Channel Swim 25: We go again

“This is gone. We go… exactly the same, we go again. Come on!”

Steven Gerrard, Liverpool Football club, April 2014

Its been eight weeks since what I’m mentally thinking of as my unsuccessful successful channel swim. I needed to take some time, both physically and mentally to wrap myself around where I am now and what I needed to do.

I felt strong on the swim, and although stiff and tired felt remarkably good the day after; over time all the hidden deficits showed up. Some showed up quickly. I managed to miss motorway turnoffs (something that just never happens) not once but twice on the way home.

This meant I came perilously close to attempting to tow a 7m caravan right through central London.

It was only over the next week or two I slowly realised I was actually physically unable to straighten my arm out at a 90 degree angle to my side. I had been unconsciously working around the issue without noticing. It’s still not right; I can’t lift a cup of tea off of the bedside table without leaning around, so I need to have someone help me out with that.

I very quickly got tired having to explain every… single… time… that I’d got within a couple of k of France then been unable to make any progress; that I’d swum until I wasn’t allowed to swim anymore, and that I was hugely proud of what I’d achieved. I’ve had a couple of meet ups with some of the amazing and incredible people I’d trained with all year, and as much as I had to be proud of and regardless of what I’d achieved I was always aware I was not a member of the exclusive club that is successful channel swimmers. But the thing that crystallised how the whole situation felt was when DCT released their 2020 hoodies; One for people who had completed the channel swim and one for… well… everyone else.

I really want to be in the right club and not the wrong one, more than almost anything. I know there were other swimmers who put in heroic efforts this year and didn’t quite get there, and I know they will know exactly what I mean. One of the things I noticed at the seminars was that there seem to be very few people who have failed to swim the channel once.

I wont beat about the bush. I’m going again in 2021.

There have been some massive wins – I’d been aware for the last couple of months leading up to the swim that an 8 hour training swim only tells you that you can complete an eight hour training swim.The only way you can really know you are able to swim the channel is to go do it, and I did. Kind of.

When I mentioned my unsuccessful successful channel swim, what I meant was that I now know on a fundamental level I can swim the channel – I just haven’t. Yet.

But to try to make sure the result is different, I need to do some things differently before the day. I can’t go exactly the same again. Having had a good think about what happened on the day there’s three clearly defined areas I need to address.

1. I know there’s a strong argument made that spring tides vs neap tides don’t matter in a channel swim attempt. I can understand the mathematics, but for a slow steady swimmer, I think that’s hogwash. If I’d not been swimming on a massive spring, the current pushing me away from France would not have been so strong. The current pushing me towards Calais would not have been so fast, and that may have bought me the time I needed for the tide to turn again. If I go again, a neap tide has to help.
2. Our boat left 20-30 minutes after everyone else. I was surprised to see that for the first twelve hours of the swim I was 20-30 minutes behind a swimmer I know is usually much faster than me. She made the critical buoy before the tide turned, and I missed it. She landed and I didn’t. I had a long debrief with my skipper the day after and he told me he could easily get me across on a different day; knowing how I swim now we both can make sure we leave a little earlier if we go again.
3. This year, the focus was all about whether I could manage an unfathomable distance, and all the challenges posed by waves, and temperature and darkness and….I’ve set those worries to rest, so if I go again I need to spend the winter finding the speed I know I lost when the pools closed for lockdown. I need to be able to make up the twenty minutes that meant I missed the buoy. I need to be able to fight a strong current pushing me off the shore. Basically, I need… speed.

There’s one other thing I’d do differently.

4. I don’t feel I can put the hundreds of people who tracked every minute of my fifteen and a chunk hour swim through that again. If I go again I’ll just go do it, and tell everyone when I’ve been successful. I don’t think I can face telling everyone I didn’t make it again. While that’s obviously not the desired outcome, one thing I now firmly believe is when it comes to channel swimming, sometimes it’s just not your day.

Obviously, this whole post is not hypothetical. I have a swim booked for next summer.

I feel guilty about disrupting the family for another year, but they are amazing and they want me to do this because they know it will gnaw away at me if I don’t.

• It’s on a neap this time.
• I’ll work with the skipper to make sure we plan based on my actual speed.
• I’ll work on technique over winter, then ramp the distance back up when temperatures start to rise (note: Covid 19 already doing it’s best to mess me up already)
• Most of all, I’m going to stand on that beach in 2021.

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