I went back through my blog and saw that I've had something like this at least once a year - it's frustrating, but doesn't do any harm in the long term. It's still driving me nuts though. I'm trying to concentrate on eating nutritious food, drinking lots of water and getting plenty of sleep.

CS&PF dinner

2011-03-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

After months away from all things open water, I went down to Dover this weekend for the CS&PF dinner (plus a great chance to get in a couple of research interviews).

It was a beautiful afternoon on Friday when I arrived and the harbour looked very peaceful - it felt a bit odd to be down there and not be planning to spend a whole day swimming up and down.

Dover's not the loveliest town in the world, but you've got to love somewhere that includes a special logo on its harbour usage signs for distance swimmers....

On Saturday afternoon, I went to the CS&PF AGM, where big changes were afoot - with Mike Oram stepping down as Hon. Secretary (to be replaced by Kevin Murphy), and several new people bringing expertise in the fields of law, medicine and accountancy to the new committee. This felt like a really positive set of changes, and happily, the meeting passed largely without controversy.

Before dinner, a bunch of us went over to the White Horse pub to perform the Channel swimmer's ritual of adding our names to the walls of the pub. The walls are packed with years of swimmers' names, but I managed to find a little strip to make my mark on. To be honest, I didn't think that I was that bothered about it, but when it came to it, I enjoyed it enormously and it feels great to have my name up there among all those other swimmers.

Then on to the dinner in Dover town hall. It has to be said - hats off to all those involved in organising this - nice food, good company, and a great chance to celebrate all the successes of the year. The highlight for me though came during the raffle, when, to my enormous surprise and delight, I won a free Alcatraz swim, donated by the nice people at Swimart. The timing is perfect for my California trip this summer - what a huge stroke of luck, and a fantastic treat.

The only blot on the weekend was the fact that I've got a galloping chest infection, which even after a week isn't getting any better. I probably shouldn't have gone this weekend, and was a bit spluttery, but I really didn't want to miss it...and to be honest, a heady combination of over-the -counter medications combined with a few glasses of wine held it at bay for most of the evening! So, no training for me recently....but at least I had the perfect excuse for not joining this morning's sea swim!

Daily News of Open Water Swimming

2011-03-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

Good news - my research has been featured on Steven Munatones' website, Daily News of Open Water Swimming. It's been up for a couple of days, and has already had an amazing effect on the number of visitors to the site, plus plenty of new contributions. Very exciting.

Swimming pool snuffles

2011-02-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

I seem to have reached that point in the winter swimming season when the constant and ever-longer pool swims trigger allergic reactions that just run into each other, making me sound like I've permanently got a cold - a proper, sneezy cold. I know that a lot of people get this, and I always have a good burst of the sneezes when I get out of a long pool swim, but this seems to have moved into a whole new league. After my 6km swim yesterday, I couldn't stop sneezing, and then I woke up in the night, nose and eyes streaming, and chest all tight and wheezy. I took some anti-histamines, but it was too late, and I ended up getting hardly any sleep. All very odd - it was nowhere near this bad last year. I didn't swim today, so I'm all back to normal again, but I really hope that this isn't going to happen every time. I think I might try taking the anti-histamines before I swim and see if that makes a difference.

I was foraging through my netbook looking for something today, and came across some photos I'd taken of Jamie Goodhead and family when we were all in Jersey last July. I've got some clips of video of Jamie doing his 6 hour swim in St Catherine's Bay - it was a stunning day, and the water was glass-flat and looks utterly delicious. Happy days.

Is it nearly spring yet?

Favourite bits of kit

2011-02-21T07:38:00.001-08:00

One of the only things I've always slightly regretted about swimming is the relative paucity of gadgets and kit that come along with it. I have quite a weakness for small electronic gadgets, and when I was running more and doing some triathlon, I always enjoyed using heart rate monitors and GPS trackers, as well as the technical clothing, nutritional supplements etc. Triathlon, of course, is perfect for this, with three sports' worth of toys and gadgets to play with, and multiple charts and graphs to download to the computer. The ridiculous thing about all this is that I'm not at all technically minded - I have no idea how most of this stuff works, and to be honest, have very little interest in that side of it....but still I love the gadgetry of sport.

And so...to swimming, which, of course, is largely (and disappointingly) gadget-free, but nevertheless, over the last few years of training, I've refined my kit preferences and thought I'd introduce my absolute favourites. Kit for long distance swimming is very personal - what suits one person perfectly just doesn't sit right with another, especially over several hours of swimming, when even the slightest imperfection of fit can lead to problems (a hat sliding off, or a costume chafing). Most swimmers I know have a strong loyalty to particular brands of costumes, goggles and caps, honed through trial and error. It's definitely quite reassuring when swim day comes around to slide on familiar suits, caps and goggles - one less thing to worry about.

For me, I especially love my pink Swimtrek cap, or the Zoggs one - both a perfect fit, staying firmly put without clamping around the forehead and causing headaches. And, after a great deal of searching, trial and error, I have finally settled on the fabulous Blueseventy Element mirrored goggles. They don't leak, even if they are kept fairly loose (which is more comfortable over long periods); I had them on for 10 hours straight during my Channel swim and didn't have to adjust them once. I only wish they made a clear version - I still haven't found the perfect pair for night swimming yet.

But there is one piece of proper gadgetry that I wouldn't be without - my Poolmate watch.

I never used to use this so much when I was training in the 50m pool, and it wasn't really necessary when swimming with the club, when lane counting is a collective affair. But swimming on my own in a 25m pool has exposed my quite pathetic inability to keep count when swimming - my mind wanders when I swim, and even over 100m sets I can't always be 100% sure whether I've done 2 or 4 lengths a lot of the time. In the past, I've tried various watches and devices that you have to tap at the end of a lap, but I found this to be too much of an interruption, and I would forget to do it as often as I would remember anyway. So this is perfect - using accelerometer technology, it senses the turn and counts for you. My only complaint about it is that it's quite big but that's not a problem in the water. I understand that the new one has a mechanism for downloading swim data onto your computer and draws charts and graphs of your progress (be still my inner gadget fiend) .... but for now, I'm resisting....

So, if anyone knows of a waterproof heart rate monitor for swim training, or a good, waterproof, small GPS system for open water swimming, then let me know. In the mean time, I think I should probably just be grateful, for the sake of my finances, that there aren't more gadgets around.

Powerboating....

2011-02-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

This week, I ventured some distance out of my comfort zone and did my RYA Powerboat Level 2 qualification. I say "out of my comfort zone" not because it's something too hard for me to do (although see below...) but more that even though my job is one of ongoing learning, I very rarely learn a new physical skill. I've had stroke correction sessions, and have had several Total Immersion sessions, but these were in something that I already had the fundamental grasp of. A better parallel might be the handful of water skiing lessons Peter and I had in 2004 in celebration of my first book being published; or more recently, the two years of cello lessons I had before swimming took over my life. This unfamiliarity of task, plus the fact that I have undeniably quite poor co-ordination, reactions and kinaesthetic sense, made me rather full of trepidation about the whole venture, but excited about trying something new (plus, I need this to work for Swimtrek, so it's part of that next bit of the swimming adventure too).

So, I put myself in the very capable hands of the nice people at Edgebaston Watersports, and, looking for all the world like a tellytubby in my multiple layers of wetsuit, salopettes, thermals, fleeces, hats, sweatshirts and jacket, I set forth to try and get to grips with powerboating. Firstly, let it be noted that, in spite of wearing so many clothes that I could barely reach over to tie my shoes, it was absolutely FREEZING on the water. All those hours of cold water swimming have apparently made no difference to my tolerance for cold and it wasn't long before I was wishing that I'd done this at a more civilised time of year.

But in spite of that, it was a really positive experience, mostly due to the relentlessly positive, constructive and clear instruction from our instructors, Ben and Jake, who bore my inadequacies with an impressive degree of patience and good humour, and did a great job at helping me to get my head around it all. I wasn't terrible at it, and I definitely got better as we went along and did eventually get my qualification, but I'm also not a natural and I think it's going to take some practice yet to really embody those skills. It reminds me of learning to drive - when you have to think about every movement really carefully and you can't imagine how people can do it so effortlessly. Hopefully, this will be the same. But even though I've still got a lot to learn, I finished the course feeling like I was able to exercise reasonable control over the boat, and be safe (for myself, and for others), so that seems like a good enough result to me.

As an aside, my heart is still definitely IN the water, rather than ON it. Particularly on the first day of the course, the wind was very gentle, and the surface of the reservoir looked thick, glassy and delicious; all I could think about was diving in and swimming, and how nice that would feel, especially compared to my frustrated sense of awkwardness and unfamiliarity at the tiller of the boat. I really can't wait until the Spring and we can get back into the water.

But thanks to everyone at Edgebaston Watersports for providing a safe and enjoyable course, and especially to Ben and Jake for their fantastic tuition - I heartily recommend them to anyone in this neck of the woods needing to get their qualifications.

Research website - quick quiz

2011-02-13T15:57:00.000-08:00

In the mean time, while I've been going back and forth on the training and trying to find some kind of even keel, I decided to revise the project website and include a quick quiz - it's a very abbreviated version of the interview questions, but with text boxes so that people don't have to write something more narrative and can just fill in and submit via the form. Within a couple of hours of launching it (on Twitter, Facebook and on the Channel Swimmers Google group), I'd had four responses already, including some great new links, so that's looking very promising.

How much is enough?

2011-02-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I managed to get myself back in gear after a really work-filled, training-free week and have done plenty of running, core and strength training, and swimming this week - five swims and 4 gym sessions in all. Hopefully, the previous week was just a blip where work got away from me.

But as I was swimming today, I was wondering about how much training I should be doing. I think that everyone worries about this, and I dealt with this first time round by training as much as I possibly could. Consequently, in some ways, I think I did more than enough....although I think that I needed that for my confidence, and that this really helped me when things got difficult during the swim. But I think that it should be slightly different now - after all that intense build-up over a couple of years, I feel like (hope?) that I have enough "distance in my arms" to be able to work on maintaining during the winter and then intensifying in the few months leading up to the swim. I don't want to skimp, or squeak through on just enough, but at the same time, I want to be able to keep the swimming within manageable proportions on an ongoing basis rather that just for this few years.

So, as always, part of me is very unsure as to whether I'm doing enough, but another part of me feels like I need to have a bit more faith in my swimming and my ability to do this. Tricky...I guess I'll find out in July.

Too much work, not enough swimming...

2011-02-06T06:09:00.000-08:00

It's been fantastic to get my new research website up and running, and last week, I gave my first seminar paper on the research data, which felt like an important step forwards for the project. But the downside is that the training has had to take something of a back seat to the work involved, plus maintaining my usual teaching commitments. I finished the week completely pooped and motivation-free, and am now feeling very frustrated at myself for letting it all slip (again). It's ridiculous, because I LOVE swimming, but sometimes it can be just too hard to drag myself back out in the evening, especially with a pile of work still waiting to be done.

It's the old problem of work-swimming balance, but I think that I've perhaps developed too much of an all-or-nothing approach to training - if I can't go for a full training swim, I tend to not go at all, rather than going for just 30 mins, or going to the gym to do a bit of weight training. So my goal this week is to do something every day, even if it ends up being a short session.

It's beginning to dawn on me that Catalina is just over 5 months away, and I'm a long way from where I need to be to complete it. Time to pick it up a bit.

New research website

2011-02-04T08:05:00.000-08:00

Good news - my research website - "Becoming a Channel swimmer" - has finally gone live. I want it to be a vehicle for communicating about the research, but also, hope that in time, it will become a useful resource for swimmers - for example, I'm in the process of building a big library of organisations, information sites, videos and blogs which some might find helpful. It's a bit scary putting it out there, but it needed to be done, not least because I've spent days playing with pictures, link and layouts - all of which is far more fun than the marking that I have to do, but I can't put it off indefinitely...

You can find it by clicking on the link above, or in the list on the right of the blog page. Enjoy!

Guest post

2011-01-31T05:53:00.001-08:00

Nicola Joyce invited me to write a guest post for her blog about open water swimming - you can see what I wrote here.

Strength and conditioning

2011-01-29T02:10:00.001-08:00

I went to a session on Strength and Conditioning last night, run by Mark Jarvis of MMJ Training, who provides S&C coaching to elite athletes preparing for the Olympics, as well as working on a small group and one-to-one basis with more normal mortals. He gave a free seminar and taster session to members the triathlon club to explain the virtues of S&C in terms of performance and injury prevention. He was fantastic - he really knows his stuff, as well as being funny and extraordinarily positive in the face of our manifold inadequacies. He had us doing some of the basic movements and tests that expose inefficiencies, structural problems and "energy leaks", and was clearly itching to dive in and start coaching as we tilted, over-compensated, collapsed and wobbled our way through the exercises. In many ways, it was a sobering experience in that I feel really strong bodily a lot of the time, and especially when I'm training, but at the same time, was unable to do many of the simplest-looking movements that he set us. That feeling of capacity and control that comes from training can be very deceptive. But it was a very thought-provoking lesson in rethinking what good training is, and where our time might be best spent. I'm not sure how to mobilise this in terms of my training practice yet, but many thanks to Mark for a really great evening.

swimming documentary

2011-01-29T02:05:00.000-08:00

Have a listen to this gorgeous documentary about the swimmers at Sandycove. It's made by Kevin Keane, and is a beautiful evocation of the joys of sea swimming, as well as a very particular celebration of the community at Sandycove and their swimming achievements.

Cold Water Swim Champs pictures

2011-01-23T10:57:00.001-08:00

There's some great pictures from the Cold Water Swimming Championships in the Guardian today - what fun... it does all look a bit chilly though.

UK Cold Water Swimming Championships

2011-01-23T01:17:00.000-08:00

Off to Tooting Bec Lido yesterday to take part in the UK Cold Water Swimming Championships. It was a cold, grey morning as I trudged across the common towards the lido yesterday, and I have to admit that my heart wasn't really in it. This cold water business is not really my thing, although regular readers of the blog will remember that I rather enjoyed a chilly dip in Parliament Hill lido in December. Consequently, my swimming involvement in the event was rather modest - just the 30m freestyle. The rest of the time was spent watching the races and catching up with old and new friends from the training camp in Cork, Swimtrek, and from those summer weekends down in Dover.

I performed with my customary mediocrity in my race - I think I came about 13th overall in the heats, and consequently, was spared having to get back in again to swim in the finals! To be honest, although I enjoyed the event as a whole enormously, I didn't enjoy my race much. Like all the races, when the time came for my heat, we had to jump straight in, then wait, holding on to the wall with one hand, and with shoulders submerged. Once everyone was ready, we were counted down and off we went. It was only a few degrees in the water, and I found the combination of putting my head in and then sprinting quite unpleasant - much worse than at Parliament Hill, which had been colder, but I had kept my head up. My hands, feet and face quickly went numb, my whole body was stinging and tingling and the 30m seemed to go on forever; it's amazing that even over such a short distance, I could feel the cold sapping my strength and slowing my stroke. I was very relieved to have it over and done with when I finally touched the wall and hauled myself out; I grabbed my stuff and headed straight for the sauna, which was packed with bright pink swimmers warming up and chatting.

I was certainly relieved that I hadn't got carried away when registering and signed up for the 450m endurance race. For someone like me, with very few opportunities (and very limited inclination) to acclimatise by training in very cold water regularly, it would have been a very tough challenge, and not one that I think I could have completed. But many congrats to those who did it - amazing.

But the day as a whole was great fun - it had the feel of a country fair (a hog roast, children selling cupcakes, a hat competition), but at the same time, was run like absolute clockwork, with swimmers assembling, changing, being briefed, and being taken to the start in a slickly organised and friendly, well-practised routine. The whole thing was managed and executed by a large troupe of volunteer marshals and safety crew - many thanks to all of them, who stood around in the cold for hours keeping things running and making it a fun and safe day for everyone.

Interviewing....and back to training...

2011-01-14T03:15:00.000-08:00

I've finally got myself back into some kind of training routine after a bit of a hiatus over Christmas, and then being ill at the beginning of Jan. Fully recovered, my training is getting back on track, with a much greater focus on landtraining (in the gym) than last year, plus plenty of quality sessions in the pool. I'm feeling it a bit after the break, but feel good for getting some consistent training done. Plus, the return to hard training has sorted out the problems I tend to have in term-time with insomnia! The next short-term challenge is my birthday swim on Sunday, postponed from last Sunday because I had a cold - to celebrate (?) turning 43, I'm going to do 43 x 200m.

Alongside that, and as term gets underway again, I've restarted the interviewing process for the research project, kicking off the year with Nicola Joyce (The Fit Writer), who wrote this lovely report on our meeting on her blog. And while you're there, have a look at the physique photos that she posted recently - amazing. All in all, the interviews are going well and I'm really enjoying doing them. I've done 12 so far, with another 5 in the pipeline...plus, I'm giving my first seminar on the research in a couple of weeks, which is a bit terrifying, but a good opportunity to start thinking about all this great data. I'm hoping to post a podcast of the seminar if my limited technological competence allows...

Goodbye 2010...Hello 2011

2010-12-31T06:59:00.001-08:00

We had the most glorious winter break in Tenerife over Christmas - bright sunshine, a relaxed pace and a gratifying absence of all things Christmassy. We celebrated with our traditional Christmas dinner of beans on toast and came back restored, well-sunned and refreshed. Just what we needed at the end of a really challenging term.

All charged up by our lovely holiday, I just got back from the pool, where I did my end of year long swim. This year, I decided to focus on the theme of "2010-2011", and did 20 x 200m, 10 x 100m, 20 x 200m, 11 x 100m (total: 10.1km) - all broken down into smaller segments, with lots of kick, pull and sprints to liven it up along the way. I was joined during the swim by various friends from the triathlon club, with special mention going to Penny, who arrived just when I was starting to flag and helped me to pick the pace back up. It was a really nice swim, but I have to confess that I really felt my lack of training recently. My times were dropping off towards the end, and I feel pretty tired and a bit sore now (but in a good way). Good motivation to get back down to training in earnest when the pool opens again next week.

It's been quite a year. I've been swimming in Jersey, Cork, Malta, the Lake District and, of course, Dover, as well as my regular local lakes, and have trained harder than I ever thought I could. I have swum from Jersey to France....and I swam the English Channel. Even several months later, it still makes me smile to say that out loud. I've also won funding for my "becoming a Channel swimmer" research project, and have already signed up for my next big swim - the Catalina Channel. A good year, I reckon, with hopefully another exciting swimming year to come.

Very best wishes for 2011 to everyone who visits the blog, and to my swimming friends around the world.

Exciting invitation...

2010-12-13T06:18:00.001-08:00

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned the possibility of an exciting new opportunity in April...Well, my latest news is that I've been invited by Swimtrek to do a couple of weeks' work for them next Spring as a guide on two of their long distance training camps! I was genuinely very surprised (and flattered) to be asked, and am a little daunted by what seems like a lot of very grown-up responsibility, but what an amazing opportunity. The only condition is that I have to get a powerboat qualification! What fun!

Plus... Sally M-G in Jersey has invited me to go on their training camp at the beginning of June as a helper.

I would never have thought that the swimming would have brought so many new opportunities into my life.

A good day in the pool...

2010-12-13T05:39:00.000-08:00

It's been such a unsettled term for me that the swimming just hasn't been going that great and I've found it difficult to get into a training rhythm. A combination of work-related stress, the strangeness of Peter and I having to live apart during the week (because he's working Bath Univ), having to leave the swimming club, and the fact that I've not been getting enough regular and hard training in to wear myself out have meant that I've been suffering bouts of chronic insomnia, which just makes it even harder to get out to the pool in the late evening. And to be honest, even when I did manage to go swimming, more often that not it was feeling like a real chore - a 90min commitment at the end of a 10 hour working day. Swimming has always been such a source of pleasure for me, and I really don't want it to be such a struggle.

And then, just when I was starting to lose faith, along came one of those glorious swims where everything just feels right. I did a 6km set at Henrys on Sunday afternoon, and for over an hour of this, I even had the pool to myself. And I felt great from start to finish - like I could swim forever. And when I got out, I was deliciously tired in that way that only swimming can produce. I felt so much better, and am positively excited about getting back in the pool tonight (although this probably also has a lot to do with term having ended!). I still don't know what the answer is to balancing work and training, but this boost came along just when I needed it.

The other change I made on Sunday was to reintroduce post-swim protein shakes. Even though I've been training on and off, I've not been using energy drinks or shakes....mostly because after the hard training of the summer, it didn't feel like I was doing enough to need them. I've been experiencing really restless legs in my insomniac nights, and hadn't even considered that this could be something to do with the exercising / recovery. But yesterday, I used energy drink rather than water, and had a protein shake afterwards, and then didn't have so much as a twitch all night. I can't say for sure that that's the reason, but I certainly felt better for it anyway, so I'm going to reinstate that part of my routine from now on.

So a positive, morale-boosting day in the pool at the end of a tough term...and a good reminder that there is nothing quite like that feeling of a good day in the water.

time, time, time...

2010-12-08T03:50:00.000-08:00

After my year on research leave, I had forgotten just how much the demands of term time swallow everything else. Consequently, I've been experiencing real problems in getting to the pool regularly, which is really frustrating, as well as making me a bit anxious about my preparations for next summer. I had been trying to get into a routine of eating between 6-7pm, and then going to the gym / pool from 8-10pm, but especially over the last couple of weeks, when essay marking was also added to the mix, I've been working through to 8 or 9pm and have ended up skipping more training sessions than I've made. I makes me realise just how much being on leave helped with my training last year - not that I didn't work while I was on leave, but I had much more control over my time, and could work more evenly across the year without the particular intensities of the academic term.

I love my job (although the current economic climate brings its own unwelcome pressures and concerns), but I love the swimming too....and I think that time spent swimming is an essential way of coping with the demands of work in terms of general health and wellbeing. One of the challenges of both academic work and swim training, though, is that neither of them have an obvious end point; it's hard to know how much is enough / too much, and it's easy to end up feeling like you're doing neither of them properly. I don't know what the answer is, but I could really do with a couple more hours in the day...

Winter swimming

2010-12-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

Many very experienced open water swimmer endorse regular immersion in very cold water throughout the Winter as a means of acclimatising to the cold. I have also met many first-time swimmers who incorporated not only cold water swimming into their winter training, but also took cold showers / baths, kept the heating down or off in the house, slept with the windows open etc. A lot of swimmers I have spoken to endorse these practices very strongly, arguing that they provide both psychological preparation as well as physical adaptation. Personally, I have never been convinced by this as an effective training strategy, not least because the body's reaction to water close to freezing and the reaction at 10+ degrees is so different. Consequently, in both seasons, I waited until May and then began the building up of time in the (gradually warming) water.

However, aside from the training side of things, there are, of course, many people who swim in very cold water throughout the winter for the pleasure of it. This, also, had always escaped me, and I had always felt very sceptical of the claims about the invigorating and health-giving properties of cold water swimming. But now I think I may have to think again, because yesterday, I had my first Winter swim and LOVED it.

I was arranging to meet Sarah Taylor (who swam the Channel this year too) for a research interview, and she suggested that we meet at Parliament Hill lido for a swim first. I agreed immediately, mostly because, having never swum in any of the lidos, I was assuming the PH lido was heated....why else would anyone suggest meeting for a swim there in December? And then I checked. Hmm. And as the day approached, Britain sank into an icy cold snap, just to add to my anxieties.

And so, yesterday morning, we met at the lido on the most wintery of days.

Just in case we didn't realise it was a cold day, the electronic sign at the entrance warned us what was to come....

Sarah is an old hand at this business and slipped in quickly (plus she'd cleverly brought an old pair of trainers for walking from the changing room to the pool steps - the mark of experience). I, on the other hand, picked my way barefoot through the snow and lingered tentatively until I realised that my feet were freezing anyway, and that the rest of me was soon to follow as a cold wind licked around me. I reassured myself with the thought that it might be like night swimming, where the water is warmer than the air, and therefore quite comforting . I went down the steps and walked in quickly up to my waste, gasping with the shock of sensation, and then off we went.

For those who do this kind of swimming regularly, this account will not seem the slightest bit remarkable, but as someone doing this for the first time, I was genuinely astonished by the experience. Firstly, it's quite painful to be in water so cold. My hands and feet went numb almost immediately, accompanied by sharp pains; my back prickled as if it were burning; it was hard to control my breathing. I kept my head up, although the water splashed onto my face, numbing my lips and chin. We swam across the width (25 metres) and back, and I was heading for the steps when Sarah suggested another two. Peer pressure won the day and off we went again. I was very chilled by now, but had recovered from the initial shock of immersion and enjoyed these two more. I noticed that small droplets of waters, splashed up by our swimming, were actually freezing in the air and colliding with other frozen droplets, making a soft tinkling sound; my body was experiencing a combination of numbness and intense sensation. When we finally got to the steps to get out, I realised that not only could I not feel my hands, but that I had no dexterity at all and could barely pick up my towel and bag; my hands felt like big, thick sausages. We scurried inside and stood under warm showers which quickly restored sensation to our extremities. It's not the same as the experience of warming up after a two hour swim in May when you get chilled to your core and you warm up slowly after a prolonged period of shivering. Instead, the recovery (like the immersion and physiological response to it) was much faster, and by the time we were out of the showers and dressed back up in our mountains of sweaters, hats, coats and scarves, I was perfectly fine...although I had the most bizarre tingling sensations down my back, arms and legs for several minutes afterwards.

So - my first Winter swim. I have to confess that I had been absolutely dreading it, but the reality of it was quite astounding - I hadn't anticipated the intensity of the sensation, and the rapidity of it. It was painful, but also extraordinary, exciting and enervating; afterwards, I felt full of beans. Perhaps it was because it was my first experience of it, but I found it quite thrilling and invigorating. I still am not convinced by its value as a training activity, although can see how it would have psychological value for those who are worried about the cold. But as an activity in itself, I thought it was fabulous (albeit in a slightly perverse way).

And in this spirit, have also signed up for the cold water swimming championships at Tooting Bec Lido in January (just the 30m freestyle....nothing too ambitious).

What fun.

Training news

2010-11-25T16:56:00.001-08:00

Great news - I met up with Robin Leonard, who used to coach the Masters section at CCSC until earlier this year, when he very sensibly decided that there was more to life than getting up at 4.30 every Tuesday morning. Anyway, he's very generously agreed to help me get my new training regime underway by writing sets for me. This is fabulous, as it saves me from having to try and manufacture sessions all the time, and there's more chance this way that I will actually do that speed work that I promised myself I would do after the sobering lessons of the Channel swim. Robin is the master of fiendish sets of suffering, so I'm looking forward to a winter of quality training.

Catalina Channel

2010-11-20T11:04:00.000-08:00

Exciting news - I've just signed my contract for a Catalina Channel swim on 20 July, 2011.

Life after club training...

2010-11-20T03:22:00.000-08:00

It's been a strange week since making the decision to leave the club, but things are starting to come together.

The Masters section coach was palpably unconcerned by the fact that I no longer felt included within the club's activities, and my posting on my Facebook page that I had decided to leave because the focus on pool competition did not meet my training needs was met with a very snotty posting from someone who I had swum with for several years that two new international level swimmers had recently joined and how great it was. Add to this the fact that another non-competing, mostly open-water swimmer was told that because of "over-crowding" on Wednesdays and Fridays, she would no longer be able to use her once-a-week membership on those days (limiting her to days that her schedule wouldn't allow her to attend). The implementation of this concocted nonsense occurred while at the same time, new competing members are being actively recruited, giving the lie to the overcrowding excuse that was clearly designed those deemed to be of no value to the club. So, all of this convinces me that I have made the right decision and I am not interested in swimming in a club that has so little imagination about what swimming is / can be.

At the heart of the recent transformation in the club's ethos is the awarding of Beacon programme status last Spring - a move that has radically shifted the focus of the club towards competition. I did a bit of research about the programme, and for those who don't know, here's an explanatory extract from a paper by Nick Sellwood (ASA Talent and Development Manager):

"The business structure of the Beacon programme is a unit that is an evolving, integrated and vertically managed business unit that creates a quality assured environment for the delivery at all stages in the talent pathways, embracing lifelong participation".

All clear? No? Perhaps this will help...

"The Beacon programme will provide quality assured programmes of coaching and development and where appropriate competition at every stage of the talent pathway from Foundation to World Class Podium and encompassing lifelong participation in aquatics. This is achieved with an integrated programme where all aspects of the development process are effectively and efficiently interlinked".

Aside from the fabulous dissociation of words from meaning in this management nonsense, at the heart of the programme is the goal of focusing intensive competitive training on the country's relatively scarce 50m pools. In itself, I don't have a problem with trying to nurture top level talent; what is not clear is how Masters swimming fits into this, especially since, as the ASA acknowledges on the Masters section of its website, the majority of Masters swimmer don't compete.

Ultimately, I can see why the club might have chosen to go down the Beacon programme route, since it brings with it funds, coaches, pool access, land training and sports science support, and status. Plus, I know that many of my former club colleagues are really enjoying the competition-focused training sessions and weekend galas, which is great. What I regret is that as club members, we were never consulted about the Beacon programme and what its impact would be; and that so little regard is given to other forms of swimming which, with a little flexibility and imagination, could easily be included within even such a competitively oriented Masters swimming context.

So, while I think it's a shame and utterly unnecessary, me and my lifelong participation in aquatics are happy to go elsewhere.

And with that in mind, I'm hoping to have a new coaching arrangement in place shortly, and have transferred most of my training to a pool belonging to a local private school which offers some public memberships of its pool and gym facilities out of school hours. It's close to home, and has the advantage of being open late in the evening (until 10pm) and is always virtually empty after 8-ish. I'm really enjoying being back in the pool and getting back down to training.

More news to follow shortly about training, Catalina, plus a very exciting opportunity next April....

Big decision...

2010-11-14T07:26:00.000-08:00

The big news is that I have decided to leave the City of Coventry Swimming Club Masters section and to go solo. I feel quite sad about this as I've had some fantastic periods of training with the club, and I'm sure that overall my swimming has benefitted from it. However, the ethos of the club is changing significantly, moving increasingly towards a focus on pool competition, and away from what I felt used to be a more inclusive, participatory training environment that was focused on personal improvement, fitness and skill development rather than racing / winning. This, ultimately, is a question of personal preferences and inclinations, and although I regret that there wasn't more discussion with members about a shift that was more imposed than democratically agreed, I wish those continuing to train, swim and compete with the club every success.

As for me, I now need to sit down and work out a training plan that will enable me to build on the work of the last year in the most efficient and effective way possible over the winter so that I'm ready to hit the open water in May.

A big change, and an exciting challenge.

False start

2010-11-12T06:16:00.001-08:00

Well, there I was, all fired up with excitement about my new swim challenge and ready to start building back into training when I got walloped by a weird viral chest infection - energy levels up and down; high fevers; generally feeling yuk. Finally, after over a week of just trying to straggle through the working day, I'm starting to feel better, and hit the pool last night for a gentle 1.5km. Hopefully, by next week, I'll be able to going again.

So, a bit of a false start, but there's no rush.

I did, however, have a meeting with the nice people at Elab at Warwick University - they're going to design a website for the research project. More about that when they've worked their magic.

The next challenge...

2010-11-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

Exciting news!!!

After a great deal of back and forth, I've decided that my next challenge is going to be the Catalina Channel. It's a similar length of swim to the English Channel - 21 miles from the island of Santa Catalina to the mainland to the south of Los Angeles at similar water temps to the EC, but with less tidal influence. A very exciting prospect, a tough swim, and a great chance to build on this year's swimming.

None of the details have been ironed out yet, but that will get done as and when. The important thing is that I've decided, and now I can start focusing on what needs to be done to make this happen.

Banning Channel swimming?

2010-11-02T01:39:00.000-07:00

There was a programme on the magazine TV show Inside Out South East last night which included a segment on Channel swimming. The segment was about the contribution of Channel swimming to the Dover economy, but also included interviews with the English and French coastguards expressing concern about the possibility of an accident / collision, with the French coastguard calling for a ban. You can see the show here (for the next 6 days).

There's been a huge amount of media hype around this story, and I, and many other swimmers, were getting calls yesterday to comment (even though no-one had seen the full programme at that point, beyond what had been teased by the BBC - so, in my case, at least, I declined). I don't know what the reality of it is yet, but do know that while demand is rising from swimmers, the number of boats / attempted crossings has been relatively stable over the last few years, following agreements with coastguards limiting the number of boats etc. Plus, the pilots have considerable expertise (plus navigational and communications equipment) onboard, and safety is unquestionably the top priority... as is evidenced by the excellent safety record within the sport.

I'm sure that life would be easier for the coastguard and shipping if the Channel boats weren't there, but this seems a little melodramatic (plus these comments were prompted by a media interview with very leading questions, so it's not clear how strong the feeling actually is that it should be banned). It remains to be seen what happens with this, but for now, it seems like there's a lot of hype and a good news story...

As an aside, I was delighted to see my friend, and former Channel relay co-swimmer, Jamie Goodhead featured in the film. Unfortunately, his swim was aborted after one of the crew fell ill, but he looks great in the water, and I'm sure will be back next year.

And one final comment on the film - they say that David Walliams is responsible for the growth in Channel swimming, but I'm not sure that that's the case...at least not on its own. The increased demand in Channel swimming is happening alongside the growth of other ultra-endurance sports (e.g. Ironman), so there's clearly something else happening too at the wider social level.

I, in the mean time, have been doing some thinking and making some decisions - more news to follow shortly.

Look what I got....

2010-10-24T05:08:00.001-07:00

Look what I got today.....

The Sandwell Lifesaving and Channel Swimming Club (based at Swan Pool in Walsall) have an cup, awarded annually, for the longest swim by one of its members, and my 16 hours and 9 mins in the Channel took the prize this year! There is a pleasing symmetry to "the long swim" winning "the longest swim", and I couldn't be more delighted.

And well done to Ali Longman, who won the "swimmer of the year" award this year for her all-round fantastic performances and hard training.

Research podcast

2010-10-20T08:14:00.001-07:00

I was interviewed about the swimming research last week for the online journal, Sociological Imagination, which is edited and managed by a group of post-graduates at Warwick University. You can find the podcast here.

Getting going again...

2010-10-16T06:34:00.001-07:00

Two very different pics of objects, each of which are providing inspiration to get back to swimming / training as the darker days of winter approach.

Firstly, the jelly-baby necklace that Rachel made for me before my swim, and which I promised I would display in all its glory. Hilarious.

And secondly, the outstandingly stunning North Sydney Olympic Pool - a 50m, heated, salt-water pool overlooking Sydney harbour, and overlooked by Sydney bridge. What more could a swimmer ask for. I spent most of my last day in Sydney there, swimming, then sitting in the sun reading, then swimming some more, before walking back into Sydney across the bridge.

And so, back to the present. The good news is that I'm feeling heaps better physically and am starting to recover my enthusiasm for training. I've been going to the gym, or doing some gentle running, plus 2-3km swims every other day, and am starting to get back into it all. In some ways, I am the fittest I have ever been; in others, I am woefully unfit...especially when out running (which I really stopped doing around April). But you have to start from where you are, so I'm building up slowly, mixing up activities to get a good cross-training effect and avoid injury, and am generally taking it easy. Plus, Peter's now working in Bath during the week and has the car, and it's almost impossible to park the van at the university because of height barriers, so it's the perfect incentive to get on my bike. It's only 15 mins each way, but every little helps.

The really good news about all this is that where it used to take several hours of swimming to exhaust me, a 45 minute workout pretty much does the job now. This is great because, especially in term time, I tend to have trouble sleeping, especially if I don't exercise, but where it used to take a good 2-3 hours of swimming to do the job, my recent idleness means that a 45 min workout will have me out like a light at bedtime, so I get extra free time and a good night's sleep!

I'm still very unsure about what to do next, and depending on what I decide, how to train. Last year, I trained with the Masters section of the local swimming club, but this has become increasingly oriented to pool competition, which really isn't my thing at all. I don't mind the training, especially over the winter, but I really don't want to compete - something which there is a growing pressure to do. Consequently, I'm not sure how sustainable it is for me to keep going, or whether I should train on my own. This is something which I'm not sure I can be trusted to do - I'm very good at training regularly, but not so good at pushing myself in terms of pace outside of coached sessions. And, as I discovered in my Channel swim, these things matter.

I'm also now thinking quite seriously about having a go at Catalina next summer while I'm over there with the research. But I have two reservations which I still need to think through: firstly, that you have to get over to the island by boat over several hours, and with the likelihood of me being seasick, I'm not sure how I would cope with swimming after that; and secondly, the wildlife....and especially the kind that bites. I've been communicating with Jen Schumacher about this and she has suggested some good ways of managing what is essentially an irrational fear, given the extreme unlikelihood of an attack. But I need to think about it some more. At the end of the day, I don't want to pay all that money and then spend 12 hours in the water, all stressed out, thinking that every shadow is a shark. Mind you, as Jen pointed out (not exactly comfortingly), the ones you see are not your problem, since they've already seen you and decided you're not dinner. It's the ones you don't see... Hmmm.

But whatever I decide, the important thing is that I feel much more like my old swimming self. I feel great, and am starting to really want to get back into it, rather than just feeling like I should.

Back to swimming...?

2010-10-05T14:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of year, and suddenly the university is bustling with students and the frantic final preparations for teaching are underway. In the midst of it all, I decided that a month post-swim was enough time to recover and that I should get back to training, but it turns out that I was being a little optimistic. I've been to two club sessions in the last four days, including the 5.30am session this morning, but I wasn't able to complete either session, and was horribly slow; even more worrying, just over those two sessions, I developed a nasty niggle in one shoulder, and some lower back pain, plus a partial recurrence of the wrist problem. But aside from the flurry of little injuries, I feel very fatigued....not in my everyday life, when I am full of beans, but while I was swimming. It felt as though fatigue had got right into my body; the only way I can describe the sensation is that my bones and joints felt sick when I was swimming. So, even though some of it is probably just from not having trained, I'm sure that my body is still dealing with the exertion of the swim (plus the jetlag etc), and it's probably better to rest up some more. So, my plan for now is to not go to the club sessions, but to stick with the local gym / pool for now, doing some more gentle maintenance-style fitness work. Not very exciting, but just what I need for a few more weeks, I think. Perhaps I'm just showing my age....

Sexism and the Swimming Times

2010-09-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

I've always quite enjoyed the Swimming Times - a bit over-focussed on the elite end of things for my taste, but a good mix of different aspects of swimming, reasonable coverage of open water swimming etc. Plus, unlike other specialist magazines such as those covering triathlon, there are high levels of coverage of female athletes. So, my heart sank when I opened the August 2010 issue to find this "centrefold" of synchronised swimmer, Jenna Randall.

I wrote to ST, who subsequently published the letter, with a reply, both of which I have copied in full below:
"I was really disappointed to open my most recent copy of the Swimming Tiems to see that it included a highly sexualised centrefold spread of synchronised swimmer, Jenna Randall.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with swimming, and simply perpetuatues the idea that women are there to be looked at. Why did we not see a picture of this athlete performing or training? All this picture does is tell young women that how they look is more important than what they can do."

Reply from editor:
"I disagree that the picture referred to has nothing to do with swimming. The whole point of us using it was to emphasise that Jenna is a swimmer and an athlete, and to show that in addition to how she is normally seen in the environment of her sport, she is also a glamorous young woman out of the pool - who could be attractive to model agencies and to sponsors. It was also something different for the magazine as we could always (as we have many times before) print action pictures (of Jenna) from synchro or other athletes from swimming or diving, but we wanted to show one of our athletes in a different light, and raise their profile slightly beyond the action in the pool.

And we are pleased to note that Jenna has recently received sponsorship from Kellogg's"

Now....my first objection to this is that contrary to the editor's defence, the picture itself does not, in any way emphasise that she is a swimmer and an athlete (although the small text box on the next page does mention her sport....and the fact that she is curling her toes in the picture like they do when they swim to make their legs look longer). Secondly, the picture is highly sexualised in both clothing and posture, and consequently, highly out of place in the official magazine of the ASA. This is not an argument based on prudishness - more one of context. That she is pictured in a semi-recumbant, come-hither posture with her clothing sliding up her legs and down her shoulders would fit perfectly in a soft porn publication, but in a sports magazine engaged in the promotion of swimming, it's just gratuitous and offensive. Young women should not have to sexualise themselves, and be sexualised by others, in order to gain sponsorship or paid employment, and it's a shame to see ST endorsing this as a legitimate way to view female athletes. What a young girl can learn from this that it's great to be good at sport, but that to really get on, you also need to be sexualised and beautiful...and another generation of body-dissatisfied young women is born.

I realise that this is not necessarily a popular view in some quarters, but this stuff drives me nuts. Oh well...at least that's a magazine to cross off the list.

The future of The Long Swim...

2010-09-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

I really have no idea how many people even read this blog, but I've loved keeping it, and it's a nice record to have of the process of training for, and swimming, the Channel. But now that "the long swim" is over, I'm not sure what to do with the blog. Should I close it? Or redefine it?

Perhaps I'll decide when I've decided what, if anything, to do next....

Victoria Woods - Channel swimmer sketch

2010-09-20T05:37:00.001-07:00

For the many people who have sent me this since my Channel swim... Victoria Woods is a genuis, and I love it:

Becky Lewis record breaking swim

2010-09-19T05:24:00.000-07:00

Here's the video from Becky Lewis' record-breaking swim this summer. Well done, Becky - you are amazing.

What's next?

2010-09-19T01:32:00.000-07:00

Everybody asks "what's next?" - a fair question, I suppose, especially from those who (probably quite rightly) assume that I'm not done with the swimming yet ... but can't I just enjoy it for a bit longer first?

There's a lot of advice out there about Channel swimming, a lot of it very contradictory, and one of the ways I've been using to sort the wheat from the chaff is to try and identify those tips that get repeated across a variety of training contexts - don't look up for France; don't ask how long you've got to go; swim from feed to feed....all good examples. (Practise sprinting during long training swims - that's another one, but we won't dwell on that for the moment... Acting on good advice once you've identified it is a whole different story!). But everyone says that you shouldn't rush straight into making big "what's next?" decisions after your swim; that you should let it all percolate for a couple of months so that you don't end up biting off more than you can chew.

Of course, I'm thinking about what I might do next, but there's a lot to consider, so for now, I'm enjoying the fact that I completed my swim; that I'm not having to train; that I'll get to spend some time much-missed time with Peter at the weekends; that I can catch up on some long overdue reading, writing and research; and that the first thing I do when I wake up is no longer checking the wind forecast. These are all good things that, for now, are next.

Zurich swim video

2010-09-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

Great video just out from the Lake Zurich swim this year. Lots of familiar faces - Neil, Julieann, Lisa, Gabor, Cliff, Sally. Well done everybody - looks like a fabulous event. Tempting...

Greetings from Sydney

2010-09-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Sydney! What a gorgeous city this is. Honestly, if I could move here, I absolutely would...but Peter and I still haven't managed to get jobs in the same city in the UK, never mind pulling that off in Australia. Never mind...visiting is fun too.

The Fat Studies conference at Macquarie was fabulous, especially once I'd done my presentation and could relax and enjoy myself. And after that, I started my intensive programme of sauntering about Sydney. A couple of days ago, I went out to Bondi and walked down the coastal path for a couple of hours - it was a beautiful day, and I was hoping for a swim at the Icebergs pool (below), but it was being filled. Fantastic setting, though.

I had fun watching the waves and surfers from the cliffs.

Unfortunately, but perhaps inevitably, the physical strains of swimming the Channel, then flying almost immediately out to Sydney, and then working for four days without really being able to catch up on lost sleep finally caught up with me. With my immune system in retreat, I came down with a cold, which last night deteriorated into a feverish, fluey thing, so I'm now temporarily holed up in the flat drinking Lemsips and hoping that it passes soon. With luck, and some good pharmaceuticals, I should be able to squeeze in at least one or two more play days before I fly home.

Channel swim video

2010-09-13T06:01:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to upload the video, so enjoy (always remembering the important caveat that I have very limited creative skills...). Peter and Sam did a fantastic job with the filming though!

Channel swim - some reflections

2010-09-13T05:56:00.000-07:00

It’s been 10 days now since I swam the Channel. Physically, I emerged from it better than I thought I would; mostly I just felt really hung over for several days – probably the result of dehydration, plus general metabolic chaos. I wasn’t particularly stiff or sore, but my energy levels were very erratic, and I was quite hyper from adrenalin and sugar for a couple of days post-swim. Consequently, I had trouble sleeping for more than a couple of hours at a time for several days. Still, I felt like the training had really paid off, and that I’d come out it pretty well, with no injuries to speak of. In psychological terms, it took a while for it to all sink in. I’d found the last four hours incredibly hard, distressing…even slightly violent in terms of the pressure that I’d had to put my body under. It was something I was very unaccustomed to and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of a swimming experience that was so far removed from anything I had ever done before. But as the days passed, I became more and more elated by the fact that I’d completed the swim, and started to get quite emotional every time I thought about those final moments of swimming in to the beach. I also learned that on that day, all but three boats had to turn back because of the difficult conditions and I began to realize how lucky I’d been to be able to get through it at all; and how lucky I’d been to have such a great crew and skilled pilot to get me through that. And because of that luck, their skill, plus all the training and preparation, and a bit of good old-fashioned determination towards the end, I was, at last, a Channel swimmer.

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned from the experience…and what I think I perhaps got right, and what I would do differently.

In terms of preparations, I chose to train for two years, and did a lot of training camps and a lot of miles. I don’t think everyone needs to do this much (and not everyone has the time or financial resources to do this either, of course), but for someone as profoundly risk-averse as me, this was a huge and necessary confidence-builder. I also found the Round Jersey and Jersey to France swims invaluable in this process. As it turned out, given what happened on the swim, I don’t think I would have made it without the experience of these long swims and some of the more intensive periods of my training. Following manifold snippets of advice from various training sites and experienced individuals, I’d addressed in almost obsessive detail as many sometimes seemingly trivial aspects of the swim beforehand as I possibly could – feeding regimen and delivery system; what foods I can and can’t eat in the water; what make of goggles, caps, costumes, suncream etc I like… and so on. Getting all that stuff sorted out, with nothing new on the day and spares of everything, just in case, took a lot of the stress out of it all. I think I did reasonably well on the self-discipline front on the day too – swimming from feed to feed; not asking where I was (even though I REALLY wanted to); not looking up for France; doing as I was told. These are the things that I think worked well for me that I’d been able to learn through both trial and error, and from more experienced others.

But there are two things that I felt unprepared for…mostly, I should add, through a woeful failure of imagination on my part on both counts.

The first of these was the delay because of the weather. Of course, even though I knew that it was always a possibility, I think that deep down, I had assumed that being first on the tide in mid-August would mean that I would probably get a swim on that tide. It would probably have always been a difficult period, but I don’t think I’d anticipated how disruptive it would be, and how stressful…and also, the practical problems that it would cause in terms of losing support crew, or trying to maintain fitness whilst never quite knowing when I would get the call to go (if at all). A bit more realistic thought on this front beforehand would have been helpful, I think.

The second, and much more serious, mistake I made relates to the sprinting…and my lack of mental and physical preparation for it. I had always framed my swimming in terms of me as a plodder – slow but steady. Of course, I had heard lots of stories about people having to sprint, but I had somehow persuaded myself that that would be for the faster swimmers, and that I would be left to plod on. Consequently, although I’d done sprint training with the masters club over the winter, in the open water, I pretty much stuck to ingraining my habitual pace, cranking out the hours and habituating to temperature and distance, but holding a steady pace and stroke rate. This makes me a bit of an idiot because I had been advised on several occasions to do intervals during the long Dover swims, but somehow I had decided that this didn’t apply to me… probably because I really hate sprinting, and love plodding. Well…didn’t that just come back to bite me! I’m very grateful that I’d done all those gut-busting sprint sessions over the two winters, because at least that gave me something to draw on when the time came, but if I had my time again (or if I ever do another long swim…?), I’d definitely be adding interval training to my open water sessions.

So that’s it – from signing up nearly two years ago, to one amazing, unforgettable (in every sense) day in early September: my English Channel swim.

But the last thing that I have to do is to say some thank-you’s. These are not in any particular order, and I hope I’ve not left anyone out, but I really want to thank:

Paul Foreman and his crew for their skill, expertise and determination to get me across, no matter how long it took; Sam for coming on as crew quite late in the day, and for being so amazingly generous and positive throughout; and Jamie and Neil for offering to come on as crew in the earlier weeks and juggling their schedules accordingly.
All of the people involved in running the training camps I’ve been lucky enough to attend – everyone at Swimtrek, Sally, Charlie and the JLDSC, Ned Denison and the Sandy Cove mob.
All those who work tirelessly down on the beach in Dover – Freda, Barrie, Irene, Louise, Emma…. What can I say.
City of Coventry Masters Club….especially for the sprinting, even if I didn’t appreciate it at the time; 1485 Tri Club for putting up with me staying in until the very end of every sessions, even when everyone else had got out; Dan Earthquake and the SLCSC; Coventry Triathletes. Thanks for all the help with training.
Penny – my winter swim training partner.
The ESRC – for funding the research that has enabled me to travel around so much and meet so many interesting people during my training.
And finally…Peter – who has tolerated in good spirit my frequent absences; my appropriation of “our” campervan; the fact that most trips we’ve made together in the last two years have at some point involved him sitting in a kayak or a boat for hours; and my endless Channel talk. Plus, he was a complete hero on the day and I cannot imagine having done it without him there to support me.

Channel swim - Part II

2010-09-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

At around the 11-12 hour mark, I was still feeling okay, and I felt pretty confident that I had plenty of plodding left in me; Sam and Peter had reassured me that my stroke count was still hovering steadily between 57-62, as it had from the start. But the fatigue was also starting to bite, and I found my mind increasingly wandering into speculations about how much longer it would be. I started to really want to know where I was; in my mind, I thought of all the swim charts that I’d poured over, trying to imagine my position and how far I still had to go. I had always accepted the oft-repeated rule that you shouldn’t ask where you are or how much longer you have to go; after all, you’re rarely going to get the answer that you want in that moment, and if it takes longer than you’ve been told, that’s going to be pretty devastating. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the absolute, burning desire to know, and I had to fight the (undoubtedly misleading) conviction that knowing would somehow make everything better, easier, more manageable. I didn’t ask, but instead, I began to focus increasing amounts of attention on what was happening on the boat, searching for signs especially the interaction between Paul, Peter and Sam.

Around that time, Paul came out of the wheelhouse to talk to Peter and Sam. They were in earnest conversation for several minutes. At one point, they all pointed towards the French coast, talking animatedly; then, confusingly, they all turned to face the opposite direction, pointing again. In my over-interpreting, slightly paranoid mind, I thought they were saying “well France is over there, but she’s not going to make it, so we’re going to have to go back that way”. At 12 hours, I asked if there was anything that I needed to know, and Paul told me to just get on with swimming, so I did…but I was starting to worry, as there was obvious some concern on board, although I didn’t know what it was, or whether it was serious.

Then at 12.5 hours, Paul came out to tell me that I needed to start sprinting in order to push as far in as possible before the tide turned, in order to maximize my chances of hitting Cap Griz Nez (a rocky promontory that is the ideal end point for a swim), rather than getting swept past it – an outcome which could extend the swim by several hours. I was grateful for the information, but also quickly realized why the tantalizing promise of information (that it will somehow make what’s left to be done more manageable) is a trap for the unwary, because it just generates more questions – how long will I have to sprint for? How likely am I to hit the Cap? I told myself that the tide would turn soon, hence the urgency from Paul, so I should just knuckle down to the task of full effort swimming for now. I lifted my stroke rate, tried to lengthen my stroke and increase my pull; I even started kicking – a bit of a shock to my usually lazy legs. Everything started to hurt – my arms, shoulders, back and groin muscles were burning; I felt nauseous; my lungs felt ready to burst. Peter and Sam were amazing – they were rooted to the spot on deck, clapping and cheering, punctuated by the occasional spontaneous, gloriously non-sensical YMCA arm gestures from Sam – a welcome burst of light relief.

At the next feed, they left me no space for doubt or questions, and as I forced down the maxim, I was showered with encouragement – that my stroke looked great, that I was flying, that I looked really strong. These were, I suspect, very generous assessments of my situation, but I took heart from them and pressed on….Surely the tide would turn soon… But no…and 2.5 hours after the original instruction to sprint, there was no sign of a change of direction, or permission to let up. By this time, I was running almost on empty, and a new doubt started to rise – what if, after all this effort, we got swept up past the Cap, but I’d used up all my energy and couldn’t manage the last few hours. Part of me wanted to just pull back and accept the fate of not hitting the Cap in order to give myself the chance to recover a bit; I also knew that after pushing so hard for so long, sailing past the Cap was going to be pretty crushing, and I wondered how I would cope with that. I was feeling pretty miserable by then; everything hurt, I didn’t know what was happening, and it felt to me like the swim was hanging in the balance. I tried to just stay in the moment, and concentrate on swimming as strongly as I could possibly manage; I thought that if I wasn’t going to make it, I wanted to have given it everything.

I found out later that, anomalously, the tide just never turned and we never got pushed back up towards the Cap. Instead, I was forcing my way across the tide, into a strong headwind, and we were now aiming for the coast below Cap Griz Nez. Paul came out at the next feed and told me that I was progressing at 1 mile an hour across the tide, and that I would be on the beach in an hour if I really pushed hard; he said that the further in we got, the weaker the tide’s effect would be. I drank down what I now know was an industrial strength maxim, courtesy of Sam, who was now super-charging my drinks to give me the much-needed energy to push through. I asked if they really thought that I could do it….meaning, whether it was really possible, or whether this was just a last ditch hope. I was rewarded for this with a stern “talking to” from Paul (see the video for this). I heard Peter say that I could definitely do it, that I was going to make it. I was sure he would never have said that if he didn’t believe it, and this gave me the resolve to commit everything I had left and strike out for the beach. Sam yelled “The Hour of Power” (a reference to when he and some of the other swimmers would pick up the pace during the 6 hour beach swims in order to push through the difficult fifth hour – something he’d told me about before the swim). Everyone laughed, giving me a much-needed boost in mood and confidence.

By this time, the sun was starting to set, and I could see the cliffs of Cap Griz Nez when I breathed to the left, starting to glow red. When I stopped for a feed half an hour later, I could see the beach we were aiming for, and individual houses. This was the first time since the sprinting had begun that I realized that I was going to make it; I wanted to cry, with relief, with exhaustion…but there was no time for that yet. By the next feed, I was feeling extremely sick from the hard effort and asked how far it was…the only time I ever asked, knowing that I was very close, and hoping that I was close enough to be able to skip the feed and just swim in. Sam said it was a length of the harbor, so I declinee the feed and started the final stretch. I’d done so many harbor laps that I knew I could knock one of those out, no matter how exhausted I was. Soon, I saw Sam and Peter getting changed, and then the boat stopped while I kept on swimming. Peter and Sam soon appeared to one side of me – I couldn’t believe it was nearly over.

I soon began to see rocks in the clear water below me, and then my hands started hitting the stones. I pulled myself in over them, until I was in very shallow water. Unlike Jersey to France, when I got to walk triumphantly up a gentle sandy beach, the rocks were too uneven to walk over easily, and I had to crawl up on my hands and knees until I found a patch flat enough to get to my feet. (This makes for some very elegant video footage of the finish!). I hauled myself upright, and lurched for a big, flat rock that was clear of the waterline. I could hear Peter and Sam shouting and cheering; I stood on the rock and raised my hands in the air. I’d finished. Then everything started to spin and I had to lower myself onto the rock, head in hands, unable to quite believe that it was over, and I’d done it. I heard the boat’s horn blow. We’d made it.

We hugged and celebrated; we collected pebbles and took pictures. I was starting to shiver now, and longed to get back in the water where it felt warmer, so crawled back in and swam out towards the boat with Peter and Sam in the gentle evening sunlight. Standing on deck, I looked at the beach in amazement; I’d swum to France!

Channel swim - Part I

2010-09-12T05:52:00.001-07:00

The last 10 days have been insane - I swam the Channel, then flew to Australia, gave a seminar paper and a conference keynote, and attended two days of conference. The whole thing has been a complete whirlwind and I've got only the faintest grasp of what time of day it is, or what day it is, but I've had a great time....although it certainly would have been a bit easier if my swim hadn't been so close to the flight. But at least I got to do it before the trip...and it all came out good in the end.

But now that my work commitments have ended for a while, I've been able to take some time to start writing the experience up. There's a video too, but at the moment, I can't get it to go up on YouTube - I'll keep working on that. But for now.... here's Part I.

Channel swim – Part I
It was nearly 3am on Thursday 2 September, and I was standing on the rocking deck of Pace Arrow, under the watchful eye of pilot Paul Foreman and his crew, Jack, as well as my A-team crew of Peter and Sam. It was time to go. The shore was faintly illuminated by the lights of the several boats out that morning, but the water looked inky black. I did a quick last check to make sure I’d not forgotten anything that I might regret later – suncream, Vaseline, a few dobs of Channel grease on some particularly nasty chafing spots, clear goggles, head and tail lights on. I perched on the edge of the boat for a brief moment, and jumped in. It didn’t feel at all cold, and I swam in to the shore and hobbled out onto the stones, took a deep breath and raised my arm to signal that I was ready. I heard a shout to start, strode in, and dived forwards, taking several long strokes before sighting forwards, looking for the boat. And here came problem number one…which boat? There were two quite close together in front of me, and I wasn’t sure which was mine! I started to go for the one on my left, but then heard some shouting and headed for the other one. As I approached, I had to ask if it was the right boat! Not quite the calm, dignified start I’d been hoping for!

But once we’d established that I was actually swimming alongside my boat, things got better, and we quickly settled into a steady rhythm. I found it much easier to keep a steady distance from the boat than I had during the relay the year before, even though it was probably just as choppy – mostly because Paul has a spotlight pointing into the water, rather than directly at the swimmer, which makes it easier to maintain a sense of perspective. Mentally, though, I was bouncing all over the place for the first hour. I couldn’t stop thinking about how long it might take, whether I would make it, what the conditions would be like, whether the feeds etc would go okay, whether Peter and Sam would get seasick, or whether I would… on and on. I’m always very unsettled during the first bit of any swim, so just tried to calm down and try to find a quieter head space, waiting for it to pass. Peter and Sam were both wearing glow sticks on lanyards round their necks, and it was lovely to see the two vertical strips when I breathed; very reassuring. We were passed to our left by another boat, which dazzled me with its lights, and then left me sitting in a fog of its diesel fumes for a while, which I didn’t appreciate, but it soon passed.

After an hour, Paul flashed a spotlight at the back of the boat to signal feed time, and I swam in to grab my bottle, which I had tied rope wound around a spool from a gardening store (thanks for the tip, Cliff). It all worked perfectly, and to words of encouragement from Peter and Sam, I guzzled down my drink, threw the bottle to one side and paddled off as they reeled it back it. Clockwork – and one less thing to feel anxious about now we’d all seen how that was going to work.

Sometime during the second hour, I noticed that there was only one glow stick at the side of the boat, but couldn’t tell who it was (I should have bought different coloured ones). I started to worry that either Sam or Peter had got really sea sick, and I felt a bit guilty for inflicting this on them. During that hour, the sun started to come up, and I realized that it was Peter who was standing on deck, but no sign of Sam. On the other side of the boat, I could see a solid shape with a flapping jacket and two legs coming down from it; it looked like someone leaning over the railing to be sick. And the shape didn’t move from its spot. Poor Sam, I thought – he’s so ill that he can’t move (I’m like this when I’m very sea sick… talk about projecting). So then I felt really guilty…and also started to feel quite sick myself – I’m very suggestible where seasickness is concerned. However, about an hour later, Sam suddenly appeared, throwing his arms in the air in a gesture of triumph and cheering. I looked again at what I had thought was Sam, and it was still there – in what was now the full light of day, I could see that it was a life buoy in a cover, supported by a frame….Sam had just been catching up on some much-needed sleep. Time for me to stop flapping about everything and calm down.

By hour three, all was well. I felt really strong and increasingly confident; I enjoyed a beautiful sunrise. And here I was – swimming the Channel. How exciting is that – really the first time that day that I’d started to enjoy the crazy novelty of what I was doing. This was starting to be fun.

Hours three to six were uneventful. The feeds shifted to half hourly, and were slipping down with no problems. I was having the occasional bit of banana or a couple of jelly babies, but I didn’t feel much like food and generally stuck with the maxim. At hour six, I switched goggles from my clear ones, which I don’t really like, to my super-comfortable, utterly leak-proof mirrored Blue Seventy goggles. In my mind, I put the previous six hours behind me, and started afresh – but with none of the anxiety that I’d had at the start. I enjoyed this period of the swim enormously. I felt really good, and was having no physical problems in terms of injury or trouble keeping the feeds down. Peter and Sam had become impressively slick with the feeds, holding the bottle and spool up in the air, the rope taut between them, as a signal that it was feed time; both of them doing it if they also had a cup with a snack in it – it made me laugh every time. As I fed, they would call out the names of people who had sent text messages, and it was a huge boost to know that people were following me and encouraging me to keep going. As I was swimming, I could see them tucking into the food from their supplies, and chatting and laughing…and always keeping an eye on me. In all this time, I never really had a serious dip, or a painful patch; I was quite happy not knowing where I was and just trusting that we were inching towards where we needed to be. When we passed 9 hours, I noted that this was the longest time I had swum this year (passing my Jersey – France time), and was pleased that I still felt pretty good…although I was starting to notice some general aches and pains and asked for some ibuprofen at my 10 hour feed, just dampen that down. By my 11 hour feed, I was getting tired, but was excited that this was now my longest swim ever and I still felt strong and focused.

It felt like it was all going to plan….

I made it!!

2010-09-04T09:41:00.000-07:00

After all that waiting, I finally got the chance to swim, and made it across in a time of 16 hours and 9 minutes.

I'm going to write it up properly over the next couple of weeks, but have been in a bit of a befuddled daze since finishing and need a bit of time to digest it all first. Plus, I'm about to fly off to Sydney, and have a packed few days immediately after I arrive, so need to focus on that for now. But for now, I will just say that it was an extraordinary, brutal, intoxicating, frustrating, exciting, painful, exhilerating, exhausting day that I will never forget.

Thank you so much for all the e-mails, texts and tweets of support - it made a huge difference. And apologies to all those who we inadvertently kept in suspense by not sending the final tweet to say we'd made it!

Much more later...and in the mean time, I'm going to get back to the pressing business of eating and sleeping a lot.

The swim is on!

2010-09-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

Just got the call - the swim is on for tomorrow morning. We're meeting my pilot, Paul Foreman, at 2am!! So exciting....and terrifying. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself, but it's time to gather up my boxes and head south.

Hopefully, Peter will be tweeting from the boat, which you can follow either on the blog or on Twitter.

I don't have an individual tracker, but you can track the boat here - scroll down and select "Dover" in the dropdown box on the left hand side, then select the boat "Pace Arrow". Don't worry if it's not always there - it doesn't mean we've sunk. If you check later, hopefully, we'll have reappeared.

More news as and when.... but in the meantime, all positive thoughts gratefully received.

Update...and a sliver of hope...

2010-08-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

As planned, I went down to Dover at the weekend to train. I did 4 hours on Saturday, then 3 on Sunday. I have to say that my heart wasn't really in it, but that doesn't really matter, as long as it gets done. But the good news is that by Sunday, there was a mood of cautious optimism sweeping the beach as we shared rumours of a high pressure front moving in bringing with it some deliciously swimmable weather. Of course, it remains to be seen if that happens, and how long it stays, but at the moment, it seems like there is every expectation that swimming will start up again tomorrow. I don't know where this will leave me yet in terms of whether I'll get a chance to swim before I go to Oz, but at least it's a positive start...and if nothing else, I'll get to see many of my swimming friends make their crossings, which will be a huge morale boost for me.

Watch this space - I'll post more news when I have it.

Hilarious video...

2010-08-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Fantastic (in a tragic sort of way) video posted by Australian swimmer, Mark Scanlon, who I met during the first week of waiting to swim. Sums it up better than words ever could...

A special kind of torture...

2010-08-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to see that this Channel swimming business is less a sport than an exquisite form of torture. The slight chance that I would get to swim on Sunday / Monday is no longer a possibility, thanks to the continuing wind, rain and general rubbishness of the weather. However, it does seem like the wind is starting to drop, and according to my pilot, Paul Foreman, they are hoping to start getting some swims out on Tuesday / Wednesday...although of course, we've all thought this before, only for more rubbish weather to sweep in...but it's nice to have something positive to keep our collective, frustrated sights on. Anyway, now that a neap and spring tide have been and (almost) gone, I've slipped back down the queue, but Paul is speculating that he might be able to get me away Thursday - Saturday...weather permitting, of course. Saturday is the absolute last day I can do it before my Australia trip, and after that, I'm back to focussing on late Sept.

I'm not very good at this....,the waiting. I like to plan and prepare; I like certainty and control. And I'm not enjoying this one little bit, but am working hard to hold my nerve and not to let too much doubt creep in. After almost three weeks of only swimming 1-2 hours a day, I feel quite unfit and ill-prepared for a Channel swim, but hopefully, there's enough in there still to get me across. And in the mean time, we all wait and think calm, windless thoughts...