Channel Swim 24: The Swim

September 7/8th, 2020

So it’s been a while since the last post. I’ve been busy swimming, and needed to digest what had happened and what I’d achieved.

My swim slot was two weeks away; the training was done and I needed to make sure I was in the best condition I could be.

Coach Hannah had warned me not to overdo it while tapering, the period of rest before a big event.

‘I know what you’re like and it doesn’t matter how nuts you are going, DO NOT go for a long swim’.

Hannah always sees the best in people. In actual fact I had no problem at all restricting myself to a single short swim in the two weeks before the big night, and spent most of the time firmly not thinking about what was coming.

Physically I hadn’t been 100% – although it didn’t seem to be affecting my swimming I was struggling to lift my arms above my head. I’d decided the best way to avoid stressing myself out was to avoid the whole thing as much as possible. A family camping vacation with some of the best people in the world helped out significantly with that, and I quickly recovered full mobility and flexibility.

I was relaxed and as ready as I could be. The gulf between an eight hour training swim and a potentially 18 hour channel swim still nagged at me, screaming quietly away in the back of my brain, if that’s a thing, but there was nothing I could do about it. I’d come to the conclusion the only way to know if you could swim the channel was by swimming the channel.

With a quick turnaround, barely time to unload camping gear and do some washing, I found myself back in Dover, on a Saturday, with support crew trickling in and a 1 am meet in the marina on Sunday morning. We’d had the confirmation call at ten o’clock that morning, but I already knew.

I’d driven to Samphire Hoe (the beach the swimmers leave from) to arrange for out of hours parking for friends and family to see me off – I’d stopped, struck by the beautiful day and I knew we were going that evening.

I popped down to Dover Harbour to let DCT know I was going that night, and although focused on the swimmers in the water they found time to encourage me; I knew they’d be tracking me while running the Sunday sessions.

Soon it was time to head back to the campsite. I then tried to nap, but it proved impossible – a phone I couldn’t turn off in case of emergencies had been buzzing continuously as word spread and so many lovely people wanted to pass on wishes of luck and safe swimming. Lance (feeder) and Jo (wife and no 1 supporter) both arrived; Jo had surprised me by bringing Dom (cherished 13 year old) who we’d agreed couldn’t come as the Monday was his first day in a new year at school. Without my realising, they had arranged a complicated relay to get him home and to the school on the Monday morning without us, so he would at least be able to wave me off. I was glad to see everyone, but Jo and Dom especially – the last year had been a huge ask of them and they were just as invested as I was.

It felt like moments later we were eating supper, running one last time through the feeding process and equipment before retiring to get a few hours of solid sleep in.

A few more moments (actually hours) later, the 12:10am alarm went off and we leapt into action. I donned swim trunks, Jo applied sun cream to my back and I pulled on my Dryrobe, wandering over to meet Lance while telepathically beaming apologies to the other people in tents on the campsite. Whispering, and easing car doors shut, we rolled out for the short drive to the Marina.

Checking my phone in the car, I could see both Hannah’s had already arrived; now the team was in place, I completely relaxed. As we rolled into the marina car park and left the car, elbows were bashed in post-covid greeting. Everyone seemed happy and excited, but determined and focused. As we finished loading a trolley, Phil pulled up and introduced himself – not only working on the boat, Phil was also my observer. He guided us to the correct slip and we were underway.

Lance was applying Vaseline to various parts of my body. I think I would have been fine doing it, but everyone keeps telling horror stories about swims being abandoned because it gets on goggles. To be honest, it was worth it just for giggles; Hannah and Hannah were laughing and posting incriminating photos to the internet. As the boat swung to the right and left the protected harbour, picking up speed, all three members of my crew went a little quiet, and a little green – it was choppier than we had expected. I kept my gaze focused on the horizon, and felt fine (which was probably psychological as I knew I wouldn’t be on the boat for long).

Although there was a lot going on, I wasn’t tired, I wasn’t sea sick and I wasn’t worried. I had one job; to swim until someone else told me to stop, and I was laser focused on just that. I was 100% determined to do just that. If it was within my power I would be next be on land in France.

We realised we were part of a small flotilla – tiny boats racing in the same direction. Most were a long way in front, but we quickly pulled alongside Louise Jane and waved furiously at the other team. It really helped to know that we weren’t quite as alone as we’d expected to be. Phil wandered up and asked how much notice I needed – ‘Literally thirty seconds’ was my response, and he nodded and disappeared again. We all looked at each other, knowing at this point that we were only minutes from the start.

I think every other boat made their swimmer jump in and swim to the beach – maybe mine drew a deeper draught than the others as I was ushered into the dinghy that then motored me to thirty yards offshore. This was a pleasant surprise, but I still had to jump from the dinghy into the water, and the water entry was something I’d not been looking forward to. As it happened, temperature and cold shock wasn’t an issue and I quickly made my way to the beach, where I could see some significant waves breaking.

I was really touched, when as I reached the shore, noise erupted from the beach where a large group of friends and family had gathered to see me off. Apparently some of the other swimmers had been bashed about but I made a clean exit, cracked the obligatory ‘Is this France already?’ joke, stood with hands raised for the boat to start the timer, and turned and threw myself back into the water.

It was 1:53 am.

It was choppy, waves cresting and hurling themselves down on me and before I’d even got back to the boat I’d already had my first ‘What in the name of all the gods am I thinking’ moment, rapidly followed by my first ‘Get a grip, put your head down and get on with it’.

As I pulled alongside the boat, one major worry dissipated. The boat was lit up like a football stadium and I could see everything. Everything in the sea, that was, as the lights were so dazzling I could barely make out silhouettes on the boat. My crew were wearing dryrobes, and I had to imagine encouraging smiles and waves as all I could make out was vaguely demonic monk like shadows.

I worked out where the pilot needed me to be able to track me on the cameras he was using and we quickly settled into a rhythm. I would swim slowly from the stern to the bow of the boat, the throttle would be blipped, the boat would overtake me again and we would repeat the process.

One think I like doing is maths while I’m swimming – it passes the time and it helps to divide a swim up into chunks. I really liked the six hour swims we did in the harbour, as six seems to divide into things much more neatly than four – for example, 18 lots of twenty minutes. Working out, with 80 minutes of training to go that you were 7/9ths of the way through the swim gave me something to do. I couldn’t do this for the swim, as I didn’t know how long it was going to take.

So I started doing maths. To start, I assumed the boat was 10m long. I knew I was in theory swimming 33k, so I could work out that I needed to overtake the boat 3,300 times. I then started counting in my head (1 Kangaroo, 2 Kangaroos…) to work out how long an overtake was taking and using that came up with a time to swim of 30 hours.

That was not a nice number.

I spent most of the first two hours working out all the ways I might have been wrong, and was pleasantly surprised when Lance waved the disco glove to tell me it was five minutes to the first feed.

I’d known the first four hours were going to be in the dark, and I’d been totally ok with that even before I’d realised I was going to be spot lit by my very own bat signal. Two hours to the first feed, which was half way to sunrise, which would then be in the region of a quarter of the way to France (more maths). The feed went like clockwork – Lance tossed a bottle near me (I’d warned him that actually hitting me would not be funny, wherever his head went on the swim), I grabbed it and bolted a solid 400ml of UCAN and with a quick ‘I’m all good’ I swam off again.

This was almost entirely all the communication I had over the whole swim, four or five words every hour. This was tougher than I expected; I hoped Swimmer Hannah was proud of me for reining in my need to chat.

An hour later, the second feed was blackcurrant squash, almost identical, but with a couple of jelly babies as a treat, then once more at a few minutes to six, the third feed was more UCAN.

I was now looking for the sunrise. We were four hours in and I was feeling strong, and privileged. How lucky was I to be waiting for the sun to come up, in the middle of the sea, with my own personal escort? If you stop to think (and although I couldn’t stop, I had plenty of time to think) this is an amazing thing for anyone to be doing. Eventually, I was excited as I realised I could make out the tiniest thread of dark orange on what I was now assuming was the horizon; as I dropped to the back of the Viking Princess I could see behind the boat a 45 degree arc, and each time I watched the orange line get wider and brighter.

Magically I started to make out, in shades of dark orange, a huge angular shape close behind me. It was a MSC shipping vessel, the first of many that swam out of the darkness, and told me with certainty that I was deep inside the English shipping channel. I was probably further ahead than I expected to be at this point, and progress together with the slow warmth of sunrise gave me a double lift to my spirits.

The next few hours flew by, but even then it was difficult to rein in darker thoughts. For a while I was wondering where Lance was between feeds – I only saw him for five minutes of every hour; I soon worked out what the issue was – he was massively seasick, not helped by having to mix up the feeds hunched over the food box according to a rigorous schedule he’d laminated for me. Like a true titan he dragged himself upright for every feed before slumping back to the deck to try to regain some gastric stability for the next time. He did this for the first nine feeds before slowly beginning to feel better

Meanwhile, I was reading novels into every facial expression the ladies showed. I knew when the observer had told them I was swimming too slowly, I could see it on both their faces. I could tell just how hard they were willing me on and every deliberate smile and clap gave me some additional drive and motivation.

Then things went a bit weird.

They both looked really cross and I spent a good forty minutes trying to work out what was going on – was the swim in trouble? Had my stroke rate dropped precipitously? Much later, I would find out that they were eating twiglets but trying not to rub my nose in this fact; as my face went in the water they stuffed a bunch in, then as I rotated to breathe they sat there, mouths full and po faced until I rolled back, before chewing furiously.

The feeds themselves were going well, I was running on the DCT 2 hours to first feed then 1 hour feeds, with a UCAN/Squash/UCAN/Squash/Electrolyte rotation. I was bolting a good 400ml without too much problem quickly each time. Concerned by my speed, the crew asked me to switch to 30 minute feeds at six hours; trying to be open minded I agreed to try a 45 minute feed, but as I swam in for the next one I could tell I hadn’t finished with the last. I forced the bottle down, but asked that we go back to hourly feeds immediately.

On most feeds, I could feel the current pushing me strongly from the boat – Lance was holding the reel the bottle was tied to and the steady ‘clack clack clack’ of the ratchet as he paid out line was a constant reminder I was losing distance every time I stopped. I really wanted to minimise the damage I was doing to the swim.

As we moved into the tail end of the ninth hour of swimming I was starting to tire – I was struggling to lift my arms out of the water, and depression was gathering around me as I wondered how I was going to keep going.

I really started to ask if this was how my swim ended.

Twenty minutes later, my mood had lifted and my strength returned – I could feel my body switch from burning my now depleted glucose stores to fats, and my stroke rate picked up and technique returned. Although burning fat is less efficient, the best way I can explain it is that I now felt about as tired as I had three hours in, and I stayed that way until the swim ended. I hadn’t experienced this in training, but it was a brilliant thing to happen on the day.

I’ve tried to explain this to a lot of triathlete friends, and they all struggle to understand it – their instinctual response is ‘Well, you bonked because you were underfuelling’, and while technically I agree this is correct, every channel swimmer I’ve discussed this with is in full agreement that you simply cannot process enough fuel while swimming horizontally to avoid it, so it’s something we train and plan for. The key thing for me is at no point on the swim did I feel hungry, and other than that twenty – thirty minute window I didn’t actually feel like I was bonking.

Most feeds, Lance would throw me my bottle but with a small sealed box attached. I could unclip in seconds and grab a solid treat from within.

The first treat was jelly babies (a good luck gift from a friend), which went down really well, as did the bit of banana that came next. However, what followed was a disaster. As I unclipped the box I grabbed without really looking two brown squares and stuffed them in my mouth. I started to chew, but whatever it was wasn’t breaking down fast enough and I needed to start swimming again. I spat most of it out and stretched back out into front crawl, but there was loads of this ‘treat’ welded to my teeth. I kept trying to get it off with my tongue, but there wasn’t time between breaths and I didn’t want to break my stroke rate. The upshot was that an hour later, called in for my next feed, this stuff was still clogging up my mouth. ‘DO NOT give me whatever the hell that was again’ I barked at Lance.

He looked at the ladies, and they looked at him and all three shrugged in unison before breaking out into huge smiles. The unidentified brown stuff was Galaxy chocolate and they happily did their best to get rid of the rest of it before I got back on the boat. I would not have expected something so common to have given me so much trouble, and the fact it was still unmelted in my mouth an hour later gives you an idea of what just how cold it was.

Moving out of the English shipping channel into the separation zone was actually a bit depressing; there was nothing to see for hours on end. I did not see a fish, jelly or otherwise, and the water was uniformly blue and clear for me all day. I actually only saw two bits of seaweed and three bits of litter on the whole swim (I did have to rein in my instincts to chase after the rubbish). However, that was my restricted view, as the crew were treated to visits from inquisitive seals and two separate sets of dolphins – this surprised me when I was told on the boat, as I would have expected to hear them based on previous encounters.

The observer had been checking temperatures the whole way, and recorded a steady drop from 18 at the start, to 15 in the middle of the separation zone, before it started to climb again. At no point did I even notice the temperature, let alone feel cold, which was another big worry that just didn’t impact me. I had almost been looking forward to cold spells or jellyfish stings to break things up a bit, but everything was manageable.

Given the total lack of things to look at, it was a relief when Hannah joined me for the first hour of companion swimming around ten hours in. I was feeling strong, but still couldn’t match the pace she was gently encouraging me towards. It didn’t matter though, it was great to have someone in with me and Hannah was awesome at making me feel like I was the only thing in the world, as she locked eye contact for the whole hour. I suspect she was frustrated I didn’t speed up as much as she’d have liked, but I was focused on making sure I could keep going; having her with me was brilliant as I was really feeling isolated given the very limited communications we’d had. I’d been worried it would be a blow when the hour was up, but it was fine, I watched her back to the boat then focused back on the swimming again.

Although it looks very flat in the pictures, there was a fair amount of chop, and as I swam with Hannah I’d been thinking to myself ‘I really hope she gets out and tells everyone it’s choppier than it looks’. Almost the first thing I said to her later when back on the boat was ‘What did you say after your first swim’ and gratifyingly, she had been word perfect.

Eventually I spotted a boat going the other way. This was a massive deal as it meant I was leaving the separation zone, entering the French shipping channel and only few hours from France. For the first time outside of a feed, I sat up and waved furiously at the crew, pointing at the boat. They had no idea why I was excited, as they’d seen hundreds of boats; my world had shrunken to such a point this was the only one I would spot in the whole shipping channel.

Despite the narrow focus I had at this point, I could see the tension rising in the boat. France had appeared in front of me over the next hour or so and was so close I could see the cars driving up and down the road. What I didn’t know was the tide was about to change and the pilot had told my crew I needed to be inside a particular buoy when it did. I was closing rapidly, but a unexpectedly strong current was picking up and apparently Lance went white as the buoy shot past with me still 200m away. He was suddenly feeling sick again, but for very different reasons. Soon we were being swept up and away from the French coast at 6mph.

For the next two hours, I told myself that France looking no closer was an optical illusion and soon it would leap forward. For the two hours after that, I knew there was a problem. Hannah jumped in again, told me ‘We just have to go!’ and tried as hard as she could to pull me to France; although I knew I could keep swimming for many more hours, I just couldn’t find any speed. Apparently I lifted my stroke rate by 1 – it felt like I was putting in a herculean extra shift.

I knew that I was being swept towards Calais, where the forbidden zone would instantly end my swim, but I also knew the tide had turned four hours ago. If I could hold out for another couple of hours, the tide would change again and I could take advantage of the slack to get in. I was doggedly determined to tough it out for as long as it took.

Back at home, friends who weren’t too close to what was involved were puzzled that it had looked like I’d be across hours ago, but had stopped making progress; those who were closer to the training knew we were battling to save the swim.

It was then that my crew called me in and explained that if I couldn’t double my speed, in forty minutes I’d be in the forbidden zone. They asked if they could do that. Bitterly, I laughed and told them I couldn’t have done that 15 hours ago – there was no chance I’d be able to do this now. Now knowing it was coming, I was still shattered when they told me they had no choice but to abort the swim on safety grounds. I dragged myself to the back of the boat, where a dozen hands helped me on board and slumped to the seat in the middle. I can’t remember if I broke social distancing and hugged everyone; I know I wanted to. I put my hand to my eyes and for a moment, just for a moment, felt tears rising as I realised it was over.

But only for a moment.

Twenty four hours earlier I had only ever swum 8 hours in one go. I had no idea if I could swim for the length of time it would take me. Now, I knew I could manage nearly 16 hours and still get out feeling as strong as I had at three hours. I knew that on another day I would have smoothly slotted onto the beach and would have been a channel swimmer hours earlier. I knew that an phenomenal and huge team of people had given me everything, for the best part of a year, to get me across and we had so very nearly made it. Nothing was wasted, I’d just lost out to the tide.

Importantly, I think it would have been very different if I’d asked to get out, but I hadn’t. I’d been prepared to fight for as long as it took, and just run out of room. On a smaller tide, not only would I not have been swept as far, but I wouldn’t have been pushing so hard against an outward current – both things would have bought me the time I needed.

I may not have swum the channel, but I now knew 100% that I could. And that in itself is huge.

We were all smiling and laughing as Viking Princess sprinted back to Dover, which felt weird – I cannot imagine being so upbeat after training for a year and then failing at anything else, but this felt earned. Even when we met my amazing friends and incredible wife back at the marina, the feeling was still one of celebration, not commiseration. I did give Jo a huge hug, and she told me she was proud of me and what we’d achieved; that made my last remaining concerns float away. If nothing else, we’d raised nearly £4000 for the local Multiple Sclerosis center.

As I looked at my phone, the sheer number of messages from friends and well-wishers was overwhelming; I put it away again (it took me more than two days to catch up with everything) but it would prove to be an absolute torrent of love and concern from more people than I could possible have imagined; people I hadn’t seen for thirty years and people I’d never met but understood what we were trying to do and why.

Now I just have to decide if the distinction between ‘being able to swim the channel’ and ‘being a channel swimmer’ is enough for me to do it all over again.