After last weekends vomiting experience I was understandably anxious about getting back into the sea. The mystery bug seemed to have finally left me, but as an extra precaution I took some sea sickness tablets just in case this had been the cause of my misfortune. At 6:30am Saturday morning I felt pretty much ready to take on Dover Harbour again.
After picking up Angela, my latest London based Channel swimming chum, we set off for the beautiful paradise on Earth that is Dover. The weather was looking nice, I had even had to bring some suncream due to my tendency to burn as soon as the sun pops out from behind a cloud. I blame my partial gingerness, I’m only a mild case but do sometimes display obvious symptoms.
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| Paradise on Earth |
Upon arrival at the Harbour everything looked lovely, the water was far from flat but was a whole lot better than I had seen it for a while. The sun was shining down which is a massive psychological boost and everybody on the beach looked reasonably happy, as happy as you can be before jumping into 13c water for a few hours.
I saw Freda who asked how I was feeling, I said I was feeling fine and was immediately given 4 hours. Irene gave me a number, we had the customary brief and we were off. Minutes earlier I was loving life, now I was face down in cold, brown water wishing my life away.
The hardest bit by far on the Dover swims is the first 2 hours, after this you are allowed to feed every hour which breaks it up and makes the time pass by so much quicker. I was still in the first 2 hours though. I was swimming well and not feeling any symptoms or sickly at all. I just kept thinking that once I get to 2 hours then the swim is pretty much finished, the 3rd and 4th hour will fly by. I looked at my watch, I had been swimming 17 minutes.
That was the last time I looked at my watch until 1 hour 57 minutes, I had just completely zoned out and plodded along and suddenly it was feeding time, I was a good 10 minutes away from the feeding point so I turned and arrived for my Maxim at 2 hours 7 minutes. This made my next hour even easier, which in turn made the 4th hour easy. It had been an excellent swim and I felt good. 4 hours in 13c water was a decent effort this early in the season and I was strangely looking forward to Sunday.
Sunday, 0615, and I was up again for a trip to Dover. My enthusiasm had waned slightly since the previous day. The weather had also taken a massive turn for the worse. It was Angela’s turn to drive, well her boyfriend, who is training for a relay swim in July, Keith's turn. The drive down was uneventful apart from the constant despairing looks at the black clouds gathering in front of us.
We parked up and took a look at the sea, it was about as inviting as a marriage proposal from Heather Mills. There were a lot fewer people on the beach, all already shivering before they had even put a toe into the water. The atmosphere couldn’t be more different to the day before. We changed in silence. I got my number and got covered in Vaseline, this doesn’t seem to make too much difference as I have nearly chafed my entire neck off, but it has to be done. I was told to go for 4 hours again, or 5 if I was feeling good after 4. Angela got 5, she was understandably delighted. Once again we strode into the water to begin another swim.
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| Doesn't do justice to how unpleasant it really was |
I was swimming along ok, and had done a couple of lengths of the harbour when I suddenly became the biggest baby known to man. I was just turning at the harbour wall on the hour mark when I just stopped, started treading water and shivering like I had in Folkestone last year.
Suddenly I was swimming towards the beach, it was literally like an out-of-body experience, I felt like I was watching myself swim towards the shore. I could hear myself saying ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Turn around start swimming’ and some things that should never be put to type, needless to say I was very harsh on myself.
The next thing I knew I was standing in Dover’s public toilets in nothing but my speedos with my face pressed up against the wall shivering like a maniac. I then had to endure the walk back to the start line. It is only about 500metres, but when everybody is dressed up like it’s winter and you’re strolling along in a pair of speedos and a swim cap it feels a bit strange.
I was still shivering uncontrollably when I saw Freda to tell her of my weakness and shame in getting out. It was a low point. She said not to worry about it, get dressed and warmed up then get back in again. Getting in again was not at the forefront of my mind, but after having a talk with a couple of blokes on the beach I decided I was going to have to. One of these blokes was Kevin Murphy, the King of the Channel with 34 crossing to his name. ‘It’s just like falling off a bike’ he said ‘you have to get straight back on it’.
I went for a bit of a walk to warm myself up and basically tell myself to man-up. I am not trying to get any sympathy here I must be clear. There was no problem with me, I was just being a complete weak loser. Plenty of people were still swimming, a few of them having swum 6 hours on Saturday. I had no excuse and this was sinking in. I always thought the thing I would have an advantage in when attempting this goal would be my mental strength, I’m usually quite good at just carrying on no matter how hideous something has become, however I now seemed to be mentally incredibly weak.
45 minutes passed and the rain started falling down. I was standing looking at the statue of Captain Matthew Webb (The first man to swim the Channel) with rain running down my face, feeling very low. If I had been in a Disney film I would have no doubt performed a beautiful yet tragic and moving song. As I wasn’t in a Disney film, I didn’t sing a song. Instead I decided to get back in the water.
I walked down to my bag to get back into my faithful, but almost see-through speedos and told Freda I was getting back in. I walked past Kevin who told me it would not be anything like as bad as I was imagining it would be and he was right. The water didn’t feel anything like as cold as it had 45 minutes earlier and I jumped in and swam away as fast as I could.
I ended up doing another hour and 15 minutes, and felt so much better for it. I had rescued what was going to be a very depressing end to the weekend and now didn’t feel too bad about it.
Needless to say it will NOT happen again…
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