Channel Swim 23: Swimmers in the Ditch!

‘There’s swimmers in the ditch! Everyone start tracking!’

I was training in Dover on the 12th July when the cry rang out across the internet.

In browsers everywhere, tiny little boat icons were inching forward as the first 2020 swimmers started to cross, until they were touching France . Or, all too often, suddenly reversing course and heading back to Dover when a swimmer didn’t make it. I’ve introduced Jo to the tracking sites and even though she doesn’t know these people it’s still making her feel sick; I think she’s starting realise just how much of a bag of nerves she’s going to be when I go and may well be revising her casual plan to mooch around Dover castle.

Although everything had been lining up for a resumption of swims I was still not really expecting anything to happen in 2020, with so many potential stumbling blocks still to overcome.

I think a few of the early swimmers were equally surprised.

The success rate for that first couple of weeks was dismal as people tried to get over the break in training, both physical and mental, and scrambled to attempt swims with in many cases around a weeks notice.

That first weekend I watched a friend get within 300m of the French coastline after 19 hours of swimming, when apparently hallucinating and swimming repeatedly into the boat she had to be pulled out. Heartbreakingly, after a tenacious and gritty swim we quickly got reports that, with no memory of the end of the swim, she was asking her crew repeatedly if she’d got across. Sky high respect only climbed further when the next day she threw herself back into the sea for a decent shake down swim. I would have still been a puddle in my bed at this point.

Shortly after this my skipper reached out and offered me the swimmer 1 position on the September 6th-15th tide. Swimmer one is ideal as if the weather is good, I’ll be going straight away. I bit his hand off, and now I have to be at least as brave as Lucy was on her swim.

Ian helpfully chimed in with ‘Hey, that’s only 43 days away’.

The water is going to be about as warm as it could be, but I may well find myself swimming in the dark for a number of hours, something I wasn’t expecting in the original June slot.

Following on from last time, I completed both blocks of Dover training – two weeks of 21 hours of swimming each, and a total of 140k in July. I did a 7 hour swim back to back with a six hour swim and an 8 hour swim back to back with a five hour swim. Each day I got our thinking ‘Yeah, I can probably do another four hours if I need to’, which would be great if it wasn’t for the fact I might have to do a lot more than that. We had been given a joker to play if we wanted to skip or cut short a session, and I never felt close to using either of mine, so swam every minute of each session. It was brilliant to have a solid block of swimming in the harbour under my belt.

Slowly as the weeks have passed, the success rate has started to climb again, and Sarah, another friend who has been casually blasting past me all winter in the local lake got across in a phenomenally strong swim; it was scary watching her stroke rate drop as she got closer to France but finished strongly with a charge to the restaurant on the beach. I’d chatted to Peter on the beach, comparing speeds, a couple of days before he ground out a determined 22 hour and 40 minute crossing. Tying the swims to people that I know makes it very much more real, in both positive and negative ways.

• 

I’ve been leaving our caravan on a working farm during the week – rocking up and being able to get the kettle on in seconds has been brilliant, but the lovely farm family had warned me they were getting married this weekend, and the reception was in the barn 30 yards from the caravan. I was expecting some noise, but arriving onsite and discovering the caravan was more than 39 degrees meant I had to make an unexpected choice between ventilation and soundproofing. They made me hugely welcome, and I had a beer and a chat with some of the proper guests before retiring to the Dutch oven on wheels. I remember turning off the reading light as the disco launched the gently lullaby of ‘Firestarter’ by The Prodigy, and I know I was either unconscious before the song finished, or the entire wedding party were playing the most intense game of charades in history as I didn’t hear a sound until the following morning.

I am constantly in desperate need for sleep so as the harbour swimming has ramped up have been doing a lot less of the 6am river swims which I loved but were slowly killing me, if only as Jo will eventually hold a pillow over my face to try to muffle the snoring.

It also turns out the duck itch season is not mercifully short after all and I do not miss those bitey little arseholes when I’m swimming in salt water.

I’ve been trying to swim six hours back to back each weekend in the harbour, and just over a week ago had a terrible weekend where I just wanted to be anywhere else. I’d turned up thinking I’d done a bunch of six hour swims and it would therefore be easy. Two hours in, when it wasn’t easy, I’d given myself nowhere to go mentally. I spent the whole of the third hour planning my excuses to get out; when the four hour feed came up, I swam in, took the feed without saying a word and miserably swum off. It was such a massive win to get through the weekend and suffer – I’m going to have plenty of that sort of challenge on the day and I’ve got that win in my mental toolbox. DCT’s Emma just looked at me and said ‘When you have a rough day like that it’s because you are ready’

The flipside of that was a just week later, when I had the most amazing six hour swim – to put it in perspective, I usually cover around two and a third big laps in the first two hours, and this time I not only swam three, I maintained the pace pushing hard for the whole six hours. When I woke up stiff and sore (not in the usual way) on Sunday, and chose not to do a long swim, I was making the decision on a completely different basis. I still got out after a few hundred meters even though I’d loosened up completely, and as my shoulders started to ache again on the drive home I knew I’d made the right choice for the right reason.

Coach Hannah always stresses that ‘listening to your body’ is the most important thing you can do; after solid months of training I think I’m getting a lot better at knowing when it’s lying and when it’s really in trouble.

We’re close enough now I can’t afford to injure myself.

At the end of the day, the only way you can know you can swim the channel is by swimming the channel. I could train for another two years and I’m not sure I’d be any more ready.

I’ve got maybe a week and half of serious training then a couple of weeks to wind down a bit in readiness, then I’m off (Ian: ‘Hey, that’s only 25 days away!’).

If I’m honest, I want it to be tomorrow. I’m ready to give it the best shot I can.