14(ish) weeks to go...

Right, at the time of writing this blog (my first one ever so forgive me if it's boring or pointless, probably both) I have around 14 weeks to go until my attempted swim across the English Channel. I have come a reasonably long way already and am becoming more and more confident as each week passes, which is handy as when I signed up for the swim I struggled to complete 2 consecutive lengths of my local 33 metre pool. The Channel is the equivalent of around 1,000 lengths, with the added bonus of cold water, jelly fish, unpredictable weather and sea sickness.

This idea all started many years ago when I was in the Parachute Regiment and based in Dover, I decided then that I was going to swim to France and set about making it happen, by 'making it happen' I mean I did absolutely nothing apart from talk about it a couple of times, whilst drunk.

Just 10 years later I decided to learn to swim, I had to do this as I had already signed up to attempt the crossing.

The first thing I did was watch some videos on youtube and read some books, eventually I decided I should at some point get into a pool. That was a depressing experience. 1 length and I was in absolute tatters, and just over an hour later I had completed 40 lengths and was thinking I had possibly under-estimated the challenge ahead of me. I had, massively. I needed some coaching.

Again I looked through t'internet and found Total Immersion, a company that claimed to be able to improve your swim technique in just one weekend. It was a very easy task in my case as it was impossible to make my stroke any worse, so I signed up for the weekend to see what it was all about. It was excellent. By the end of the weekend I was by no means swimming like a pro, but definitely knew where I was going wrong and knew how to work on it. I then signed up to get some 1 on 1 lessons in Southend with Dawn and Gill at Tri'n'swimW.E.L.L. swimming in an endless pool full of cameras to get a complete stroke analysis. I was truely terrible at swimming, and looked nothing like I thought I looked like underwater, just shocking.

Ready for my 1st mile

Happy to have finished

Slowly but surely my technique improved and confidence started rising. I entered the Great London Swim in the River Thames and swam my first open water mile in 37 minutes, after initially swimming directly into a canoe. This was after about a month of swimming so I was just pleased to finish, but now realised I was incapable of swimming in a straight line, yet another thing I hadn't thought of. Dawn and Gill kept teaching me, and I kept practicing what I was told, and it was paying off. I entered more open water swims and finished them, still really slow times and in a wetsuit so nothing special, but my confidence was growing every time. I then entered a 10k swim, despite my furthest swim ever being 3km with the tide on a Pier to Pier swim.

Slightly nervous pre-swim

And they're off!

The 10km swim was surprisingly easy as it was down the River Dart, in Devon,  and had a massive current helping me along, plus again it was in a wetsuit so I could probably have just laid on the water and floated to the end. But again it was a confidence booster, as I did have to front crawl for a few hours despite the current assistance. I was again one of the last to finish, this was fully expected though so I wasn't that bothered and was beginning to think that speed didn't matter so long as I finished.

It was now the end of Open Water swimming in England so I had to get used to just swimming in the pool all winter. Just as I was accepting this I got an email from my Channel Pilot, Paul Foreman, asking me if I could assist an Aussie swimmer on a Channel Crossing, as he needed a crew and his swim was tomorrow. It was 10o'clock at night and I had to be in Dover for 3o'clock the next morning. I of course accepted.....