29/07/2011

No Guts... No Glory

I spent Tuesday 26th July on board Neil Streeter’s boat, Suva, as Hannah Noble attempted to become a Channel swimmer. I was to witness one of the bravest swims I have ever seen (not that I’ve seen a lot, but still…).

The first steps of an epic day
It all began at 0520, on Shakespeare Beach, Dover. The weather looked lovely and the sea looked calm. About 40 minutes into the swim, this all changed. I wouldn’t say the sea was rough but it was incredibly wavy, and the Sun just would not come out from behind the clouds, making it pretty cold. The major downer was the wind.

The first 4 hours passed by pretty quickly, and before I knew it I was in alongside Hannah for an hours swim. This is the longest you are allowed to swim with a Channel soloist, before you have to get out for a break. It is not to pace make, just to offer some company as it can get pretty lonely on marathon swims, even with people staring at you constantly from the boat. The hour passed by very quickly (for me), and once again I was on the boat and sorting out the feed.

Hannah was still swimming along at the same pace, keeping up a regular stroke rate and looking quite comfortable. She was chirpy at the feeds and everything looked rosy, by 7 hours she was nearing the separation zone in the centre of the Channel. We started making optimistic guesses of finishing times, we all thought around 14-15 hours, which seemed a reasonable assumption.

Keeping good form
When I got in again at the 9 hour point, it wasn’t quite such a happy experience. Hannah was starting to feel it. Her pace had dropped significantly but she was still plodding along and looking reasonably comfortable under water. She was maintaining her technique, despite shoulder problems later revealed. By the end of this hour she was entering the North West shipping zone, or French waters, but everything was about to take a turn for the worse.

When we reached 4 nautical miles from the French coast we stopped. Literally stopped still, along with 3 other boats within our vicinity. Nobody was making any ground at all. Hannah was to cover around 250 metres an hour, for the next 3 hours. It was horrific to watch. At each feed I was telling her what good progress we were making towards the coast, but at one point we actually moved slightly further away. I got in again for another hour at the 14 hour point and felt the conditions for myself. It was definitely not a case of Hannah slowing, it was a case of the wind deciding nobody was going any further.

Our 3 hour sticking point
After I got back out, I again asked Neil how far we had to go, and was told we still had 3.5 nautical miles. We were barely moving, and Hannah’s mood was deteriorating rapidly. She was still going though, her arms were just going through the motions almost automatically, despite the fact that she was obviously in pain and almost crying. I was so impressed and humbled by the whole experience. I knew she was gutsy but this really was incredible.

At the 16 hour feed I was sure it was soon going to be over, it looked like we were just never going to get moving again, it was heart breaking. Her Dad then suggested she move to the other side of the boat to get a bit of protection from the wind, and this turned out to be a master stroke. Although she still wasn’t exactly flying towards France she was moving in the right direction once again.

The coast of France looks deceptively close for an incredibly long time, but it never seems to get any nearer. It appears to stay the exact same distance away forever, until it is suddenly upon you. We never got to experience the moment where it was suddenly upon us, as it was pitch black, but the orange glow from the shore was gradually becoming separate lights, and we could see cars driving up and down just in front of us.

The final mile
At the 17½ hour feed I was told she had under a mile to go. This was an excellent thing to hear as I was slowly but surely beginning to accept defeat, Hannah never reached this stage. The first time she complained or said she couldn’t do it was after 16 hours, and this blip lasted for about 20 seconds until she was off again – it was amazing.

After I delivered the 18 hour feed I was told to get changed and get ready to swim into shore with Hannah. This was an amazing moment for me, I can’t imagine what the feeling was like for her when she was told she had 300metres to push! I jumped in, to surprisingly warm water, and swam alongside. I told her to follow the torchlight. I wasn’t allowed to go in front so just breast stroked/front crawled next to her until she uttered the immortal word ‘sand’.

After 18 hours and 24 minutes, she had set foot in France.

We walked the last 15 metres or so until she was clear of the water, and that was that. Hannah Noble was a Channel swimmer, and one of the most deserved ones there can possibly be.

A well earned 5 second lay down
I have now been on 2 Channel crossings, which have been massively inspirational yet completely different. Cameron Spittle’s crossing last year was an exhibition of pure swimming ability, coolness and just a text book display. Hannah's was an exhibition of absolute grit and determination.

It was a privilege to be involved with both, and it will provide much inspiration for my attempt in around 3 weeks. There are no excuses – I MUST GET ACROSS… 


….one more thing, we had the added bonus of getting stopped and boarded by customs as we were leaving France. We were then taken to Boulogne and searched for 3 hours (apparently, I was asleep for the whole thing). If you’re going on a Channel swim always remember your passport. Luckily we all had, otherwise I think we were looking at a good few years hard labour.


24/07/2011

The Wall

This week, for the first time, I have broken the 50km barrier. Nearly 32 miles of swimming. It has been a tough time, but actually hasn’t been as hideous as I would have expected it to be. 34km have been in the pool, and nearly 17km at Dover. I also completed 7 hours in the sea, so it has been a week of firsts.

The pool swimming has involved a lot of sprinting and some long aerobic warm-ups. I have managed to get a new P.B. in pretty much every distance I have attempted, still not amazing times but not too shabby. Better than the celebrities that are attempting to cross the Irish sea in September anyway, in ‘the SWIM’

My thoughts on this are very mixed, it’s obviously good that they are trying to raise so much money for Cancer research, but the way they have gone about it has been almost farcical. Jenny Frost for example is currently learning to do front crawl in Ibiza, and Ronan Keating has confessed to hating swimming. This is an excellent attitude which I’m sure will not encourage anybody else into the sport. They are getting some excellent swimmers involved, who I'm guessing are going to end up doing the majority of the work.

Also don't fool yourself into thinking that this is a hard challenge, if it were a hard challenge then people would be required to swim far further than the 3km's they are asking for in the trials. Good luck to everyone who attempts it, but there are far greater challenges out there that deserve far more recognition. When I see the amount of graft people put in every weekend at Dover and struggle to raise sponsorship, it's frustrating to me how willing people are to sponsor 'celebrities'.

Anyway who cares about celebrities? The whole celebrity culture is ridiculous, and it’s nobody’s fault but our own. Why do we want to read about these people’s lives all the time? Who cares? On the same day that many innocent people were murdered in Norway, Amy Winehouse is top news, an average singer with a drug habit. This is surely not right, but this is the world in which we currently live. This is nothing against her, although I don't think she should be revered as a great, but it really needs to be put into perspective.

Again who cares about celebrities? let’s talk about swimming. That’s far more interesting I’m sure...

Perfect conditions (minus the Sun). What a difference a week makes
Simon, Angela and myself arrived at Dover harbour early this week, which was an absolute pleasure. We had time to get everything sorted, and be truly ready to get into the sea. The weather was not too bad and the water was delightfully calm. The sun was occasionally poking through the clouds, but only very occasionally. After my beast in the pool this week I knew I still had a big swim ahead of me. I thought it may be 8 hours but Freda instead prescribed me 7. To be fair I don’t think there’s that much difference between the two (until I do an 8 hour next week).

Simon suggested we swim together and I accepted, quite reluctantly as I don’t mind swimming on my own, but it turned out to be the right decision. We set off at a very decent pace and managed to keep it up for the majority of the swim – Simon kept it up for the whole of the swim. I faded badly in the last 90 minutes, again hunger struck me massively.

The first 2 hours of the swim were an absolute pleasure, although I feel the cold a lot more when there is no sun shining on me. This makes such a difference it's unreal. When the sun is out I am happy and loving life, but as soon as it drifts behind a cloud I slowly become a mess. Fingers crossed for a sunny day for me in August.

Towards the end of these 2 hours we had managed to swim far too far out to sea and were near the end of the harbour wall, so we decided to swim back towards the shore. This was when I hit the wall, not the metaphorical wall, the actual wall. I smashed my hand against the corrugated iron after drifting to the left and managed to cut my wrist open. This was a very unfortunate thing to do so early in a 7 hour swim.

My horrific injury. Many men fainted upon seeing this
When we arrived for our first scheduled feed I had quite a lot of blood seeping out of my hand, it looked pretty cool to be fair. The bleeding soon stopped when I started swimming again, the cold water made sure of that. Every time I came into feed from that point onwards though, all the blood came back to the surface and it looked worse and worse. There’s nothing better than a wound that doesn’t hurt that much but looks bad, it’s very good for street cred.

At the 5 hour point I really wanted to get out of the water, I was starving. The milky ways are just not satisfying my hunger. From now on I will be taking down some sandwiches to eat when I come to shore, I have been told to do this already but constantly forget (sorry Cameron). The good news is that, hunger aside, I had no real problems. The bad news is the hunger was unbelievable and it really, really affected me.

I only covered around 3km in the last 2 hours, which was a shame as me and Simon were going really well for 5 hours. I was so weak and feeble and constantly thinking about eating. Nutrition is so important it cannot be emphasised enough. Especially for me, I’m a big fan of eating even if I’m not doing anything.

By the end of the swim I was very happy to be getting out of the water, but I was happier to have stayed in for the whole time. There were many times towards the end where I was very tempted to get out and eat everything in sight.

There are just 26 days to go now until my Channel window opens. I’m guessing I'll have one more major weekend in Dover with big back to back sessions, followed by a little taper. Then I will have the main event. 

It’s been a hard year so far in the Channel with a fair few excellent swimmers being pulled out of the water. I won’t be one of them… (please!)


20/07/2011

FAME!

I have finally achieved worldwide fame. It was surely a matter of time, but it has finally happened. I have appeared in H2Open water magazine. This is an excellent magazine if you’re into your open water swimming and, at present, is the only such publication in the world!

I wouldn’t recommend it if you have no interest in swimming though.

It's an excellent little piece in the charity section towards the back of the mag (page 66). There's also a nice little link to my sponsorship page, which is handy if you fancy sponsoring me?? 

At this point I would like to say a massive thanks to all of the people who have sponsored me so far, and a big thank you to Clare who baked a load of cup cakes to raise some funds at her work place. I'm very nearly at £3,000 now which is excellent, but I'd love to get more. 

There's just 30 days now until my window opens, I'm hoping the weather will sort itself out between now and then. Today was the first day swimmers have had the opportunity to make the crossing for a fair while, due to horrendous rain and wind. 

Good luck to the 'Just Swim It' relay team who will set off at 0230 tomorrow morning!...




The 'Just Swim It' team made it across! In 16 hours 34 minutes of hard work. It wasn't an easy day today with a few soloists getting pulled out. It's no joke this Channel swimming malarkey.

Well done Ange, Keith, Cassie, Barnaby, Adam and Camilla - Congratulations!

19/07/2011

For Those in Peril on the Sea

The 11 hours of sea swimming I envisaged at the weekend quickly turned into just 3. The weather took care of Saturday and the Dover Rowing Regatta took care of Sunday (for me).

The drive down to Dover on Saturday was an interesting one, for I fear the Saxo may have finally taken its last trip to the beach. Every time I turn a corner now it sounds like it is going to explode, it’s fine in a straight line but unfortunately most journeys nowadays involve changing direction at some point. The other interesting thing about the drive was the fact that we (myself and Simon) literally couldn’t see 20 metres in front of us. The fog was incredibly thick, and coupled with the traffic travelling down for the Golf Open at Sandwich, we were inevitably late.

We arrived at around 0915, those who had arrived on time were only just making their way into the water. To say the sea didn’t look inviting would be kind – it looked extremely angry. We quickly got greased up and walked towards the water, a couple of Sunday Times photographers were taking photo’s of everybody as they were walking into the sea, so I may be in the Sunday Supplement at some point. I won’t be looking particularly good, as I was waist deep in a very upset sea and desperate for the toilet.

ChloĆ« McCardel was also on the beach, ready to attempt a 3 way swim (England to France to England to France - mental) in the next week or so. This lady is already a bit of a legend so if she completes her swim, which I’m sure if the weather allows she will, I will be fully in awe of her. The best bit was, as we were walking into the sea, she was running back to her car with her crew to get out of the rain. It’s always a nice sight to see such an accomplished swimmer run away from the water. To be fair she has already completed a 6 hour swim in the Harbour this week, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have got any benefit from getting into the whirlpool in front of us.

Back to the swim, Freda said we only had to do 4 hours, which was very unexpected. I didn’t think we would be going for the whole 7 or 8 hours that I had originally predicted due to the weather, but I didn’t think we’d be doing as few as 4 hours. I didn’t complain though and dived in and swam away. This was an incredible swim.

The waves usually just about reach the wall, not on Saturday - Photo's never do this justice

For the first 40 minutes or so I stayed with Simon, but my right shoulder was not enjoying the waves at all, and I started really slowing down. Simon was a machine and got faster if anything, so I let him go on without me. That was nice of me wasn’t it? I had no real choice, as I couldn’t stay with him. The water was not in the least bit cold though, so that’s a major worry completely gone at the moment. I still shivered at feeds as is my way, but nothing like I used to.

As I came in for the 2 hour feed Kevin Murphy said to me “This is better isn’t it?” I said “No, it’s hideous”. He then said “The water is yes, but you’re hardly shivering at all”, he was right (as always). In fact I felt much warmer than I ever had at a feed. So off I swam for another hour through the rain and the waves.

I was barely covering any ground at all on this swim. I measured it on google earth when I got home, and in the 3 hours I only covered 6,100m(ish). This is very poor distance wise, but I’m not too displeased as the conditions really were horrific. At one point I was swimming on the side of a wave and had to reach about a foot below me to put my hand into the water, the other hand was entering the water about a foot above me. This was most definitely not the sort of swim where you effortlessly glide along. It was strangely fun though.

At the 3 hour feed Freda had decided enough was enough and we were told to leave the water. I wasn’t amazingly upset by this, as it was getting a bit silly, plus my shoulders were not having the nicest time. A few swimmers were still flying along, but these swimmers are robots, incredible water borne robots.

As we got changed I spoke to my friend who was on Si’s boat on his Channel attempt last week. Si is not too down at all about his swim, as he knows he put in everything he had. This is an excellent and mature approach, don’t expect the same from me, I will be a complete baby if the worst should happen. It won’t.

Just as I finished getting dressed somebody mentioned they were going to McDonalds, suddenly this was all I could think about. On the way home Simon and myself visited the golden arches, and between us bought about £30’s worth of rubbish. It was excellent. I feel I must mention at this point that Si and Simon are different people, just in case none of this makes sense.

The Sunday session was still on but it took place at 5 O’Clock in the morning, due to the Regatta starting at 9. I did genuinely have every intention of getting up at 3am and making the trip, but I slept heavier than I ever have before and no alarm in the world would have awoken me. I also think the car would have failed to get me to Dover anyway, so sleeping in was probably a blessing in disguise. In the end I woke up at 6 minutes past 9, 6 minutes after the swim had finished.

A lot of people’s swims are coming up in the next couple of weeks, including Hannah from my Gozo trip. I will be her support swimmer so am looking forward to that, she will do very well as she has got so much guts it’s unbelievable. Karen Throsby (again from Gozo) has flown over to California to have a crack at the Catalina Channel, so good luck to her as well.

I only have 4 or 5 weekends left training at Dover before the big swim, just typing that makes me nervous. We really are entering the business end of it all now, which is good and bad. Good because I finally have the chance to put all my work to good use, and bad because after it’s all over I will have nothing to focus on. I’ll have to plan some more swims, after having a massive sleep…

15/07/2011

I'm so Tired, my Mind is on the Blink...

This week fatigue has caught up with me. It hasn’t just caught up with me, it has overtaken me in a massive way. Fatigue is in a Sebastian Vettel driven Red Bull Formula One car, and I am in my sellotaped up Citroen Saxo. I have swum 26km in the pool so far which has actually been fine, but when I return home I literally cannot stand up. I have been slurring my words and wobbling around the house like a drunk, it’s been very weird.

Every morning this week I have struggled to get up. It has taken me about 15 minutes to prise myself off of my bed, and a further 5 minutes to remove the pillow that has stuck solidly to my face with dribble. When I arrive at the pool I feel fine, after a few lengths. I worry about over training and I also worry about not training enough, it’s a horrible conundrum that I am yet to solve.

On Wednesday the decision to cut training short was taken out of my hands when I had to leave the pool for not being a woman. Now I am pretty sure when the Women’s rights movement was in full swing they wouldn’t have wished for everything to be equal, but still have time on their own in the pool. It does seem odd that on 2 days a week, I am potentially not allowed to finish my session because of my sex and age.

I know I have touched upon this subject before but it is annoying, why are there no men’s under 50’s hours? I’ll tell you why, because it would be sexist. The best solution, crazy as it may sound, is to let everybody swim all the time. I'm sure this would never work though.

I had this discussion with a friend recently who disagreed with me, saying that: “if women are embarrassed about swimming in front of people then let them have their hour” fair enough, but what happens when a bloke is embarrassed? There are plenty of blokes in the pool who should be embarrassed. The first time I squeezed into a pair of speedos I would have been pleased to see an empty pool, but no, I had to crack on.

I just feel that you shouldn’t pick and choose when you want to be equal, and when you want special treatment. I'm not saying that this is what has happened, as ironically of the people I have spoken to about this, the women have agreed and the men disagreed.

This subject of course wouldn’t bother me quite so much if I wasn’t training for such an epic swim, but I am, so every second in the pool is viewed as crucial. It’s incredibly frustrating to miss out on possibly essential training purely because of my genetic make up.

In other news the school holiday’s will shortly be upon us, this means the pool will once again become a battleground. Children will attempt to kill me at every turn, their parents will tell me how adorable they are, I will disagree but nod and smile. Please let me swim families, I’ll be very grateful.

Anyway I have 5 more weeks to push and am slowly becoming nervous, so things are bothering me a lot more. I’m also knackered so this is probably playing a part. Luckily I only have around 11 hours of sea swimming this weekend so that should be nice and easy…
                                                                                                  

12/07/2011

One Tough Bastard

Herculean effort

This is just a quick post to say commiserations to my friend Si, who was pulled out of the water on his Channel swim after a gruelling 15 hours and 12 minutes of hard graft. This is still a massive effort and he should be very proud. I know he'll be down on himself right now, as I would, but when it sinks in I hope he realises what he has achieved anyway.

Well done mate, good effort.

11/07/2011

Woe... I'm Going to Ibiza

It’s been a few days since my last post and I feel I should apologise to the loyal fan(s) of Texswims for my lack of blogging… sorry Mum.

The reason for my absence is due to the fact that I have been to San Antonio, Ibiza, on a stag do. Not the ideal preparation for a Channel swim you might think, but a stag do that I wanted to attend nevertheless. This island is not the sort of destination I would advise you to visit if you are anything like myself. I hate club music, clubs and clubbers, specifically drunk ‘Brits abroad’. Nothing about this trip changed this view, in fact it massively cemented it. Despite this slight disadvantage I still had an excellent time, due to fantastic company and terrible jokes.

I managed to get to Ibiza despite thinking I was departing on a different day, and having no idea what time the outbound or return flight was. I had been informed by the best man with plenty of time to spare, but had chosen not to write it down anywhere and instead rely on memory. This is a strategy I wouldn’t recommend when flying. I am usually quite good when it comes to being organised for things like this, however this time I didn’t appear to have a clue and was packed and ready to go 2 days early.

Every thought I have in my head revolves around swimming, so I don’t appear to be able to take in any other information. This could have actually been a good reason to get away for a couple of days, just to get myself refocused and ready to make the final push.

How my wrist looked on Thursday, worrying
The break also turned out to be reasonably good timing, as injury seems to have taken its toll on me. My right wrist and forearm have been playing up recently, forcing me to cut short a pool session for the first time last Thursday. It’s probably just a strain, but it is not particularly welcome at the moment as I am starting to move onto my longer swim sessions, and want to feel as comfortable as is possible. I have experienced a similar pain before as I used to play a lot of guitar (hero) and felt something along the same lines then.

When embarking on this Channel challenge I knew I would feel a lot of aches and pains, however they have not been where they were expected to be at all. I always assumed that my shoulders would be the biggest problem area during my training, but they have never even felt remotely tired. They have been fatigued obviously, but never painful. The biggest problems I have had have been completely unexpected.

Tom demonstrating classic swimmers tongue in Gozo
I came back from my Swimtrek excursion feeling fine apart from my tongue, which had swollen to about double it’s original size. I couldn’t eat or swallow anything and struggled to shut my mouth at all. This was never a worry for me beforehand as I had never even heard of the issue, but it is just another example of all the factors involved in sea swimming.

The only other real pain I have experienced was my core muscles after the Lake Windermere swim, I have genuinely never known pain like it. To be fair I was fine, as long as I didn’t breath or move. There are so many little things that you don’t really account for in swimming, until it happens to you. This is one of the reasons I think it is such a challenge compared to all the other endurance challenges there are out there. You can aim off in a lot of sports and make pretty educated guesses what is going to be hurting you during your event, swimming seems to be different all the time.

I will be back in the pool tomorrow morning to hopefully get around 6km done, ideally without any more pain in my wrist than is absolutely necessary. Then I foresee a big weekend in Dover, possibly involving a 7 hour swim or two. I only have around 5 weekends left now before my Channel attempt. I cannot believe how fast the time is passing…

04/07/2011

Good Weekend

Dover looking good in the sun

This weekend something amazing happened in Dover Harbour, and I don’t mean the annual Dover Regatta. This was something far more incredible… for the first time the sun was out! This made the weekend far more enjoyable and, psychologically, far easier.

Saturday morning, and the now familiar sound of a 0545 weekend alarm woke me up. This time it didn’t bother me that much at all, as I knew I only had to do a 3 hour swim. The reason for this being we had to be out of the water at 12 o’clock due to a display by the Coast Guard, and a 3 hour swim no longer seemed like a challenge at all. It's made even easier by the fact that we don’t feed until the 2 hour point, leaving us with only one feed. This might not seem to be a factor in making it easier, but it helps to know that once you have eaten, the swim is basically over.

Successful feed
The drive down was uneventful, despite being in a car held together by parcel tape, and we (myself and Angela) actually arrived early. It was a nice change not to have to run directly into the water. I actually had some time to spare to get ready and have a bit of a pre-swim chat. I received words of congratulations for my Windermere swim from several people. It was nice how everybody bothered to find out how I was doing and were genuinely happy for me, the swimming community are some of the nicest people I have had the pleasure to meet.

Lucky pants
I spoke to one of my swimtrek buddies whose Channel window opens in 4 days, so he was on his last Dover session. He has trained remarkably hard and I will have my fingers crossed for him next week. Not that he’ll need it, he is incredibly tough mentally and a very decent swimmer. It will be nice to see the first of our group complete the swim. At the same time it will be nerve racking to start ticking the names off.

Anyway the Saturday swim was not a problem. I covered just under 6km in the first 2 hours, and then shamefully took it quite easy in the third hour. I even stopped for a quick 'tread water chat' and some jelly beans with half an hour to go. Once the 3 hours were up I swam to the start point as fresh as a daisy, knowing that Sunday wouldn’t be so easy.

The hardest part of the day turned out to be trying to navigate Angela back to the car past the hordes of puppies that were visiting the beach for the Regatta. Eventually after several stops and molestations, we managed to get to the car and the day was done.

End of the 6 hour swim
I woke up before my alarm on Sunday, it seemed I was actually quite excited about going swimming. The sun was out and everything looked perfect. I had had a marvellous Saturday night watching David Haye get absolutely destroyed in the boxing, which will hopefully shut him up.  This is doubtful however as he wasn’t particularly graceful in defeat, blaming it on a stubbed toe. I personally completed the ‘P’ company 10 miler with a broken metatarsal as well as an 8 mile warm up run the day before. I assure you I am not bigging myself up, as my foot didn’t hurt at all during the event due to adrenalin. I am merely mocking 'The Hayemaker' and his lame excuse for his loss. The chances are he broke his toe whilst diving to the floor over and over again during the fight.

Anyway back to Sunday… the sun was shining and I was almost looking forward to going to Dover. This is a very rare feeling for me, I always dread it. I knew it was going to be a long swim today, and I also knew the water still hadn’t warmed up at all. I saw Freda and was told I would be swimming for 6 hours, I was actually expecting 7, so strangely 6 hours seemed like a bonus.

After getting greased up I began the long walk to the water, it’s not actually a long distance but it takes a long time to cover the 20 metres or so. There’s the odd person who runs to the water and jumps in, but most of us normal people trudge down the pebbles at a snail's pace, a particularly slow, lazy snail. The tide was quite far out which made it even worse, as you could walk quite a long way out into the water before having to submerge. I promised to myself to jump in on 3 and I began to count, after completing the 3 count about 6 times, I managed to dive in and start the days swim.

The first 2 hours of the swim were fine, I didn’t have a single negative thought, and this managed to carry on for pretty much the entire day. Bizarrely I had the song ‘Maneater’ by Hall and Oates stuck in my head. I honestly cannot remember the last time I heard this song, but I heard the line ‘ooo-ooooh here she comes, watch out boy’s she’ll chew you up’ about 1,000 times over the course of the swim.

Post swim Jelly babies
As I returned to the shore for each feed I never even considered getting out, and I didn’t really shiver that much. I still shivered, as is my trademark, but nothing like I was accustomed to. Over the course of the 6 hours I managed to cover just under 10 miles. Although I hope to be a lot faster on the actual day, I was quite pleased with this. It’s very easy to swim slowly when doing lengths in the harbour.

At the end of the swim we got to watch some of the Regatta, including the ‘Pirate Bears’. These were absolutely massive dogs, Newfoundlands, who were demonstrating their ability to drag people and boats out of the water. It was pretty impressive.

Big dribbling dogs - they were incredible
All in all it was my most successful weekend in Dover. Next weekend I have a stag-do in Ibiza, the perfect training break, which will hopefully not undo all my work so far…