My Two-Way English Channel Swim, Sept 20th 2009

The Swim Part 2: England - France

2009-11-29T11:28:00.007Z

I stood on the beach, fixed my goggles and waited for the signal to start. At that stage I probably should have been having deep profound thoughts about what lay ahead and what I wanted to achieve. But to be honest I was just very excited to be starting and happy to have finally gotten the chance to swim. All of the nerves were gone. I was ready!

Yay, time to begin! :)

At about 10:35am Lance blew the horn on the boat. My swim had started! I hobbled down the stones (I'm not very good with walking on the shingly Dover beaches!!) and started swimming. I had thought that the first few hours when I was only feeding on the hour would go very slowly, but it felt like a very short time before my first feed. It went well and I was happy! I did realise that it was quite difficult to hear the crew talking (I had earplugs in) so out came the whiteboard for messages for the rest of the swim.

One of the most common questions I get asked when I talk to people about my swim is what I think about while I'm swimming. A lot of swimmers talk about mind games that they play to keep themselves occupied. I don't do anything interesting really. I just let my mind wander wherever it wants to go. I've had plenty of practice from the long pool sessions! On the swim I spent a lot of time thinking about my training and about all of the people that helped me and what I'd been through to get to where I was. My crew were passing me on text messages from people that had come through, and after hearing one of these I would often spend the next while thinking about that person and how they had helped me in my training and preparation. I also spent a lot of time singing...I love the Amy McDonald album 'This is the Life' and the Lily Allen album 'It's Not Me, It's You' so I went through most of both of those. My most recent feel-good song is 'I Gotta Feeling' by the Black Eyed Peas and the Take That song 'Greatest Day' was in my head a lot. I tend to tune in to song lyrics a lot so when I wanted to change my internal cd I tried to think of a song that would keep me feeling energetic and encouraged. I did however end up with the Kookaburra song (you know the one-"Kookaburra sits in a tall gum tree, Merry merry king of the bushes he...") in my head for a good two hours. It was just stuck there randomly and nothing I could do would get it out! It was still better I think than 'Nellie the Elephant' though-I heard of one Channel swimmer recently who had that stuck in their head for six hours of their swim!!

Happy out!

Everything went well until it came to about 4 or 5 hours in. I think at that stage I had a moment of clarity where I realised exactly how much I still had ahead of me and the enormity of what I was really doing!! This was one of the things that I had worried about before my swim-I'd had very few times in training that I really had to convince myself to stay in the water so I didn't know how I'd deal with the mental demons if they arrived on the day of the swim. I never actually thought about getting out of the water, but I think I spent about an hour trying to convince myself that it was a good idea to stay in. Eventually I talked myself around, I figured that I'd done a 14-hour training swim, so there was no way I was giving up before that mark since I knew that I could get that far. I'm really glad that the doubts came in early in the swim. If I had started thinking like that later when I was more tired it would have been much harder to fight. But thankfully once I got those thoughts out of my head they never came back again.

I get asked if I saw much in the way of shipping while I was swimming. And to be honest I didn't really. I saw a few of the ferries on the first leg because we were travelling pretty close to their path. I had warned Sarah to try to get a photo of me with a ferry in the background, the iconic Channel swimming photo!! And she did :) Other than that I didn't really see much. The ships passing up and down the Channel weren't in my line of sight when I was breathing. I kept more of an eye out for them at night time, they were all lit up like Christmas trees then, they looked really cool!

I really WAS in the middle of the Channel!

At the half-way mark my crew gave me a signal. I had asked them before the swim to do this so that I could have some marker of where I was, since I knew that Lance probably wasn't going to be very forthcoming with that information. I was at 8 hours when they told me that I was half-way, and that really annoyed me for a while. I was figuring that if it had taken me 8 hours to get half-way then by the time I got to France I'd have taken so long that Lance would say that I wouldn't be able to make it back. At the next feed a half hour later I threw a bit of a tantrum and gave out that I was not swimming well and that my time was going to be very slow. That wasn't exactly what I meant though-I really didn't care about my time as a number, it was more that the longer I took getting over then the less chance I'd have of getting back. Once I started swimming again I regretted having said it, because I knew that they would spend until my next feed worrying about how to encourage me and how to keep me going. But I hadn't been thinking about giving up or anything like that, I was just frustrated that it might take me 16 or 17 hours to get to France and then it would be very hard to turn around. But I think as soon as I said it I realised how stupid it was to be worrying about things like that-my job was to keep swimming and not to think about getting there or not getting there, if Lance thought I wasn't going to get there then that was his call and until then I would keep swimming.

Maybe half-way across or a bit later my left shoulder started to get sore. All year when I've had shoulder issues it's been the right shoulder that's given me trouble. So I was surprised to have pain in the left shoulder instead during the swim. I think it was a good thing though-mentally if the right shoulder had gotten sore it would have been harder because I'd always dreaded that causing problems on the day...whereas when the left one got sore I just thought "that's strange, the wrong shoulder is sore!". I took some painkillers for it and they did help a lot. For a while anyway!!

I don't remember much about it getting dark. What I do remember is once it did get dark and as we got close to the French coast, I could see the lighthouse on the Cap. Every time I stopped to feed my crew were telling me to swim towards it, I knew that that was what we were aiming for. And every time I saw it, it looked exactly the same. It didn't look like we were getting any closer to it at all. I realised later that the tide had swept me past the Cap going south and then again going north. So I was pretty close to the lighthouse for quite a long time. Eventually we were swept north of it, and while I was disappointed to know that I wasn't going to land on the Cap, I was happy not to be seeing it at every feed any more!

Nightswimming

I remember being quite frustrated for the last couple of hours getting into France. I couldn't see how far from land we were, and I felt like I was getting nowhere (this feeling was not helped by seeing the lighthouse continuously for so long!). One nice thing was that a relay that had just finished their swim came by and cheered me on. I must say that I definitely had a jealousy moment at that stage that they were done and I wasn't! It was a great boost though. And at one stage Lance turned up the music that he was listening to-I couldn't hear a lot of it besides the beat because of the water and the earplugs but I heard 'Castles in the Sky', a song that I really like, so that gave me a pleasant change of soundtrack for a while!!

At that stage I kept veering off from the boat. I could see lights off to the left from the town of Wissant but nothing else. At a few of the feeds my crew kept convincing me to follow the boat and not the lights. I've heard so often about Channel swims where the swimmer decides near the coast that the pilot is taking them the long way around and heads off in what they think is a better direction. I knew that they thought that that was what I was doing but it really wasn't-not consciously anyway! It just seemed that every time I looked to the boat it was WAY off to my left. I think that when I breathed to the left I probably took my line from the lights for the next 3 strokes until I breathed towards the boat and that must have been putting me off direction-wise. Eventually I concentrated on just following the light from the torch on the boat that was shining into the water and hoped that that would keep me nearer!!

Then Lance started playing around with the light on the front of the boat, and I couldn't figure out why. I guessed that he was probably getting it ready to shine on the beach for me but I couldn't figure out why he was doing it at that stage. I had absolutely no idea how close we were to land, I couldn't see a thing in front of me. I just concentrated on swimming towards the boat as much as I could. And then they started shouting at me to swim away from it, and that totally confused me. It took me a minute to realise that they meant that we were very close and the boat wasn't going in any further!! It was so nice when I did realise it though :)

As I got closer to the beach and Lance shone the light on my landing spot I saw that there were some people on the beach. I realised that a group of young French guys were having a beach party!! I realised that it they were on a beach in the middle of the night they probably weren't sober, and I was worried that they would touch me and end my swim. I kept asking them not to touch me and tried to explain what I was doing...but of course I was explaining in English, at that stage my French language skills were buried much too deep to be of any use!!! I'm not sure if they ever realised what was going on and why there was a boat arriving from nowhere and 3 people arriving out of the pitch black water...but they did seem to understand that I didn't want them to touch me anyway!! They wandered further along the beach, to my huge relief.

Sarah and Imelda had swum in behind me to make sure I was ok and to bring in some things for me. It was great to be able to chat to them without being under the same time pressure as I had on the feed stops. My big concern when I landed was that it had taken me over 17 hours to swim over and I was wondering if Lance was going to let me turn around after taking that long. I had calculated that from trying to add up the feed stops and figuring out where I was on the feed schedule (I had a list of feeds to cycle through). Imelda and Sarah looked at me as if I had about 10 heads, they couldn't figure out what I was talking about with the 17 hours. They convinced me that it had taken me much less than that and to look at my watch. And of course they were right...it had actually taken me 14 hours and 36 minutes. Seeing and hearing that made me a lot happier! Of course it would have been nice to have hit the Cap and been faster, but I was never under any illusions of being a fast swimmer and I knew that if I had pushed it too hard on the way over I wouldn't have had anything left for the way back. Regardless I was so happy to realise that I was at the 14 hour rather than the 17 hour mark!!

While I was on the beach I did a few things. I had a drink of water (it was nice not to have to tread water while drinking it!), I had a couple of throat lozenges (my throat was quite sore from the salt water even with the mouthwash and I was afraid to have a lozenge while swimming in case I choked on it), I put on some more grease on my shoulders (and tried to get as much of it off my hands as I could after!) and I found a souvenir stone (this took a bit of searching since we were on a sand dune in the pitch darkness!). I had a bit of a chat with Imelda and Sarah, I can't remember what about at this stage. And then I heard Lance shouting so I assumed it was time to get back in.

I've had a lot of people asking me how I managed that part, the getting back in. It was something I had thought a lot about before the swim. Not in a visualising kind of way, I never really bought into the 'visualising your swim' thing, I always figured that I could never visualise something that I had never done and something that was so unpredictible. But I had thought about what I wanted my attitude to be on that beach. And I had had quite a bit of advice about how to view my whole swim. Freda Streeter, whose daughter Alison has done three two-way swims and a three-way (she is also Queen of the Channel with 43 EC solo swims to her name!), advised me to think of my England to France leg as a warm-up, and that my actual swim was from France to England. She suggested thinking of France as my starting point. Kevin Murphy (King of the Channel, with 34 EC solo swims including three two-ways) had warned me not to allow myself celebrate when I got to France. He said that especially since I hadn't done a one-way before, it would be very easy for me to decide that I was so happy having made it to France that I didn't need to turn around at all. I trained myself to think of France as a functional stop. I needed it to put on more grease and things like that, but it was just a step towards the goal, not a goal in itself. And I think this worked...the only thing that I was concerned about with regards to getting back in was whether or not Lance thought that I could make it back with the tides and my pace. I asked about this and Imelda quickly told me that I was getting back in regardless!! Even if I had wanted to get out I don't think that I was being given the option!!

And so it was time to start on the hard part of the swim...France to England...all in the next blog post!

P.S. I'll try to get the next installment up a bit faster than this one. I know that I'm always slow with blog posts anyway, but a few things made this one slower than normal. The most obvious one is all the randomness still happening in my life...I'm still going to schools most days and talking about the swim, I'm still raising money for my charities (yes, you can still donate!!) and I'm still trying to make myself go back to the PhD. But the main reason I think was that I went through a point of two or three weeks where I was feeling really low...I knew it was more than likely going to happen, it seems to be a common thing for people to go through a month or two after their swim. But it was still frustrating, I was constantly feeling down for no good reason. Things do seem to be better now thankfully! I'll talk about that stuff a bit more in my 'after the swim' post anyway!

The Swim Part 1: The Lead Up

2009-10-18T17:34:00.010+01:00

It's taking forever to write an account of my swim. Mainly because I've got so much going on at the moment and I'm finding that I'm not spending much time on the computer. But last night was a late night so today is a lazy day so I'm getting a bit of catch-up time!

I've decided to break the posting of the swim up into stages because I figure it will never get posted otherwise! Plus it will be WAY too long! So here goes with the first installment...

It's hard to even know where to start in describing my swim. It was such a fantastic experience, I can't say that I enjoyed absolutely every minute but I did enjoy most of it. It's nowhere near sinking in yet what I've done. Or maybe I'm still in denial the way I was leading up to it!

We spent a very long 10 days in Dover waiting for the weather to break. Wind, wind, wind. It was a big disappointment considering the forecast before we travelled had been so good so we had all thought we would get out nice and early in the tide. But it wasn't to be. The waiting was frustrating, but my outlook was always that there was nothing I could do so I might as well make the most of my time there. I swam almost every day in Dover harbour and spent lots of time relaxing in the caravan (in the fantastic Varne Ridge Caravan Park!). I even had time to paint my toenails!

Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Irish Colours

All through the second week it looked like the weekend was going to be good. The question was, would it be good enough for a two-way? As the week went on it looked like Owen would go on Saturday and me on Sunday when it had calmed down a little more. Until I rang Mike on the Thursday night and he said that it looked possible that Saturday would be calm enough for me to go. So I arranged to ring him again the following morning to get a better update. And started panicking!! I hadn't been nervous for the few days leading up to that because I wasn't sure if I would actually swim or not. But now things were getting real. Mike was very certain that I would go at some stage over the weekend. I was terrified and so, so excited at the thought of it!

The following morning I rang Mike...and the news was scary! I was to go at 10:30am, meeting at the harbour at 9:45am. ALL SYSTEMS GO! It was an absolutely manic day. I had to arrange flights to get Sarah and Imelda over, sort through all of my stuff and pack it, shop for the things that we couldn't have gotten earlier in the week and borrow feeding equipment from Dave Whyte's boat. And eat and try to get to sleep reasonably early. It all worked out in the end, Dan offered to go and collect Imelda and Sarah from the airport which was great. And we had most of the stuff packed up and ready by the time I was heading off to bed. I had a shower, put on a layer of suncream so that it would be well soaked in by the morning, and went to sleep. And, surprisingly, I did actually manage to sleep! The following morning was also crazy, and very emotional for me-I spent half the morning crying for some reason!! I think it was just seeing and hearing from people who were supporting me, I got so many texts and had people calling to the caravan to wish me well. It was great. Finally we were ready to go, and Owen's dad, George, drove me down to the harbour. We had an absolute ton of stuff with us but we figured we didn't want to run out of anything out there!

We met Lance, my pilot, around 9:45 and I gave him the £3000 that was remaining to be paid for the swim. No going back now!! But the thought of not doing it didn't even cross my mind at that stage. I was at the point where I figured that I was going to have the easy job for the next 30+ hours (although maybe a lot of people would disagree with me on that one!). Lance and his crew of Chris and Tanya had to worry about navigating and getting me to France and back using the best route possible on the highest spring tide of the summer. My mother, sister and Imelda had to think about feeding me-what to give me and when, read how I was feeling so as to know what best to say to me and keep everyone at home informed. All I had to do was to try to make their jobs as easy as possible by putting my head down and taking stroke after stroke. I couldn't wait for all the fuss to be over and to be in the water and be able to hand off the thinking to everyone else. And soon that time came!

Lance drove us out of the harbour to my starting point at Abbot's Cliff. It was the perfect day to start a swim-the sun was shining and the water was like glass. Absolutely beautiful. On the way over Sarah and Imelda greased me up and I got ready to go.

Getting Ready

Greased up and ready to GO!

By the time we got there I was ready. Lance brought the boat right in and I only had a few metres to swim into the beach to my start. On the beach were Owen, George, Jackie (Owen's coach) and Ned. It was great to have them there to send me off. And I have some fantastic pictures of my start courtesy of George! Thanks George :)

My Send-Off! Thanks guys :)

Contemplating what's ahead...

And we're off :)

Stopping the clock...

2009-10-11T18:57:00.000+01:00

I've had a few conflicting reports on how long my swim took...some people said 35hrs 20mins, others said 35hrs 36mins. And to be honest, that evening when I got back on the boat it was the last thing on my mind-my shoulder was in so much pain that it could have been a time record and I wouldn't have cared less!! But I've been wondering about it since because my watch said 35hrs and 23secs when I finished so I couldn't figure out how I'd stopped it at some stage and started it again a while later, therefore losing 20 or 36mins on it. So I talked to Mike Oram and checked what the story is (still unofficial for now, it needs to be ratified before it becomes official). So here's the verdict:

Start time in England: 10:35am on 19th September 2009

Landing time in France: 1:11am on 20th September 2009

First leg England / France swim time - 14hrs 36 mins

Start time in France: 1:18am on 20th September 2009

Landing time in England: 9:35pm on 20th September 2009

Second leg France / England swim time - 20 hrs 24 mins (the return leg time includes the time spent in France)

Start time: 10:35am on 19th September 2009

Finish time: 9:35pm on 20th September 2009

Total for 2-way England / France / England - 35 hours

VOTE!

2009-10-07T23:19:00.003+01:00

There's a post on the way about the swim when I eventually get enough time to finish it...this week is busy with school visits starting tomorrow and those will go on for the next couple of weeks. They'll be fun once they get started I'm sure, but for now I'm dreading them!! I'm ok with interviews because I'm just talking to one or two people at a time-I block out the fact that there's lots more people listening or watching!! But it's a little harder to block out when they're all sitting right in front of you...

Anyway, in the meantime...I've been nominated for the 2009 World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year by the 10kswimmer blog. This for me is just unbelievable, I was delighted to just have my swim featured on there let alone to be nominated for that! It's amazing. You can vote here, once per computer. It will go on until the end of the year. Keep passing on the link!

What a Whirlwind!

2009-09-27T09:49:00.000+01:00

It's been such an amazing week. Only this time last week I was on my way back to England having swam to France. I seems like a lifetime ago! I will post about my swim, I just want to put a bit of time into it and that's something that I don't have a lot of right now.

For now I want to say thank-you to everyone who has made this week so much fun for me. To everyone who rang, texted and emailed during and after the swim and to everyone who came to the airport to absolutely astound and amaze me! I'm still totally in shock at all the attention I've had this week-I really wasn't expecting it at all. I was expecting to come home to my family at the airport to welcome me and then to do a couple of newspaper interviews this week. Not to have 150 people at the airport and to be on the launch of TV3's new chat show! It's just been absolutely fantastic and I've been having so much fun with it.

One yummy part of my week was arriving home to a big cake on Monday...my sister Amy and my friend Ruth Corcoran had been ringing around that morning to get signs and balloons and a cake and Lee Rourke Cakes offered to make it for free! Amazing. And it's so cool, she asked for my swimsuit and hat colour and all to make it more realistic. I love it!! (oh, and it's really yummy too-we've been cutting around the swimmer though, can't bear to cut that part!)

My REALLY cool cake!

On those lines, Ace Signs also sponsored a huge congratulations banner to welcome me home from the airport. People are so generous-both of these were done at only a few hours notice. Thank you so much!!

It's been such an amazing week for me. The media have been all over the story and I've had calls left right and centre. I'm heading up to Dublin in a couple of hours for the third time this week, I was up on Wednesday for TV3's new Midweek show (you can watch it here) which I really enjoyed doing. And I travelled up on Friday for the Late Late Show (watch it here). I was a little disappointed by how short an interview the Late Late gave to me and Owen, but it was a really fun night and we came away with a free hamper each so all was good! The car was very full on the way down with 3 big hampers in there!! Now I'm heading back up to be on The Hub on Setanta tonight and Ireland AM on TV3 on Tuesday morning. And then I think my life at least partly gets back to normality after that.

Time to go get packed and ready now. Keep updated on what I'm up to via my twitter on the side of this page. And DON'T FORGET TO KEEP SPONSORING...click here for all the details!

She is arriving in Cork at 4pm

2009-09-21T13:05:00.002+01:00

Hey Everyone!

Just spoke to Lisa and read some of her sisters messages. Lisa is arriving at Cork airport around 4pm and RTE and TV3 TV stations will be there to document her arrival. From what I have heard she will be on the News at 5:30 this evening!

She is very alive and awake despite 2 hours of sleep last night! She is high on adrenaline!

If I hear anything else I will let you know.

Congrats to our favorite girl!

SHE HAS DONE IT!

2009-09-20T21:38:00.004+01:00

SHE FINISHED!!!!!!

SHE DID IT in 35hrs 36mins!!!!!

LISA CUMMINS IS THE FIRST IRISH PERSON TO SWIM THE ENGLISH CHANNEL BOTH WAYS!!!!!!!! OFFICIALLY SHE IS THE 20TH PERSON WORLDWIDE!

Last few metres. Shes nearly there guys!!!!

2009-09-20T21:34:00.001+01:00

She is only about 200metres from shore now according to Imelda on her crew!

Direct Comment From LISA

2009-09-20T20:39:00.000+01:00

Dont stop me now coz Im having such a good time......

Lisa is so close. Keep thinking about her. History could be closer than you think!!!!

Spoke to her sister Amy

2009-09-20T19:01:00.004+01:00

She is still swimming! Wind has picked up, it's getting harder for Lisa to accomplish her achievement but not much will stop her! Send your positive thoughts, and will power because we all know what a champion she is!

GO LISA!!!!!

Updates From Amy over the past few hours!

2009-09-20T18:45:00.008+01:00

Follow her to the END! @

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0VRLs4Of9DsYVSvsoj4lmW7Ik0Zgi69fk

or http://www.ais-doverstraits.co.uk/

Her boat is the Sea Satin

4:45pm Lisa is in great form!! The coast is getting clearer and she has started to pick up the pace. Come on our hero!!!

2:45 pm Great news... Lisa is in the last lane of the shipping lanes. Very positive feedback from the pilot. She has a little push from the tide so lets pray it will continue!!! X

Fantastic news..... Land is finally visible. She will be landing in Folkstone. X

Just to let everyone know the GPS is finally working properly again!

Great news. Very positive feedback from Lisas Pilot. The course is really nice with a small tide push. Lisas in the last of the shipping lanes. Shes nearly therer!

1:45 pm Lisa is very close to England. They cant see it because there is an awful haze. A few aches and pains but she is soldiering on!!! Aches and pains are nothing to her!!!

11:45am Lisa is over halfway back the channel. She is some woman. Its some day for the rebels today!!! Come one LISA. We know you can do it.

SWIM SWIM SWIM!!!!

2009-09-18T22:27:00.002+01:00

The big day is TOMORROW!!!! I'm just writing this update and then getting to bed, and when I get up it will be time to SWIM THE CHANNEL!!!! Very very exciting. And scary. But more exciting. I can't wait for all of the waiting and preparing and packing and general hassle to be over. I'm meeting my pilot tomorrow morning at 9:45am. So from 10:30/11am tomorrow morning all I have to think about is putting one arm in front of the other until I get back to where I started. I don't think that I've really come to the realisation of what I'm doing yet. But I'm sure it will hit me when I'm still swimming after 20 hours!! Or maybe it won't and I'll still be in denial when I'm done, who knows.

Updates during my swim:

GPS Tracker: my boat has a gps tracker on board that broadcasts our location every 10 minutes. The link is here and then click on 'Sea Satin' (the name of my boat). It shows a map of the Channel and the path that I've covered. It's really cool! Don't worry if there's no update for longer than 10 minutes though, sometimes I've been watching people and there's no update for up to an hour-I think it's just if they're in an area with bad connection or whatever.

Twitter: my twitter page is here. Sarah will be updating it every so often. Dan may also have updates on his twitter here. That's not 100% certain as of now. My twitter updates will feed through to my facebook page where you can comment on them, but I won't get the comments til after the swim. The updates will also be shown on the right-hand side of my blog. I may also have some blog updates going, we'll see how that goes.

Text: you can text my phone at +353 87 6681369 or Sarah at +353 85 7142964. Messages will get through to me but you may not get a reply until after the swim. The only guaranteed texts to go out are for the people who sponsored a mile. If you are going to text in please try to make the texts funny!!! I'm gonna need as many laughs as I can get out there, I really want to enjoy this swim as much as anyone can possibly enjoy 30+ hours of non-stop exercise!!

So I'm gonna sign off now and get some much-needed sleep. And the next time I update I'll hopefully be a two-way English Channel swimmer :)

GO GO GO!!!!!

2009-09-16T20:25:00.002+01:00

Excellent news from my pilot tonight....looks like the weekend is going to be good and right into Tues/Wed at least. So it looks like all the waiting will finally be worth it!! He's not sure yet when exactly the winds are going to die down but it looks like a possible start Saturday at midday or Sunday at midday. SO EXCITING!!!!!

Time to get some rest now, that's gonna have to be a priority over the next few days. That and eating of course!!!

I'll try to get a post up here tomorrow about how to follow my swim...

Playing the waiting game...

2009-09-14T13:48:00.007+01:00

There's not much going on here at the moment...the good weather seems to be avoiding us. Looks like the next few days are going to be horrible but then it looks like the wind will die down at the end of the week so the weekend looks good for a swim. Hopefully the forecast is correct!

My tides officially finish this Wednesday, and then we start into spring tides. This means that there will be more water movement with each tide and so it can cause swims to cover a much wider path. I talked to Mike about the possibility of doing a two-way on a spring tide-I thought that it might cause problems if I were to get pushed far along the French coast. He said that they do make navigation a bit more difficult but it can be done, and my pilot, Lance, successfully piloted for a two-way on a high spring tide in 2004. So basically what happens now is that we keep our swim preferences (I've got the first-place slot so I get first choice on whether or not to swim if good weather comes along) until the 23rd, when the next tide starts. If I still haven't gone at that stage I get put to the back of the queue for that tide. Unfortunately Lance has 4 people lined up for that tide so it would be at least the 27th or 28th then before I could think about another opportunity to swim even if the weather was perfect. Mike has said that they are prepared to keep swims going into October if the weather allows it and until the water gets too cold. So it's just a waiting game from now on...

We've been filling our time wandering around the towns close to here. We went to Folkestone and Canterbury to do a bit of shopping (well-Sarah shopped, me and mum just wandered around!) and then yesterday we headed along the cliffs in Dover for some nice views of the Channel. We took some photos, but they make it look rather evil with the black clouds in the background. Maybe that's apt though considering all of the stress that it's causing us this week!

If you look hard you can see France on the horizon!

We the headed a bit further along to St Margaret's Bay, where we got more of a first-hand experience of why exactly no-one was out swimming. I'm not sure how much of it is conveyed on the video but it was CHOPPY out there!! I think that the sound says more than the video really, that's WIND in the background!

All pray to the weather gods that this wind goes soon!!

And while you're waiting for news...don't forget, there's still miles left to sponsor here! Over half of them have been sponsored so go there now, pick your mile and donate your €50 (or more!) on my charity page. Go go go!!!

A Bigger Update...

2009-09-10T09:56:00.000+01:00

The last couple of weeks have flown by. I haven't been doing a huge amount of training but I've had a million other things to do! I've been spending a lot of time trying to get my fundraising up and going, and that's been going well. I'm up over €2,400 online for Jack and Jill, and over €2000 offline for Marymount and ARC. Incidentally, if you want to donate or sponsor one of my miles you can do so by clicking here.

Other than that I've been getting stuff together and getting myself organised for the trip. And now I'm here. In Dover. We left Cork yesterday around 1pm and arrived in Dover at dinnertime. We went straight to Varne Ridge, the caravan park where we're staying, and were met by the owners, David and Evelyn. They showed us to our caravan and gave us lots of info. Then I rang Mike Oram (my pilot's father, my contact for the swim) to get updates on the weather and when it was looking possible to swim. It had looked good a couple of days before but unfortunately the forecast had changed-winds were due to rise. He said that it looked like it would be at least the weekend before anything was moving. So time to settle in and get used to waiting!

We headed out for dinner to a pub down the road from the caravan park (the Royal Oak if anyone's interested!) that David and Evelyn had suggested-a good recommendation! The food was lovely, and we got TONS of it! Then some grocery shopping in Dover and back to the caravan to chill for a few hours before bed. I did try to get internet going but we had the wrong wireless password so nothing was happening (obviously that has since been rectified!).

So then today we woke up to a big change in weather. It was cloudy, and the wind had come up. It still didn't seem that strong-if I'd heard wind like that in Cork it wouldn't make me think twice about swimming in Sandycove. So I was wondering if it was really THAT bad. Until I saw the Channel itself. And the white horses. No hope of getting across in that. And it was only due to get worse :(

So we decided to do some more shopping for groceries and some stuff for the swim. First a trip to Lidl and then to Folkestone to have a look around there. I was hoping to get a swim in the harbour today but my throat and ears were scratchy and sore and I didn't feel 100% so I figured that it was time for lots of honey and lemon and ginger and that a swim wouldn't be the best thing to do. I do feel a lot better this evening except for being quite tired so I think it's going to be an early night...

A couple more things happened today...

The other lads arrived. I haven't seen Sylvain yet, I was talking to Owen earlier and he was in for a swim in the harbour, he said the temperature was lovely. I'm looking forward to getting in tomorrow hopefully...

Also, I talked to Mike and he said that it's looking bad right up until Monday. NOT the news I wanted, but I was expecting it. I need all the prayers I can get for good weather now!!

Now that I've written this I think it's gonna have to wait til the morning to get sent, I'm absolutely wrecked and don't feel like going down to connect to the network...so I'll send it first thing. I'll also try to get a post out tomorrow about following my swim...

LANDED!!!

2009-09-09T17:21:00.003+01:00

I'm landed in Dover. I flew into London yesterday with my mother and sister, we rented a car and drove down. It was gorgeous when we arrived, beautiful sun, lovely calm water. And a BAD forecast! We woke up this morning to winds and white horses on the water. So it looks like nothing is going to be moving for the next couple of days at least...

I'm keeping this short and sweet because I'm just grabbing a few minutes of internet before the library closes...my wireless at the caravan park isn't working yet. But I'll try to get a bigger post up in the next few days. Either way I'll try to update my twitter (http://twitter.com/lisaecummins) from my phone with what's going on. So keep checking!

Sponsor a Mile...

2009-08-25T23:08:00.002+01:00

In two weeks time I'll be in Dover. I can't wait! I'm doing very little training at this stage, lots of short swims to keep my muscles loose but lots of rest too. It's nice not to be doing the 10 and 12 hour swims anymore, but I'm getting impatient at this stage! Im looking forward to getting to Dover and getting the swim started.

In the meantime, it's time to concentrate on trying to raise some money for my charities. And this is where you come in. If you're reading this now, and are thinking to yourself, "I must sponsor her sometime"....GO AND DO IT!!!! No time like the present! My sponsorship page is here. No excuses!!

From now on, you can sponsor a mile of my swim. What this means is that if you donate €50 or more towards my charities, you can pick one of the miles of my swim as your own (miles still available are listed here). Then, sometime during that mile, you will get a text letting you know how I'm getting on (if I have a mobile number for you). €50 may seem like a lot-but I'm swimming 42 miles!! Think of where you were this time yesterday. Now imagine that you started swimming then...and you're still swimming...and you still have 6 or 8 hours ahead of you. That's gonna be me pretty soon. Don't you think that's worth €50?

The Last Long One...

2009-08-06T17:45:00.003+01:00

So, after the antics of Friday night/Saturday morning, an easy day was called for on Sunday. Two hours in the lake, just enough to stretch out the muscles and see where the pains were. Thankfully I didn't feel much in the way of pain-I was, however, FREEZING! In 17deg C, I felt colder than I had the night before in 12deg C. It really showed me how important rest is-when the body is tired everything is so much harder. So I'd like to say that I slept well that night in preparation for my 14 hour swim the following day. But I didn't. I had gotten bitten all across my stomach during the night swim by sea lice, and basically looked like I was covered in chicken pox. And they were just as itchy. So I kept waking up on Sunday night finding myself scratching them and making them sore and itchier. I think I got about an hour and a half's sleep all night, maybe two. Not such good preparation for a long swim! Of course, the one time when I did manage to fall fast asleep was just before the alarm went off at 5:45am....typical.

I got myself moving, had a nice big breakfast and headed for the lake. I was hoping to start as close to 7am as possible so that I would be finished before it got dark that evening. It was a dull, grey morning, which didn't make getting into the water a very inviting prospect. But I greased up and got in. The water felt much warmer than it had the day before thankfully-I really didn't want to have 14 hours of feeling cold ahead of me!

I knew that Mark Sexton, a fellow Channel aspirant who was taking the day out of his holidays to do a long swim, was due to join me around 8am. So I hung around close to the slip until he arrived and then we started doing laps-each lap was 2 miles so these broke up the day nicely into 1-hour segments or a little more. Perfect for feeding. A lap, then a feed, then another lap. At 10am Ossi arrived with hot soup for us. Lovely! He warned us that bad weather was due for the afternoon-possibly gale-force winds and thunderstorms. I was kinda hoping for the thunderstorms because if there was lightning it would give me a valid excuse to get out!! But for now the weather was fine so there was no excuse for it, just keep on swimming...

A few hours later my parents arrived with another hot delivery, more hot soup and flasks of hot water for Maxim. At this stage Mark was starting to feel tired-he realised that he hadn't eaten much the day before and his body wasn't as well-fueled as it could have been. He stayed another half-hour, about 6 hours in total, and then I was on my own. I knew that I would have about 6 hours on my own before Imelda and Ossi came to join me at 8pm that evening for my final hour and a half. This was the testing time. 6 hours up and down to the buoy on my own. Total boredom. The weather was starting to get worse too so there weren't even very many walkers around to make me feel like I had company. Nothing for it but to keep the head down and the arms moving. I timed myself for each lap to make sure that I was staying on pace.

Then at around 5pm my mother arrived with yet more hot food. In the lashing rain. It was colder out of the water than in the water at this stage. But time was passing quickly, with each feed knocking off another hour. At around 7:30pm my parents arrived back to make sure that everything was going ok. At this stage the weather was horrendous. Of course the lightning storms never materialised (although I know that I would have been giving out like mad after if they had arrived and had disrupted my swim regardless of how much I wished for them there and then!). But there was wind and rain, rain and more rain. I knew that Imelda and Ossi were going to be there a half hour later so I just swam back and forth to the forest across the lake until they arrived. At which time Imelda decided to get in and up the pace to "see how I dealt with it". Surprisingly I was able to keep up. I guess all this training has taught me how to pace myself. My final hour was just as fast as my first. And I got out after 14 hours feeling GREAT! Both physically and mentally. I don't know if it was because I knew it was my last long training swim or what, but everything just fell into place that day. I love days like that where everything feels easy. It shouldn't have been-I'd done a long swim a couple of days before, I hadn't slept well, the weather was horrible and I spent a lot of the day out there on my own. But I never once had to really argue with myself about staying in there. I knew that I had to do 14 hours and I just went and did it. And I'm really hoping that it will be like that on my Channel day too. Head down, one arms in front of the other, over and over again. I'm not thinking for a minute that it's going to be easy. But I've done all the distance preparation I can do and I am ready to have my go. Bring it on!

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night...

2009-08-04T15:22:00.000+01:00

This weekend has been a long one-yes, it was the bank holiday weekend, but it was also a really big weekend for my swimming training. I swam almost 25hours over 3days. It's not the most I've swam in a short time (I did 21hours over 2days a few weeks back, and I've done 27hours over 3days a few times), but it included my longest swim so far, plus a very interesting swim...

On Friday night, I did my first night swim. Most Channel aspirants train for an hour or two at night in preparation in case they end up swimming in the dark on the day of their swim. In my case, I will definitely be swimming in the dark. Perhaps over two nights depending on what time of day I start. So it was REALLY important for me to see what it was like to swim in the dark and to make sure that it wouldn't freak me out on the day!

Swimming at night can be difficult for a few different reasons. First of all, there is the obvious one: swimming in darkness. Not being able to see anything but whatever lights are around from the pilot boat and other ships. Another issue is the cold. The water of course does not change temperature at night. But the air does. And because the body is used to being asleep at night, it will feel colder anyway. There's tiredness. I must admit that I'm a bit of a night owl-if I'm working towards a deadline I tend to get my best work done at 1 or 2am. But even so, once it comes to 3 or 4am, my body wants to sleep. Apparently the hour before dawn is the worst and the time at which people feel at their lowest.

So to experience all of this, it was decided that I would start swimming when it was starting to get dark, and finish swimming when it was fully bright again or an hour or two after. A great idea in theory. In practice I was kinda thinking that an hour or two would be a lot nicer! I didn't really like the thoughts of spending a whole night swimming in the waters of Sandycove as the lights in the houses went off and people went off to their cosy beds. In fact, I spent most of the week dreading it. But I knew it was important to do it-even more so because of the fact that I was dreading it. As I've so often said to myself this year, what's life without a challenge?!

So on Friday evening at 8:45pm, I left for Sandycove, nervous and excited. And the strangest thing happened. On the radio came the song 'Nightswimming' by R.E.M. I haven't heard that song in a couple of years and now I hear it when I'm on my way to my first night swim. A very strange coincidence! A good omen hopefully :)

I arrived at Sandycove at 9:30pm, armed with my light-sticks, and enough food to feed an army (seriously-if anyone looked into my car they'd have thought I was going away for the whole weekend!). Imelda and Ossi had kindly offered to be in Sandycove all night to feed me hot food and drinks, and I had two kayakers-Niall was going to do the first 4hours and then Padraig would take over until it got bright. So everything was in place for me to get started.

I was dreading how cold the water was going to be. I had been in Sandycove the day before for a couple of hours, and it was really cold-somewhere between 12 and 13 deg C. I was freezing, and that was by day with the sun shining. I didn't know how I was going to be able to cope with that temperature in the colder air. But there was only one way to find out! So I started my swim at 10:20pm. And it actually didn't feel too cold! I was plesantly surprised that my hands didn't react badly to the temperature at all-I had been worried that the muscles in my right hand and forearm would seize up as they usually do in cold water and trigger my shoulder pain. But they didn't, so all was good.

We couldn't go around the island because it had been stormy all day and there was still a very big swell around the back. So out to the beach we headed and from there we swam up and down the front of the island. Darkness fell, which was actually quite nice-I enjoyed the peaceful feeling of being out there on my own, just swimming along next to the kayak with no distractions. By day there's always something going on, something to watch or look for. But at night there's nothing. So it's much easier to zone out and just swim. It was time for the first feed and I hadn't noticed an hour passing at all.

We had decided that I was going to use the swim to try out different foods since I had people there to prepare them for me. So during the night I tried different soups, banana, creamed rice, pot noodle, jaffa cake bars, mini rolls, hot chocolate, and of course, Maxim. Everything went down well and stayed down so all was good.

The first 3 hours passed quickly and then Padraig got in to get used to the dark while Niall was still there. So I had an hour with the two kayaks in the water...during which I managed to get a jellyfish sting, my first in Sandycove this year! Not being able to see anything in the water is actually a pretty good thing when it comes to me and jellyfish. When I can see them I spend my time watching for them and trying to swim around them when I do see them. Which isn't good because it disrupts my stroke. And the sting really isn't THAT bad, the one I got that night was gone within 10minutes. I just find it so hard to convince myself of that when I see them around me by day!

Niall left at the end of that hour, and Ossi got in to swim with me for a while. I hadn't realised just how bright the lights I was using were until he got in and I could see his. I got electronic lights from Freda a while back that she advises all swimmers to use now rather than the previously-used glow sticks. They're supposed to shine for a radius of 2 miles. And they really work! They must have looked so strange though for someone driving down the road-thankfully Imelda had the foresight to warn the neighbours what we were up to the day before!

It was fun having someone to swim with for a while, it broke the monotony of it all. By the time Ossi was getting out I knew that I only had a couple of hours left before it got bright again. I also knew, however, that those hours would probably be the hardest. And they were. I started getting very cold and just wanted to be out of there. I never really got tired, but I would have done anything to get out of that cold, dark water and into my warm, cosy bed. Everyone was great though, keeping me as warm as possible with the hot food, and making me push harder when I didn't want to.

Eventually the sun's rays started peeking through. It was very pretty watching the light grow brighter and brighter. Unfortunately though I think I was mentally expecting to feel warmer when sun came up. And of course it didn't really, it would take a few hours for the heat of the sun to have any effect. So I started really noticing the cold at this stage. My muscles had started feeling it too-my shoulder and upper back muscles had gotten very tight, as had my right arm (but strangely not my hands where I normally feel it!) and my thighs were starting to cramp from the cold, to the point where I couldn't really kick. And of course I was probably getting colder as a result. On my 6:45am feed I decided to look at the temperature on my watch. I had been avoiding looking at it because I was afraid that I was only imagining the cold and that it would tell me that it was actually 16deg or something. But no. The watch read at 12.4deg C. And if general opinion is to be believed that body temperature has an effect on the watch reading, the actual temperature could have been closer to 11.4deg. I had never swam so long in that temperature before. Let alone at night. I was actually quite happy to see that reading though because it meant that what I was feeling was reality, and not just my mind playing tricks on me.

I talked to the others and decided that since I couldn't go for a shower in Kinsale until 8am, I'd do one more hour and then get out and head into Kinsale to get warmed up. But at 7:00am, the others called me out and decided that it was enough. And I wasn't going to argue! So after 8hrs 44mins, my night swim was over.

All in all I quite enjoyed it, apart from the freezing cold. And I think it was probably good to experience that too, because it won't be that cold in the Channel, so I'll have that to remind myself of what I have done when I'm at a wimpish moment!! One of the big sayings in the Channel swimming world is "prepare for the worst, hope for the best". And I think this night swim qualifies. Dover water temperatures are currently around 16deg and might even be a degree warmer by September if the weather is nice. So I'm not expecting 11 or 12deg at any point!

Thanks so much to the gang who helped me on the swim-Imelda, Ossi, Padraig, Niall. It can't have been fun for them hanging around all night. But I really appreciate having the opportunity to do it and it has proved to be a big confidence-booster.

I think that the rest of my weekend's adventures will have to wait for another post...time and space are of limited supply! I'll finish off the rest of it in the next few days...

Where to start?

2009-07-03T22:32:00.001+01:00

Well...I guess I'll go back to where my last post in May ended and take it from there...

When I started in the sea at the end of May it was still cold-10deg C. Which didn't help my shoulder at all, the cold was causing everything to tense up and making it worse. I was getting very annoyed that I couldn't get back into the training the way I wanted to, and at the same time I knew that I just had to be patient and let it heal. And then I was unbelievably lucky...we had a weekend of absolutely beautiful weather that brought the temperature up to 14deg C.

I was in Cavan that weekend for the Lough Sheelin swim. I had signed up to do the 15km swim but from the way my shoulder had been acting up the few days previously I figured I'd see if I could get to 5km and then decide what to do from there. We travelled up to Cavan on the Saturday and headed to Martin Cullen's house-the race organiser and our very kind host for the weekend. He had prepared a huge dinner spread so we ate until we were bursting and then chatted for a while before getting to bed. Sunday morning was an early one but it did start with the yummiest porridge ever made for us by Martin! A great start to the day. We headed for the lake and got ready to start. It was a beautiful day, not a ripple on the lake. I was sharing a kayaker with Imelda, and decided that I'd head to the 5km mark and see how I felt then. So off we went. The water temperature was gorgeous-15deg C, and it was lovely and clear-normally I'm not a big fan of freshwater swimming because it can be quite murky, but this wasn't really. It was a perfect day for a swim, and for the first time in a long while, my shoulder didn't hurt :) I was feeling great! We got to the 5km mark and I decided that I'd go to the 7.5km and stop there at the half-way point. I was feeling good enough to turn around and start coming back (the course was 7.5km to the other end of the lake and 7.5km back) but the most I had managed the week before was 5km and I was sore after that so I didn't want to risk pushing it too far. And I didn't regret my decision after-I got out feeling really good for having completed more than I had planned and I wasn't sore. When I got back to the start I sunbathed for a while, did the 1km swim to stretch out, and basically enjoyed the afternoon. It had been so long since I just enjoyed swimming-it had become such a chore and something that I had to do rather than something that I wanted to do. And I had gotten to the point where I thought that the injury was never going to go away, that I was going to spend the summer fighting it. But the swim showed that it could go away, and it would in time. It was just a really important day for my recovery I think-both physically and mentally. And I can't wait to go back next year and do the full 15k!

Now it's time to go and get myself ready for my long swims this weekend...more to come on Monday...I figure that if I keep posting in bite-sized pieces I might eventually catch up! :)

Where did June go?

2009-07-01T20:55:00.000+01:00

Things have been so crazy the past month. As they have been the month before and the month before that I guess. But now that I'm in the sea I've got travel time to and from training, plus all the time that it takes to try to coordinate company for my swims. Not a straightforward task when I'm doing 8 and 10 hour swims!! But all has been good, and yes, I have been doing those long swims, and the best part is that I've been able to-shoulder pain is GONE!! Mostly anyway-on the very rough days it twinges but then I just get out of the rough conditions-luckily there are a few areas around Sandycove that are always quite calm. And I've swum enough in those rough conditions to know that I'm able to if needs be-I can't see any benefit in swimming through them for the sake of it and ending up injured again.

June has been quite a fun month with lots of different things going on. Ned organised a long distance training camp, so we had some visitors around for a couple of weeks. In the middle of that we had the Champion of Champions and a 6-hour qualification swim for those doing the Channel this year. As well as that I've been swimming in lots of different places-Oysterhaven, Cobh, Loch Ine, Inniscara, even Kerry. It's been great to get a bit of variety-Sandycove is great for the boring mental training that needs to be done for the Channel but I think I'd go insane if I didn't get out of there every so often!!

And on top of all of that, the weather has been GORGEOUS! We did have a few days of extremely cold water in the middle of the month after a storm, but other than that it's been positively tropical-water temps are up as high as 15 or 16deg C. It means that the jellies are in, but it's mainly the pink non-stinging ones so it's not so bad. And it's worth it to not be shivering after every long swim!!

For now I don't have time to get into any more detail about what I've been up to, but I've got a rest day Friday so hopefully I'll get to put up some more about what I've been up to then :)

Injury Time is Almost Over!

2009-05-22T19:19:00.001+01:00

I guess I've been pretty lucky up until now on the injury front, especially with the distances that I've been doing in the pool. Unfortunately my luck has run out this past week. My shoulder that's been a little sore on and off the past few months decided to really start complaining last week. On Thursday it was quite sore, but Friday was the real decider-it was very painful to swim and didn't get any better as I warmed up. Time to rest it.

So I've been going to physio the past week and I've done no swimming, which felt very strange (as well as frustrating). But thankfully the break seems to be doing it good-I'm going to be easing back into it after the weekend. I can't wait!! I just have to be very careful now that I don't do too much too soon and end up back where I was. But hopefully the worst is over :)

So now the fun starts-I'm in the sea full-time from Monday onwards. All along I'd been really looking forward to this but I was really hoping that the water would have warmed up a bit by now! But I'm not going to be able to do huge distances next week anyway with my shoulder still recovering so it's a perfect time to start increasing my time in the cold water. Hopefully by the time I'm doing slightly longer stuff we'll have had some warmer weather (although I won't hold my breath!). And regardless of the temperature, it means that I have no tumble turns, no chlorine, no blue lines, no people in the way from now on. And that can only be a good thing!

Doubling Up...

2009-05-06T18:58:00.001+01:00

It was a really great weekend's swimming. The Spike Island swim was happening Sunday. So on Saturday I took it easy, a nice short pool session to stretch out after all the week's metres.

Sunday arrived bright and sunny to my delight :) We met in Cobh town and changed and got ourselves ready to go. I'm sure that people passing us were thinking that we were totally mad...but what's new?! We got into the water around 11:30, high tide was around 1pm so we were hoping to get a push from the tide at the end.

The temperature felt great, around 11deg C, about a degree warmer than Sandycove (which seems to be the coldest of the local swimming spots at the moment!!!). We had our instructions as to where to get our bearings from so off we went, Danny and David with a rib and myself and Imelda with the boat. It seemed like no time had passed by the time we reached the island, although it took us about half an hour. From that I was figuring that we should be done in just over an hour and a half.

As we swam along the back of the island the water temperature dropped considerably and I started getting cold. Then we turned the corner to head back towards Cobh and it got very choppy. At this stage I was counting down the minutes-I was still cold and that was making me tired and the choppy water was annoying me. I figured that we had about a half an hour left at the most. Boy was I wrong!

We were taking our bearings off the Cathedral spire, and for ages it didn't seem to be getting any closer. What was actually happening was that the tide had turned so we were fighting the river and the tide, so we were getting closer but at a very slow pace. We realised this when we had to stop to let a ship pass. While we were stopped we felt ourselves drifting like crazy away from the town. So for the rest of the swim we were swimming back upriver towards our starting point. It felt like we were going in slow motion or something, we were passing the buildings SO slowly. And all this time I was miserable-I had never heated up after the temperature drop earlier and I just wanted to be out of there. But there was no way that I was getting on that boat!!

In the end it took us 2hours and 35minutes to complete the swim. Over double the length of my longest sea swim up until then! I didn't appreciate it at the time, but now it feels great to know that I can do that long in 11deg C. And I wasn't even that cold after-I shivered a bit but warmed up fast. I've been a lot worse! It was a really successful swim and I'm really happy now that we had to fight hard to complete it, no point in making training easy!

Monday was a bank holiday, so I decided to go down to Sandycove...the plan was to do three laps and I had company for all of them so all was good. What I didn't factor in was a very cold wind and how tired I was from the day before. After the first lap I was cold and decided that two was enough. No point in torturing myself on my day off! As it turned out noone ended up going around again anyway. Although I'd been hoping for more, I was very happy with what I'd done, especially after the day before. A good weekend's swimming all round :)

So now we're into the next week and I have a bit of an easy week...yesterday was the first day in ages that I didn't feel stiff at all after the three low mileage days in a row, it felt really strange! And today I had one horrible session and came back later after college and did a great one, funny how that goes. Lets hope the rest of the week goes well.

On the fundraising side of things, I got some more sponsorship this week from my fantastic Connecticut cousins, thanks guys :) It's great to see the money coming in. Jack and Jill have also put a profile of me on their website which is cool, it's great to see them getting involved and publicising the swim. Don't forget, if you want to sponsor me, you can do it here. Thanks!

It's the weekend :)

2009-05-02T11:01:00.002+01:00

So my latest facebook status reads..."Lisa can't figure out where the week went...but who cares, it's the weekend!". And it's so true. This week has just totally flown by in a blur of pool-Sandycove-eating-sleeping. It's another long week metres-wise so my plan (knowing that this is a long weekend and I wouldn't want to be spending it in the pool!) was to get as much done as I could early in the week so that then I could have a bit of a break over the weekend. And the tides earlier on this week were evening tides too, so not only was I doing a lot in the pool, but I was then trying to get a trip to the sea in later on too. So I did have a couple of days this week where I literally spent the whole day training, eating, and traveling. So now I'm absolutely wrecked after the week. BUT...it means that I practically have the weekend off!! Yesterday was just a short one, I'm meeting someone today for a short pool swim, I've got the Spike swim tomorrow (postponed after horrible weather last weekend) and the plan is to do a double in Sandycove on Monday. All nice, easy, short stuff! Yay for time off! Of course I've got the million other things that I should have been doing all week to catch up on instead...

It didn't feel like a great week training-wise. Nothing like last week anyway. But it tends to go like that I find....for every really good week there are a few bad ones. With the two long weeks in a row I was quite tired this week, and that wasn't helped by the fact that I was trying to squash everything into four days either. And that meant a lot of arguing with myself about why I should stay in the pool and get stuff done rather than just leaving it til tomorrow...when of course I won't feel like doing it either tomorrow! But it was worth all the tiredness to have a few nice easy days now.

I really am getting sick of the pool-I can't wait to be in the sea full-time! It's now May, so officially 'summer-time'...although Irish seasons don't necessarily follow this-in fact, they almost never do! I am starting to get more time in the open water since it came up to 10deg C. However, this past week we've had some cold weather again, and unfortunately it seems to have ruined the progress that the sea had made....both Monday and Tuesday evenings felt very cold in Sandycove, colder than it had been for a few weeks. So lets hope for good weather coming back in to heat things up again. The sooner it warms up, the sooner I can get out of the pool, and I'm SO looking forward to that!

Happy days!

2009-04-23T21:46:00.005+01:00

It's one of those weeks where everything is going well...at least in my swimming world anyway since I haven't had time for everything else!! It's a 75km week and I'm already over 60km and I've only got 4 days done! Monday was short but I've had long sessions the last 3 days, and they've gone really well-I actually really surprised myself at how strong I was at the end of today's 20km session even though I've done so much. I guess training is paying off :)

I've also been in the sea quite a bit. I did my longest swim of the year so far on Saturday, an hour and a quarter, and I was fine after-a bit of shivering but nothing unusual! And I did my first double lap of the year on Sunday. It was a very comfortable swim-conditions were good and I had fun doing it. I also went to the sea for a short swim yesterday-I'm trying to get there as often as I can now, the longer I can stay in the sooner it will be that I can get out of the pool and I'm SO sick of the pool! And this weekend is going to be busy on the open water front too-I've got my normal Sandycove swim on Sunday but I'm also doing my first organised swim of the year on Saturday...it's a 5km swim around Spike Island in Cobh Harbour.

Spike Island Swim Route

I haven't thought much about the swim to be honest because I've been so busy swimming (and eating!) all week that I haven't really had time for anything else! But I'm sure that it will be a fun swim and it should be a little longer than I've done so far this year so it will be a good test for me. Hopefully it will go well, a good ending to a really good training week!

Feed, swim, feed, swim......

2009-04-19T16:10:00.004+01:00

I know that it's a while since I posted. I've been trying to settle back into the routine (which hasn't exactly worked with the pool so busy over the Easter holidays!) and I've also been doing a lot of thinking about the swim. My trip to Malta gave me a lot of food for thought. I came back from Malta feeling much less confident about my swim than when I went there. I loved the camp, it was really well-organised, we did lots of swimming and it was a lot of fun. And all the swims went really well, even the 6-hour swim was relatively easy (given the fact that we were stung from head to toe during it!). But I came home feeling a certain unease about what I'd taken on. And I've been trying to figure out why. I can only put it down to one of two things:

The cold. I didn't expect to be cold out there. I've done lots of cold water training over the winter, and I was comfortable in lower temperatures last summer. But I have lost a lot of weight training since then and I think that's what's making the difference. So I guess the camp was a good indicator that I need to start gaining back some of that weight over the next few months. Probably just 6 or 7 pounds-I wasn't so cold that I was shivering after the swims or anything. But enough that I'll be more comfortable in the water. I know that once I start getting in for longer lengths of time over the summer I will get better with the cold again. I need to keep remembering that the swim is almost 5 months away yet-plenty of time to get better used to the cold!

I had too much time to think about what I'm doing. Since we decided that I'd go for a two-way swim, I've been dealing with the practical aspects of it-changing my plans with my pilot, training more, contacting people who have done it before. But I haven't really had a chance to think about what it means. What it will be like to swim for over 30 hours. How tired I'm going to be. How hard it will be to leave that beach in France when I'll be so happy to have completed my one-way and then I have to do it all again. And I had a chance to think about all of this in Malta. And when I started to think about all of it I started to doubt myself. Can I really swim for 30+ hours? Will I really have the determination to turn around in France? But I realise there's no point in asking myself those questions. Because how will I ever know unless I try? I just need to stay positive and know that I'm working as hard as I can to prepare for this, and I will complete it. Freda's big advice for me about the two-way was "don't think about what you're doing, just swim from feed to feed". And I've heard that advice so often. But I realise now just how important it is. If I think about the whole distance that I'm going to swim it seems so long and overwhelming. But as long as I can swim to the next feed I will keep swimming.

A lot of people talk about visualising their swim and how important it is to imagine leaving the boat and swimming to the beach, and how they will feel as they leave the beach, etc, until they imagine themselves landing, having finished their swim. That's just not for me. I don't want to know what's ahead of me. No matter how many times I imagine it, it will never be like that on the day. It's not that I'm in denial about what I'm doing, far from it. I just firmly believe that if I can concentrate on getting as much training in as I can and doing tons of open water swimming so that I can learn to deal with any problems that may arise on my swim, that will help me a lot more than imagining it all. I'm a very practical person anyway, I need to do things rather than think about them!

So from now on I'm just going to concentrate on getting lots of training and long swims done and get used to the routine...feed, swim, feed, swim, feed, swim....I'll get there when I get there!

Milestones

2009-04-11T16:45:00.004+01:00

Today is one of a few milestones that have happened in my training over the last few weeks. It is 5 months today to the start of my swim tides. 5 months of training left. It seems like a lot now (in fact it seems neverending sometimes!), but I know how fast time has been passing-I'm sure that those 5 months will go by quickly too!

I also had two milestones while I was in Malta. On March 29th it was a year since my first sea swim. It feels like forever! It's been a great year :) Also, I have now completed over a million metres since I started training with Eilís in October. That's about 28.5 times across the Channel. Sounds like a lot-but of course that's done over 6 months, so on average it's about one Channel crossing per week. I wonder how much that figure will have changed by next September!

My next big milestone needs to be my first double lap of the year...I stayed in for an hour today so I can last the time, I just need to find someone else who wants to join me...hopefully tomorrow or Monday.

Happy Easter...enjoy the chocolate eggs! (I'm making the big sacrifice of eating lots of them in the name of gaining weight...it's a big sacrifice I tell you!)

Swimtrek

2009-04-08T00:23:00.002+01:00

So I've finally put together a (rather long!) report on my Swimtrek camp. I've posted it below with each day getting a seperate post. For those of you who don't want to read all of that...suffice to say that I had a fabulous time, did tons of swimming, and would go back in a heartbeat. And I completed my 6-hour swim there so I am now qualified to swim the Channel :)

I'll put up photos over the next few days and some of my thoughts on the trip...what I learned and things like that. All in good time!

Day 5: All Over :(

2009-04-08T00:19:00.002+01:00

On our last morning we had a nice relaxing swim up to one of the caves just outside the bay. It has a tunnel through that gets really dark until you can see the light coming through the water from the other side, it was so pretty. The tunnel leads back out into the bay but there is a rock at the end of it that extends a couple of metres down into the water. So to get out that way we had to dive down under the rock and come up the other side. I was a little nervous to dive down because my ears don’t do so well down deep but they were fine, and it was well worth doing it just for the fun factor (plus it meant we didn’t have to swim back through the tunnel and around to get back into the bay!). It was a fun ending to a really fantastic camp :)

Then it was time to say our goodbyes...I met some really great people on the trip and I'm sure I'll be seeing some of them again in the future. It was a really well-organised camp and I just wish I was back there now...I'm jealous of the people who still have it all ahead of them over the next few weeks!!!

Day 4: The Qualifier

2009-04-08T00:18:00.003+01:00

We had an early start on the morning of the 6-hour Channel qualifying swim. I expected to wake up feeling nervous about it but I didn’t start to get butterflies until after breakfast (or maybe it was just indigestion from all the food I had stuffed down my throat!!!). We got greased up and got in the water for an 8:30am start. The plan for our group was to do 8 laps of the bay outside the hotel and then head along the cliffs for a 5km swim to a larger bay, where we would stay for the rest of the time. So we started off with our nice wide circles, and we had 4 done when Lizzie came over to us and told us that the groups were separating too much and to start heading out along the cliffs. So we did. It was a bit choppier when we got out of the bay, but I didn’t mind that, it took my mind off the cold! Apparently at this stage there was thunder and lightning off in the distance and they toyed with the idea of calling off the swim-thankfully they decided that we were ok for now! Then my worst nightmares appeared…jellies. Lots of them. We swam through them for at least 10minutes before reaching clear water and this time I wasn’t so lucky, I got a few stings. At first I was panicking, having to breathe every two strokes just to get air in. But after a couple of minutes I got used to them and just kept swimming fast to try to get away from them. So maybe it was a good thing-I need to get used to them at some stage!

When we got closer to our destination we were told that the bay that we were swimming towards was full of jellies and that we wouldn’t be able to swim there. So instead we were to turn around and head back to the bay outside the hotel and finish off the 6-hours there. I don’t know what upset me more about this news-the fact that we were going to be spending 2 or 3 hours going around in small circles, or the thoughts of the jellyfish that we would have to swim back through to get there! But there was nothing for it except to turn around and start swimming.

It was an eventful trip back. First of all we hit the jellies again. The tide or the current must have been sweeping them in because the sea was thick with them on the way back. They were all you could see in the water and every stroke we were getting stung. My lips and face got very sore from all the stinging. One went down the front of my swimsuit (something which I have always dreaded!) but I didn’t even stop to take it out-I figured that the time I was stopped I’d only be getting stung more. Thankfully it made its own way out somehow!! It seemed to take forever but eventually we got past them. And then the weather decided that it would test us. A storm rolled in and we had thunder and lightning and rain…I was just really hoping that they wouldn’t pull us at that stage because we had about 3 hours done and I didn’t really like the prospect of starting it all over again. Now if they had tried to pull us during the jellyfish attack it would have been a different story...!

Eventually we got back to the bay and things were calm after that. Freda mixed up a nice strong feed for us at 5 hours and we got yummy kit-kats, a nice surprise! So that had us going strong for the last hour-myself and Mark even sprinted to the boat at the end (although I must admit I called the sprint a little early-by the time we got there I was winded!!). 6 hours and 3 minutes…and I came out of there wanting to do more. A very successful qualifying swim :)

Of course the rest of the evening was spent eating and drinking and celebrating the day’s achievements! Everyone did really well, a good day's work!!

Day 3: Relaxation!

2009-04-08T00:17:00.002+01:00

We started the third day with breakfast and another seminar, this time on hypothermia and mental preparation for the Channel. An interesting fact that they told us was that in water of 20deg C or less a person *will* get hypothermic-it’s just a case of how long it will take. So I guess what we try to do with our cold water training is to put it off as long as we can rather than to actually prevent it.

The talk about mental preparation was interesting-and a little scary for me. I’ve never had a time in the water where I really wanted to get out and someone had to convince me to stay in. Of course I argue with myself when I don’t feel like being in there, but so far I’ve always managed to shut up that little voice that tries to tell me that I’ve done enough and I should get out and rest. But many people have had times when that voice was just too loud and they just wanted to get out more than anything else. And I’m afraid that the first time that I’m going to experience this is on my Channel swim day. But all I can do is keep drowning that voice out so that I know how to-if I do it successfully in training then hopefully I’ll be able to do it on the day too!

After the seminar we headed down to the bay to do some stroke filming and a short swim, only about 20mins-just enough to stretch out but still stay warm! We then went to the guide’s apartment for lunch and to watch the videos. The analysis was interesting, it’s always fun to see my stroke and how different it looks to what I imagine. I didn’t really find out anything new-the couple of faults that were pointed out are things that I already knew about and that Eilis has given out to me about already! But judging by our chats after some people found it very useful.

We went for a walk with the guides for the afternoon-it was a gorgeous day (contrary to the forecast!), the sun was shining and not a cloud in the sky. So it was a really nice day to do some exploring. Of course when we came back we had to have a dip to cool off!

After we had a short swim, we had another seminar. More advice about the Channel swim, things like crew and what their role is and lots of useful bits and pieces of information that would never have occurred to me until we were out at sea and it becomes a major issue-like having spare torch batteries.

And then it was time to eat again…dinnertime and an early night to prepare for our 6-hour swim the following morning.

Day 2: A Surprise

2009-04-08T00:15:00.002+01:00

The plan for our second proper swimming day was to do the Gozo-Malta crossing (about 5km)-we were told that we would be swimming for 2.5 hours so once we reached Malta we would keep going along the coast until the time was up. We got up early and got a bus to the harbour, where we got on ‘Hey Lampuki’, our boat for the trip. The wind was not being as cooperative as we would have liked, and it was quite choppy as we headed over to our starting point. The one advantage of this was that apparently jellyfish don’t like rough water so they tend to stay deep when it’s rough-I’ll take waves any day over jellies!!

We started out in our three separate groups so that we wouldn’t be too far apart. We set off in the middle, with Lizzie in a rib looking after us. We headed towards Comino, the small island between Malta and Gozo. I was swimming with Mark and Trevor, we stayed together pretty well except when myself and Mark kept heading off in the wrong direction and were told to go follow Trevor…my sense of direction is so bad, I’m glad that I’ll have a boat to follow on the big day of I could easily end up in Spain or Belgium!! Even though it was rough, the water was really clear and under us we could see all types of sea life-things that glowed, things that were all different shapes-they were really cool to look at but I was happy that they were well below us, I didn’t really want to become closely acquainted with any of them!

As we came close to the Comino shore the sea calmed down…and lo and behold, the jellies came out in force. I think I may have mentioned (once or twice!) that I’m not the world’s biggest fan of jellyfish. Far from it. They freak me out big time. So when we came across a whole load of them I was NOT a happy camper. My first reaction was to stop and see what the others were going to do. Which apparently is the worst reaction you can have for two reasons. First of all, when you tread water, the currents you create drag the jellies towards you. Not what I was going for! And second of all…the most obvious thing…when you lift your head up, you can’t see them any more. So then you’re getting stung without even being able to see what’s stinging you! Regardless anyway I didn’t stop for very long-the two lads were swimming along quickly to get out of the shoal, oblivious to my panic. So I figured that I just had to put the head down, swim as fast as I could through them and hope that they would get out of my way.

When we got away from them, we stopped to see who was stung where. Amazingly I managed to escape, Mark got a couple of horrible stings across his forehead and Trevor got a few too. Not sure why they didn’t touch me but I certainly wasn’t complaining!

From there we swam along the Comino coast and through the Blue Lagoon-a really beautiful area-in the summer they actually put lanes in there for people to swim. It’s just like a really big, really pretty outdoor swimming pool-you can see to the ground and it’s covered in sand, so the water looks a really pretty turquoise colour. The kind of place that makes all those jellies worthwhile!

From there we headed further along the coast and Lizzie brought us through a really cool tunnel-she does the shorter distance Gozo Swimtrek trips (the ones that people go on to have fun!) so she knows where all the cool places are!! It was nice to be exploring a bit after our circles the day before. However, it wasn’t to last :( Lizzie called us together and told us that we were to head back to the Blue Lagoon-the groups were getting too split up so they wanted us to do laps there for the rest of the time. We weren’t too happy by this prospect but there was nothing we could do. At least by the time we got there we only had about 45mins left so it went by quite quickly.

We were all happy with our morning swim and were anxious to find out what the plan for the afternoon was-they kept it securely under wraps until we had lunch and were starting to warm up and get comfy. Then they dropped the bomb. A 3-hour swim in the afternoon. And we were getting into the water in half an hour. I don’t think that anyone really welcomed that news. I had been hoping for a nice stretched-out hour to recover from the morning and to relax before the 6-hour the following day. However, the other thing they told us was that conditions looked better for Wednesday than for Tuesday so we were going to put the 6-hour off for a day.

Nothing for it except to go get ready to swim. I was still a little cold by the time that we were setting off-it actually meant that the water felt a little warmer though so maybe it wasn’t a bad thing. We set off around Cominoto, the small island next to the Blue Lagoon, then the route took us back through the Blue Lagoon and further along in the direction that we had been going that morning before we turned back. We swam for maybe an hour and a quarter before turning back to swim along the cliffs back to the Blue Lagoon. We knew that once we were back there we were going to be going in circles again so myself and Mark took the longest possible route back-hugging the cliffs the whole way rather than taking direct lines from point to point! We really didn’t want to have to do circles for any longer than we had to. We still ended up swimming around the Blue Lagoon for over an hour-at this stage the prettiness had just about lost its appeal, we were BORED! And just then the sun came out :) It was such a welcome sight, we had sun for about 40mins and it really helped with taking my mind off the swim. I really do hope that I get some sun on the day of my Channel swim-it’s not only about feeling warmer, it just makes me feel much more positive.

We finished the swim and headed back for some well-deserved dinner. It was a really good day-I really didn’t want to get in for that 3-hour swim but once I got in the water I actually enjoyed it most out of all the swims so far. I think that all those days when I’m in the pool and just want to be somewhere else are beginning to pay off!

Day 1: Swimming in Circles

2009-04-08T00:14:00.000+01:00

On Sunday morning we met for breakfast in the hotel and then headed to a meeting area for a briefing about what the week would entail. We were introduced properly to the two guides and also to the rest of the group, everyone had arrived at that stage. About half of the group were signed up for a Channel swim, a few people were there to increase their open water distance and then we had a couple of non-swimmers along with their partners. We were given some information about how the week would work-the plan was for two swims a day and all the swims were to be timed swims rather than trying to cover a particular distance. We were to keep in our groups and try to swim together as much as possible. They wouldn't give us any information in advance about how much we were going to be doing each day-they wanted to keep us on our toes! Finally all of the chat was done and we were told to get our stuff together and that we were doing a 1hour swim in the bay outside the hotel.

We all got ready and greased up, and in we went. It didn't really matter if we stayed in our groups or not because we were only swimming around in circles of about 400-500m anyway so they told us to go at our own pace. Regardless, I soon realised that I had a very similar pace to one of the guys in my group, Mark. We stuck together for the swim, and swam together for the rest of the week-it's always so nice to find people that you can swim with comfortably-usually during a long swim one person will slow down more than the other but we must have slowed down the same amount because we stayed together even during the longer swims! It was really nice to have company for the week.

The circles started to get very boring-I think we did 8 rounds of the bay in the hour...so when they told us at lunch that we were doing 2hours in the bay again that afternoon, we were going mad! Myself and Mark decided to make the circles as wide as we possibly could, so we swam out towards the edge of the bay until we got shouted at and then kept as close as possible to the edges the whole way around! It made a small difference-we did 14 of the wider laps in the afternoon.

It wasn't a hard day by any means, but it was very boring. But then again, swimming the Channel will be very boring. Freda’s advice when people complain about the boredom of training is “you’re swimming the Channel, it’s meant to be cold and boring!”. So I guess that it was a good training day…mentally anyway.

After the swims we had a seminar about Channel swimming…the rules and regulations, the admin side of things that we need to get sorted and some advice about feeding. Freda gave us the feeding plan that she has made out for her swimmers in Dover, which will prove very useful I think. Lots of helpful information!

Introductions

2009-04-08T00:07:00.003+01:00

The camp began on Saturday evening with us all meeting each other and meeting our guides, John Coningham-Rolls, Simon Murie and Freda Streeter. We were all very happy to have Freda there, she has trained so many Channel swimmers in Dover each summer and is a gold mine of knowledge and information. We were told that another guide, Lizzie de Bono, would arrive the following day too. We met the others in the group but some hadn't arrived yet so we left proper introductions for the following morning.

They wasted no time in getting us in the water-we were instructed to bring swim gear to the meeting and they told us that we were doing a short swim in the bay outside the hotel. It really was a short swim-we only stayed in for about 10mins. Surprisingly, the water felt cold...even though it was 15deg C! I expected it to feel comfortable after having swam in much colder temperatures at home all winter. But it definitely felt chilly.

We swam around in a small loop, they were judging to see which group each of us would swim with-they break the swimmers into three groups by speed so that it's easier to manage having 14 swimmers in the water at once. I ended up in the middle group which I expected, I'm very much an average speed swimmer! After our swim it was time for dinner and then bed...the plan for the morning was to meet for proper introductions and briefing and then a swim. Much to look forward to...

Swimtrek Countdown

2009-03-27T16:54:00.010Z

It's been a really fun couple of weeks with everyone finding out about my big plans! Some people have been surprised, many suspected something was going on anyway with all the extra training I've been doing. Everyone has been really supportive though which is great-I've had lots of encouragement and offers of help-people offering to keep me company during my long swims in the summer and even a couple of people offering me boat/kayak support so that I can do some longer swims or get away from Sandycove for a bit (although I'm dying to get down there full-time now, I'm sure I'll get tired of it fast when I'm spending hours there every day!). It's been really great to have such a positive reaction. I've even got a few big donations on my charity page, which is great...keep those coming!

The next big thing in my training is the Swimtrek long distance training camp, which starts this Sunday. So I'm currently in Malta...I travelled here yesterday to get a couple of days of sun before the camp starts! It's beautiful here, the weather is like nice Irish summer weather-not quite as warm as I would like but it is only March! And it's looking like it's going to get nicer over the next few days, which is good. I've already got tanlines from the last two days anyway so it's probably a good thing that it's not any warmer! The sea looks gorgeous too...as you can see from the pictures below...clear and sparkling today (although I didn't venture further than sticking my toes in yet-it wasn't quite as warm as I was hoping for-I'm sure it will be lovely for swimming but not for paddling anyway!).

Beautiful clear water in Malta!

Back in August I talked with Julieann about Swimtrek, at that stage I was thinking that it would be a good boost to my training and it would be nice to have a bit of a holiday too! When she said that she was thinking of doing the long distance camp too we decided to try to book in for the same week. So we meet our Swimtrek guides on Saturday to talk about the week and also about our swimming plans for the year and our reasons for doing the camp. Then on Sunday we have a stroke analysis session where they video our stroke above and under water. I haven't had that done in a few years now so it should be interesting! On Monday we have two swims-not sure yet how long they're going to be-they say that the distance will vary according to the swimmer and what they are training for...but I'm guessing they won't be too long since we have our 6-hour swim on Tuesday. That was one of my main reasons for doing the camp-we get our Channel qualitifation swim swim out of the way nice and early in the year. I'm looking forward to that, it's so long since I've done a decent length swim in the sea. It's not going to be an easy swim I'm sure but I'm not worrying about it-I've done longer in the pool and I know that I'm going to have much longer swims to face this summer so I'm just taking each one as it comes, no point in stressing over a training swim I figure! Wednesday and Thursday are gonna be more or less recovery swims after that I think. Hopefully we should find out more tomorrow evening about distances and stuff...

I'm really looking forward to this week to get lots of time in the sea, it will be a welcome change from blue lines and constant tumble-turning. It will be really nice to be able to really enjoy swimming in the sea for a while without having to think about the cold-it might be getting warmer at home but it's still gonna take a couple of degrees more before it's comfortable to swim in for a decent length of time. And on top of all that it's a break from everything else for 10 days...no PhD, no work, no rushing from one thing to another...all is good :)

The plan for now is to meet Julieann when she flies in tomorrow and head to Gozo, which is a little island off Malta where the camp is based. We've got that meeting tomorrow evening and I'd say we might try to take a dip before then to test the waters so to speak! I'll try to update from the camp during the week...fingers crossed that we'll have internet access over there!

Big News!

2009-03-19T22:03:00.001Z

In September I'm swimming from England to France. You all know that. What most people don't know (until now!) is that when I get to France I'm going to turn around...AND SWIM BACK! I'm attempting to be the first Irish person to complete a two-way Channel swim. So that's why I've been doing all that crazy training!

I decided this back in December-I always knew that I wanted to do it but my original plan was to do a one-way first and then try for the two-way next year or the year after. But when I talked to Eilís about it she suggested doing it this year instead. I've got the time to train at the moment whereas I'm not sure what I'll be doing workwise next year or the year after. And I was well ahead in my training at that stage. Plus, I've got nothing to lose besides the extra cost. If I don't make it back, I'll still have swum the Channel. So maybe I'm mad, but I'm going for it!

What it all means basically is that I'll be swimming non-stop for over 30 hours. My original goal is now the half-way mark. I have no idea what it's going to be like to swim through a whole night's sleep and still keep going. But what I do know is that I can't wait to find out!

Don't forget that a huge reason for me doing this is to raise money for my chosen charities...please support my goal by sponsoring me here! I'm swimming up to 70km a week to train for this swim (that's 2,800 lengths of a 25m swimming pool...mind-numbing stuff!). The least everyone can do is to sponsor me and make it worth my while :)

And don't forget to pass on the charity link to your friends, family, work colleagues...anyone who will give me money!!!

Update 3: Money Stuff

2009-03-14T12:00:00.002Z

This whole Channel swimming thing is really expensive, as most of you know. It's gonna cost me well over €5000 between booking the boat and getting my crew to Dover and staying there for a week. So I've been looking around for some sponsorship to help with these costs...and I'm happy to say that the ESB have been generous enough to help me out. I really appreciate it :)

Of course, if anyone else out there wants to become a corporate sponsor for my swim I'd be very happy-I've still got a long way to go in covering my costs! If anyone is interested I can be contacted at lisa@arockieswim.com.

On the fundraising side of things...I've been so busy that I haven't really had a chance to really get this going. Over the next few weeks I need to find time to send out emails and start getting sponsorship cards together and things like that. I really want to make some decent money for my charities-I know that it's not a great time to be asking for money from people, but times are tight for these organisations too-they've still got the same bills to pay and if we don't keep supporting them it's the people that are benefitting from their services that will ultimately lose out. So...if you're reading this, please visit my charity webpage here and donate-even €5 or €10 will be much appreciated! Thank you :)

Update 2: Sea Swimming

2009-03-11T15:36:00.002Z

All was going well in the sea up until that really cold snap we had a few weeks ago-snow, ice, frost-the works! And the sea dropped down to around 7deg C. Which, for the record, is REALLY cold!! The difference between 7deg and 8deg is unbelievable. The first lap I did at 7deg, all I could think about was getting out of there. I briefly adjusted to it at the first corner (enough to idiotically think that it was a good idea to go around!) but by the time I got to the second corner I was FREEZING...all that was going through my mind was to get back to the slip as fast as I could-I actually made it around in 30mins which is quite a fast time for me in cold water! It wasn't pleasant. At all. By any definition. And yet I went back in the following weekend, with the water still at 7deg. Don't ask me why. I think I'm just too stubborn for my own good! I did make the smart move of wearing fins this time though, for two reasons. First of all to keep my feet from getting quite so numb. It's kinda annoying when your feet are still cold two days after a sea swim! And second of all, to get around that little bit faster. This time I made it around in 28mins, and I'm not sure if it was that or the fact that I was a little more used to it or maybe the air was a little warmer, but it was much easier the second time around.

Luckily, the temperature has risen since then. Only to 8deg, but the difference is just unbelievable! When it was at 7deg, all I could think was 'get me out...NOW!'. But at 8deg I could actually enjoy the swim. It's just amazing the difference that one degree makes. It's also great that the temperatures are finally going in the right direction, Spring is on the way :)

The last couple of weekends I've been out of the sea-trying to rest this shoulder as much as I can. I'm going to have a whole week of it soon with my Swimtrek training camp so it's more important that I get rid of the injury and try to get some decent metres in before I head away. I'm hoping that I get enough done in the pool this week that I don't have to go there at the weekend though and can go to the sea instead...I'm sick of seeing blue and white tiles under me constantly, I need a change!

Update 1: Injuries

2009-03-10T15:24:00.001Z

So I'm finally getting around to actually updating-things have just been so crazy with college and work stuff, I haven't had a chance to get near this! There's been lots going on in the last few weeks so I'm gonna update in stages-otherwise it will be ages again while I write a big long post!

So I've got good news and bad news on the injuries front...

My back is totally healed up. No pain, nothing. All is good with that :)

However....now my shoulder is acting up. It started getting sore about three weeks ago, but I didn't think much of it at the time-different muscles have been sore up until now on and off but they always got better so I assumed this would too. But it got worse and it wasn't going away. So I've spent the last few weeks cutting back on the metres and resting a lot, just trying to get it better. It does seem to be improving a lot thankfully-this is going to be my first long distance week in about a month now so it will tell a lot. It's just so frustrating that I just get one thing sorted and another comes along-and this one is taking so long to go away! I know that I've got ages to go yet before my swim and I keep telling myself that it will get better and I just need to be patient, but it's so hard not to get frustrated. I just need to stay positive and let it take the time it needs to heal so that I can get back to normal training again!

More updates soon...

Life gets in the way...

2009-02-17T22:19:00.003Z

Yes, I am still alive and training. But college is getting in the way of my online life for the moment-I have a deadline for a research paper this Friday and it's nowhere near finished so every spare moment is going towards that at the moment. Thankfully it's a light training week since Eilís is on holidays. Good timing!

Just thought I should pop in and do a quick update-I'll update properly at the weekend though, I've got plenty to catch up on. After spending so much time on the PhD this week I think that I'll be taking the full weekend off that though...I have to reward myself somehow or I'll never get through the stress of the next few days :)

At last!

2009-02-02T08:37:00.008Z

Yesterday I headed down to Sandycove for my second sea swim of 2009. I've been down 3 times since the start of the year when we haven't been able to get in, so frustration has been starting to set in. So when I got to Kinsale yesterday to find the river all choppy, I was seriously annoyed, I knew that probably meant that Sandycove was going to be bad. And it was...waves coming over the wall AGAIN! There was chop coming from all directions, waves at the first and second corners and the slip was just a mess.

I was contemplating what I was going to do-would I go home and get someone to accompany me to a beach later in the day-but then the tide would be out so I'd be frozen by the time I'd get to the water-and then again maybe if the wind changed like it was supposed to things might get better later in Sandycove-but then it would be low tide there too-I was weighing up all my options when Sally turned up. And, like me, Sally was determinded to get a swim in. Regardless of where it was, as long as it was in open water. So we tried to figure out what our best option was. The inland places that would be much calmer than the sea are so, so cold at this time of year, and we'd have had a decent journey to get to any of them. The other option was to head further along the coast in one direction or the other to either Oysterhaven or Garretstown. We figured that since Garretstown was on the other side of the headland, it wouldn't be affected by the same winds as Sandycove, so we decided to give it a try. We headed for Garrylucas beach, which is the safer of the two beaches in Garretstown-the other one is a surfing beach. And we were glad we did! There were some waves, but only close to the shore, and beyond them was much calmer than the water in Sandycove. It was worth the trip!

The wind was bitter cold (the air temperature was 3deg C apparently), so we got changed in our cars and then hobbled down the stones to the water-I missed Sandycove and it's lovely slip at that stage! In we got, it was cold, but probably no worse than Sandycove when I was last in, even with the cold air temperature. I had expected that I'd be freezing when I hadn't been in for a few weeks. Regardless of how warm or cold it was anyway, we didn't have too much choice about getting wet-the waves made sure of that! By the time we were knee-deep we were soaked so it was time to start swimming-we headed out past the waves, and while it wasn't glass calm out there, it was swimmable. We didn't venture too far from the cars, we just swam up and down a bit-the current was tending to carry us out which was a bit unnerving but it was probably just because the tide was on its way out. We found the if we swam slightly diagonally towards the shore we ended up going more or less straight so it was fine.

We swam for a little over 15 minutes before deciding to call it a day. Getting back into shore without getting knocked over proved to be a bit of a challenge, and I was really hobbling getting back up the beach, my feet were so numb that walking on the stones felt like walking on glass. And of course there was a mini sandstorm at the same time-Garrylucas beach has big sand dunes so there's often sand blowing down the beach. So it was nice to reach the car and wrap a nice big towel around me! We got changed and had mint tea that Sally had sensibly brought-lovely for getting us warmed up fast :)

On the way home I dropped by Sandycove to see what the conditions were like at that stage-it still wasn't pleasant but it had calmed down a bit and because the tide was lower, the waves weren't breaking on the slip any more.

So maybe if we'd just gone down to Sandycove an hour later than we did that might have been a better idea, but then again there's more rocks exposed at lower tide so with the waves and everything we'd have only been able to do a small triangle anyway. All in all we got our swim in, and we were happy with that!

Just keep swimming....

2009-01-31T23:03:00.004Z

It's been a busy couple of weeks on the swimming front...well, in the pool anyway. Last week I had my biggest distance week so far, 60km in 5 days in the pool. And I made it with no major ill-effects (although my shoulders may argue with that point)!! I had an easier week this week just gone though so the shoulders are starting to get back to normal a bit...I'm sure it won't be for long though!

My back has gotten way better-I've been going to the chiropractor twice a week for the past few weeks and thankfully I'm almost pain-free now...it just twinges when I sit down funny or something like that but no pain at all when I'm swimming. And I've only got one chiropractor appointment next week, he's very happy with my progress. So all is good on that front...except of course it means that I'll be back to circuits soon...I've got one more week off those and then back to normality!

The last couple of weekends have been a bit of a disaster on the open-water front, we've gone down and two weeks in a row we haven't been able to get in because it was too dangerous. The waves were coming in over the slip and basically we wouldn't have had a hope of getting out safely. And I'm in no rush to break any of my bones thank-you-very-much! Two weekends ago we did put the trip to good use and headed out further west towards Courtmacsherry to see the 60foot fin whale that had been beached there a couple of days previously and had died. Unfortunately the tide was in so we couldn't go anywhere near her...even looking from the road it was clear what an impressive creature she was though. I've included a photo below taken by someone who was lucky enough to get a lot closer to her than we were. More information can be found on the whole event at the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group website (beware that some of the pictures on there are very gory though!).

The forecast for today was for more south-easterly winds, the worst kind for Sandycove. So I didn't bother heading down today but the plan is to head down in the morning and see how things are then. With only one sea swim for the whole month of January I'm really hoping that February starts out better! So fingers crossed for tomorrow....

Good news at last!

2009-01-13T20:10:00.003Z

My impatience eventually got the better of me-that and the fact that I had a horrible training session yesterday. Because I've been using the pullbuoy so much, it was starting to hurt higher up my back and everything just felt tight and horrible. So I decided that I had to go and get it checked out to make sure that I hadn't done any major damage and that I wasn't doing any more damage by training. I talked to Eilís and she made an appointment for me for this morning with a chiropractor that she highly recommended, James Cosgrave.

So I went to him first thing this morning. After doing a short examination, he decided to send me for x-rays-he didn't think that anything was broken but wanted to make absolutely sure. He made an appointment for me to get them done straight away so off I went. They were amazingly fast and I headed back to him about a half an hour later, praying the whole time that they would come up clear of any fractures! And they did :)

Apparently my sacrum (part of my pelvis) is slightly out of line and my coccyx (my tailbone) is pushed slightly forward. And there's a lot of inflammation. But there should be no permenant damage done thankfully! He thinks that I should be right as rain and pain-free within four weeks of treatment and lots of ice packs :)

And the best thing of all is that I don't have to stop swimming while it's getting better....yay! I was really dreading that he'd tell me to take a break for a few weeks and let it get better, I'd go out of my mind! But I'm allowed to swim away-no speed work for a couple of weeks, just long, stretched-out swims (the kind that I like anyway!) and no circuits (yay!) for a while either. Basically he told me that I'm not allowed to do any of the things that I hate doing anyway!

I went up to Silver Springs after and told Eilís the great news and did my swim for the day-I'm back using my legs now, he said that using a pullbuoy would start causing problems in other areas, which it already had been doing. And the session went really well-I think that now that I know that I'm not doing any damage, I'm much more relaxed in the water, and then I'm not in so much pain. And I feel much better knowing-I was starting to think the worst when it wasn't really improving!! Now I can get focused on making it better and still continue with my training...all is good :)

Give me patience!

2009-01-10T23:06:00.003Z

It's been over a week now since I fell and it seems to be getting better but it's so, so slow! And of course I'm so, so impatient! I've spent the week with a pullbouy on, a couple of days I did some full stroke but it hurts-strangely it doesn't actually hurt while I'm swimming but when I stop it really does. Which isn't necessarily a good thing-it means that I could end up doing more than I should. So the easiest way to avoid that is to just keep on the pullbuoy.

I'm actually really enjoying swimming with the pullbuoy-I swim faster with it (which shows just how bad my kicking is normally I guess!). Unfortunately I'm getting very used to my faster times and really liking them-I'm not gonna be a happy camper when they go back to normal!!

So after the week using the pullbuoy I was wondering what the plan was going to be for the sea at the weekend. In one way I really wanted to get in because I hadn't been in since Stephen's Day, which was over 2 weeks ago. But at the same time I don't want to be causing myself any injury, one sea swim is not worth that. So I decided to leave it up to Eilís and do whatever she suggested....which was to head to the sea and use the pullbuoy and band. The thoughts of it alone made me cold-the sea, in January, at 8degrees C, with no kicking. But off I went this afternoon for a 3pm swim...the wind was gusting and of course I was hoping to myself that it would be too rough to get in at all!!

As I got close to the island I saw the waves breaking at the second corner, and knew that it was not a day to be going around-of course I wasn't planning to go around anyway, not with my legs tied together!! I got down to the slip and it was definitely swimmable. There was quite a gang down too for a January swim-about 8 in all I think. Myself and Jen decided to swim straight out towards the beach on the island and then decide whether we would head back or do a triangle-I had no clue how cold I would be without kicking so I didn't want to decide until I got in there! So I got all ready and then faced the task of tying my feet together with the band and managing to get into the water without losing the pullbuoy...all very complicated! I eventually managed to shuffle down from step to step (accompanied by girlie screams as I got deeper into the water!) and then dive in-it was so, so cold. Normally when it's rough it's warmer-not the case today. It took me absolutely ages to get my breath and I never really lost the ice-cream headache for the whole swim-normally it's gone within 3 or 4 minutes.

So out to the island we headed, accompanied by another girl who had never before swam in January, and who was sensibly wearing a wetsuit! We stopped to check what we were going to do next-at this stage we had only been in about 3 and a half minutes so I didn't want to head straight back to the slip yet! So we decided to swim down the island for a bit. It was nice swimming down because the wind and tide were both with us-of course it wasn't so nice when we had to turn back and face into both of them! By the time we got back to the slip we had been in the water just over 13 minutes-long enough for me when one half of my body was not creating any heat at all!

The next problem then was how to get out of the water-just about as hard as getting in. I struggled to take the band off with numb hands and then Jen's husband, Mick, was around to help drag us out! When I took away the pullbuoy I had big white patches on my otherwise red legs from where the cold hadn't had a chance to get to...it looked very funny!

After we got dressed we headed into Kinsale for nice warm soup to heat us up...a perfect end to a winter's swim :)

It can only get better from here...

2009-01-03T21:32:00.005Z

2009 hasn't gotten off to a great start for me.

On New Year's Day I went down for my first sea swim of the year to find waves breaking over the slip and very rough conditions even inside the island...definitely not conditions that we wanted to be swimming in.

A choppy New Year's Day at Sandycove

I expected it to be rough down there because it's been very windy for the past week, but I thought that we'd at least manage to swim to the corner or do an inside triangle for our first swim of the year, but it wasn't to be. A total wasted journey after 4 hours of sleep...I had been to a concert in Killarney for New Year's Eve and had driven back and gotten to bed around 4am. So I really didn't appreciate the waste of a trip...I could have (and should have!) stayed in bed!! It did work out well in one way though-I was trying to decide which day this week I'd take as my day off since I hadn't taken one yet, so my decision was made there and then!

So then on Friday I headed to the pool, did my swim and gym session and went back up for a shower....and slipped on the wet floor in the dressing room. My own fault, I should have been wearing flip flops and I wasn't. I basically fell on my backside, thankfully I managed to not hit my head...or even worse, break an arm or something...but I fell pretty hard and it was quite difficult to walk when I got up. My lower back, basically my tailbone, was very sore all day yesterday and I was terrified that I'd done some damage besides it just being bruised and sore. I was not loooking forward to whatever pain was facing me when I woke up this morning! But thankfully it was a bit better and I had no pain anywhere else either.

The plan was to head to the sea today for my delayed new year swim, but the wind was still howling when I was going to bed last night and I figured that the last thing I needed to be doing with a sore back was to be heading into the rough sea. So the pool it was. It was a good thing too-when I got into the pool I did my first two lengths and realised that I couldn't kick my legs without being in severe pain. I had thought that tumble-turning would be my biggest problem but that was actually fine once I made sure to push off the wall really gently. So I got out my pullbuoy and band to make sure that I didn't kick and did a nice slow 4,500 metres with Imelda. The swim really helped too, I found that the stretching out relieved some of the pain and I felt much better getting out than I did getting in. So the plan is to do the same for the next few days until I know that it's better.

So it wasn't the best of starts to the 2009...but hopefully that's my clumsiness out of the way for the year now :)

Happy New Year :)

2008-12-31T15:02:00.002Z

2008 was a very busy swimming year for me. Over the year I swam 75o,000 metres, and did 108 laps of Sandycove Island. I did my first sea swim back in March, my first Lee swim, my first 12km swim around Inishbofin harbour and my first 10km session in the pool. And I paid my deposit for my pilot boat for my swim-a whopping £1000 Sterling which will be worth every penny when I complete my swim!

It's strange to think that this time last year I didn't know any of the Sandycove gang-an absolutely fantastic group of people that I'm so lucky to have gotten to know. I've also been so lucky to have Eilís take me on to train me for my swim, I really appreciate all the help that she has given me these past few months.

It's been a great year for my Channel swim training, and I've really enjoyed it. So now it's time to look forward to 2009-from now on I'll be talking about my Channel swim 'this' year instead of 'next' year...a scary thought but very exciting too! I can't wait for all that's ahead of me this coming year...roll on 2009!!!

Christmas swims...

2008-12-27T14:08:00.002Z

I've had a fun few days on the swimming front...

After Mike's party on Sunday, I had my last session with Eilís on Monday before she started her Christmas holidays, so that was a nice long 10k session...my last long session for a few weeks :) For the next few weeks I've got a program of sessions to do so I'll still be swimming but my distances will be much smaller and I've got a couple of weeks off circuits too...yay!

So on Tuesday I had a nice short swim and since then I've been in the sea. On Christmas Eve we were in Sandycove, the weather had gotten a little colder since the weekend but it was still very mild so we got in hoping to do a double. I hadn't done a double in over a month, and the water temperature was about a degree warmer then, so I wanted to see if I could stay in that long, but at the same time I didn't want to end up hypothermic at the back of the island. So when we got to the second corner and I was feeling fine I decided to go around to the first corner again and see then how I was feeling-if I was feeling cold at that stage I'd head back to the slip. When we got around to the front of the island Ossi headed in towards the slip to see if Mike Harris, who had arrived while we were doing our first lap, was coming around, but it turned out that he wasn't. So while he was doing that I managed to catch up with Imelda, who was waiting for him, and I decided that I'd go again and head off ahead of them since they were wearing fins and were much faster than me. They waited for Sevy, who was also doing a double, at the first corner, so the three of us got to the second corner at around the same time, good timing! At that stage I was starting to feel the cold-mainly across my back and shoulders so it was probably more from the air than the water. My hands and feet were numb but not sore and I was still getting power from my stroke so hopefully they've started getting used to the cold! We finished in just over an hour, a good Christmas Eve swim!

On Christmas Day I went down to Robert's Cove for the Christmas Day Swim taking place there. It's really well organised-there's a nice big bonfire to keep warm beside and lots of soup and hot whiskey in case the bonfire isn't enough! There were lots of people there, way more than I expected. We were all told to get ourselves ready and gather by the bonfire until everyone was ready...

Waiting to go in

And then off we went....

The mad dash...

...which soon slowed down as

people hit the cold water!

The tide was way out, so by the time I was in any decent depth of water, my feet were absolutely FREEZING!!!! Eventually I managed to get out to deep enough water to dive in, swim about 4 strokes and then get out again!! For me this was much harder than getting into Sandycove because I'm used to just diving in and dealing with the cold all at once rather than delaying the pain!

It wasn't a day to be hanging around-especially since we couldn't feel our feet at this stage! So we trekked back through the shallow water again, the bonfire a very welcome sight at this stage!

Fallon greeting Tom, myself and a wetsuit-less Ossi!

Getting dressed was nice and easy without numb hands, and I had nice cosy boots to warm up my numb feet, so I wasn't really cold at all after the swim-it didn't stop me having a nice hot whiskey though...thanks Imelda! :) There are a few more photos from the day here.

Stephen's Day was another sea swim day...back to Sandycove again. We had a nice big group of peope turn out for the swim, it wasn't such a nice day for it though-there was an easterly wind, which not only made it really cold, it also made the water really rough. So it was a case of heading to the corner and deciding then where to go from there. I headed out with Ossi and Kieran, and as we were on our way out a big group of people who had headed out ahead of us were making their way back down the front of the island, having obviously decided that they weren't going around. We decided to head around anyway, making sure to stay together all the way along the back (in other words the other two swam slowly so that I could keep up with them-thanks guys!). I normally enjoy swimming in rough water-it's good for a change and it makes you forget about the cold. But it just wasn't a pleasant day for it-I found that by the time we got to the second corner I was absolutely exhausted from fighting with the water! It was definitely a one-lap day, so back to the slip we headed and it was only then that I realised just how cold I was, getting dressed was a struggle!!

So when I heard the forecast for today (stronger easterly winds) I decided that it was time to go back to the pool...the tides are at bad times anyway for the next few days so it makes swimming at Sandycove difficult. So it's back to short, sprinty pool sessions...my favourite....NOT!!! And it's Christmas holidays so the pool will be full of kids and their parents taking up the lanes :( Oh well, I guess I'd better get used to it...the New Year is coming so the place will be packed now for the next month with everyone and their resolutions to get fit...kill me now!!!

Knee-replacement party...

2008-12-22T22:02:00.006Z

We finally had a mild weekend this weekend, it was about 11 or 12 degrees C both days, much better swimming weather than on previous weekends! And I was very glad of it-after a weekend off I was not looking forward to getting back in, so the warmer weather made things much easier!

Sunday was a fun swim-it was Mike Harris' first lap since he had his second knee replacement in November, so the plan was to get around the island and then back to his apartment in Kinsale for mulled wine and mince pies-great incentive to get around as fast as possible! There was a good gang of people down for the swim-both swimmers and onlookers wrapped up in nice warm clothes!

Mike hadn't been in for longer than 10 minutes since his operation so he decided that he'd head to the first corner and see then how he was doing with the cold. He refused to wear a wetsuit but conceeded to wearing the bottom half of an old one to cover up his knee so that it wouldn't seize up! So after the obligatory group photo (which I will post when I get a copy of it!), out to the first corner we headed. And of course when we got there he had no intention of turning back-his only comment was to "push on"...so that we did! It was quite rough so a few of us stayed with Mike to make sure that everything was ok. And it was better than ok, he made it around with no problems at all, and then proceeded to get out and make tea for everyone while still wearing the half wetsuit!

So after we had tea and were warmed up a little we headed back to the apartment in Kinsale, where Mike's wife, Ann, was making way too much yummy food!! Once everyone was fed, John Conroy started passing out the lyrics of a Christmas carol that he had composed last year after Mike's first knee replacement:

Harris the red togged swimmer

Has a pair of bright speedos

And if you ever saw them

You would even say they glow

All of the other swimmers

Used to laugh and call him names

They never let poor Harris

Join in any swimmer's games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve

Imelda came to say

Harris with your togs so bright

Won't you guide the swim tonight?

Then all the swimmers loved him

Since he got his brand new knee

Harris the red togged swimmer

You'll go down in history!

And then there was the presentation...

Mike's new red togs!

Mike had lost a pair of red togs during the summer so Finbarr found a 'lovely' replacement pair!

So know that Mike has had his two knees replaced, we're trying to figure out what joint is going to be replaced next so that we can have another party next year!

Website and Charity info...

2008-12-19T17:22:00.004Z

Last weekend I had a weekend off-it was my birthday on Monday so Eilís gave me an early birthday pressie! So besides going out for a great night on Friday, I spent a lot of the weekend working on finishing up my website. So it's finally done! Check it out at http://www.arockieswim.com (for those of you who don't get it-I'm from Blackrock, hence I'm a Rockie!).

I've sorted out all of my charity details now too. I decided that I would support three charities-one online, and two offline. I had two reasons for picking my online charity. I have worked part-time with children for over 10 years now through swimming teaching and they have provided me with so many smiles and laughs over the years, so I wanted to support a children's charity. I also talked to Eilís since training Channel swimmers is one of her ways of raising money for charity. We picked the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation as my online charity. The Jack and Jill Foundation provide home respite for children up to four years of age who suffer from severe developmental delay and associated problems, requiring extensive medical and nursing care at home. Usually these children cannot function at birth and require 24 hour care. Jack and Jill provide funding to allow the family to hire a carer or nurse in order for them to get a break from this 24 hour caring role of looking after their Special Needs child. My donation page is available here.

For the offline charities I wanted to pick charities that provide care and support to people with cancer. Most people today have been touched in some way by cancer and I am no exception-a number of my uncles have died of this horrible disease. I wanted to give something back to those people who care for and help people when they are going through a very difficult time. I picked two local cancer charities to support.

I have always wanted to support Marymount Hospice, which is a hospice in Cork City that provides help and support to terminally ill patients and their families when the illness is at an advanced stage. I have known a number of relatives and friends who have received their hospice care and they are truly a deserving charity. The staff are absolutely wonderful and do their utmost to provide support and care for people during a very difficult time.

Cork ARC Cancer Support House is a voluntary organization established to provide a centre in which people with cancer and their families can find emotional support and practical help. A diagnosis of cancer has an enormous psychological impact, the effect of which can be prolonged. Cork ARC provides the necessary support when the patient leaves the hospital setting, and helps them to adjust to their life after diagnosis. Along with the support provided to cancer patients, Cork ARC provide support for family members and friends of those affected by cancer and for members of the caring professions who work with people with cancer.

Details of how to donate to my offline charities are given here. Please give as generously as you can, I really want to do as much as I can to help. It makes my training that bit more worthwhile to know that it's doing some good for charity!

Back to the pool :)

2008-12-09T20:38:00.002Z

Another cold weekend at Sandycove-I absolutely froze on Saturday!! But I think that had more to do with me than it did with the actual temperature since the air was a little warmer than the weekend before and the water was about the same. Put it this way-heading to London for 24 hours on your day off and then going straight back into training is not the smartest of ideas! My birthday is coming up and myself and Sarah had booked a few days in London, but circumstances changed and it ended up only being one day really-we travelled out on Wednesday (after she did an exam and I did a swim session), went to a spa Thursday morning, shopping Thursday afternoon and back to the airport to travel home Thursday evening. Basically we spent about a third of the time traveling! And then Friday was busy with swimming, circuits, more swimming, a sports massage and work. So by the time the weekend came around I was wrecked! So I guess it wasn't surprising that the sea felt really cold on Saturday-I spent the whole lap wanting to get out! But at least I got a lap in I guess-I did about 40mins altogether.

Then on Sunday I really didn't want to go down there, but I figured that I'd only dread next weekend all the more if I didn't! And I'm really glad that I did...I spent 5 minutes longer in the water (which really is a long time in 9 degree water!!) and still felt a million times better than Saturday. So all is good again :)

Still, even with the good swim on Sunday, I was very happy to be getting back into the pool again yesterday...warm water is much appreciated at the moment! I didn't even mind the thoughts of circuits-I might come out of the class in pain and wrecked tired but at least my hands aren't swollen up and awkward!

So all is good on the training front. And for those of you wondering about the website that I mentioned...it's on the way, I promise! I need to sort out a couple of small things in the next few days and then it should be up and running...it's just that between training and work at the moment it's so hard to find time to go and do things-I don't want to imagine what it will be like after Christmas when Eilís really steps up the training! But it's all good...the more I do now the easier it will be on the day of the swim-that's what I keep telling myself anyway!

Brrrrrrr!!

2008-11-30T21:52:00.001Z

The weather has officially turned evil. All week fine weather. Thursday...it turns cold. Saturday, Sunday are freezing. Actually freezing with frost on the ground. And the forecast is saying that it will get warmer midweek but it will be cold again next weekend. That shouldn't be allowed!!

Saturday was a really beautiful day in Sandycove. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. And it was about 4 degrees C. A lovely day to sit in the car and look out at the sea, but not such a nice day to get into the water. I had been dreading the swim since Thursday when I heard that the weather was going to be so cold for the weekend. And getting up to frost on the ground Saturday morning didn't help matters! But I had arranged to meet Niall down there, plus I knew that if I didn't go down I'd have to face the pool which is full of parents and children on a Saturday afternoon-not such a fun time to be trying to get a decent session in! So off I went, with my car heater to keep me nice and warm and banish all cold thoughts on the way down!

I arrived in Sandycove to find Ger there, one of the Sandycove regulars. Niall arrived and measured the water temperature with his lab thermometer-it read at 9 degrees C, a degree colder than last weekend...it was to be expected though with the few cold days weather. We decided that we'd better get ready quickly before we talked ourselves out of it! So in we went...it was so, so cold...my feet and hands were numb just about immediately and it took a long time for me to get my breathing right...I was breathing every second stroke until I got to the first corner, normally I get into the rhythm of breathing every third stroke after about 30 or 40 strokes. And I thought the headache would never go away! But by the time I had rounded the first corner I started to get used to it, I kept my stroke rate high to keep warm and soon caught up with the two lads, who had left a couple of minutes before me.

The plan had been to swim two laps, or an hour if there was noone around to swim the second lap with. However, when I felt the cold as I got in I decided that an hour was out of the question. Mainly because I'm terrified of getting hypothermic. I don't mind the shivering or the numbness, or even the pain in my hands and feet when they get really cold. What I'm afraid of is the mental state that goes along with hypothermia-the confusion, the drowsiness-and the possibility of not realising that you are indeed hypothermic. It's a very dangerous state to be in if you're in open water. And the two lads were getting out after the lap, so I was going to be on my own after 30 minutes. So I decided that swimming back to the first corner again, then to the red house and back to the slip would be enough-it brought the swim up to 40minutes, which is about 2km...enough for 9 degree water I think!

I could get used to people handing me cups of tea when I get out of the water-yesterday it was Mike Harris, who recently had his knee replaced and was down to catch up with the goings-on of Sandycove-he misses the swimming but has to wait another few weeks yet before he can get in. It was good to see him and even better when he handed me hot tea!! So I drank that down, got a jumper on me and headed back to Actons. Unfortunately the hot tub wasn't working-apparently it was too cold outside for it to work properly!! So I had to make do with the steamroom-even that didn't get me warm fully though, I think because I was just so cold going in there. It took a few hours for me to really begin to feel warm again. But I guess that's to be expected when you swim in the sea for 40 minutes on a day when most people won't leave the house without a hat, scarf and gloves on!!!

Today was just as cold as yesterday. I was the only one mad enough to go down and swim today, so I took my mother and my dog, Fallon, along for the spin to make sure that I didn't freeze! Tides were at bad times this weekend-high tide today was around 6:30am and 7pm so the only times to swim were either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Early in the morning is not really an inviting option when there's still frost on the ground so 3:45pm it was. Unfortunately that meant that the sun had already gone down over the hills around Sandycove by the time I was getting in, so no bit of warmth even from that. So even though the water temperature was the same as yesterday, it felt much colder.

Having no company meant that I had to stay inside the island-whatever about the middle of summer, there was no way I was going around on my own on a cold winter's day! So I got in and swam up and down parallel to the island for a while. After 30minutes I decided I'd had enough-my hands were swelling up and quite sore and the sun was well and truly behind the hill at that stage so it was getting colder by the minute! And I knew that my poor mother was walking up and down the hill with Fallon, probably feeling the cold as much as I was!!!

Getting out was a challenge-the tide was still quite low, and my hands were very sore and more swollen than they've ever been getting out of the water I think. But I managed to crawl up the slip to the nice cosy towel that my mother had waiting for me! It was so nice to have the car warm when I got into it, normally I have to put up with those few minutes of cold air while I'm waiting for the heater to warm up! And to have someone drive me into Kinsale so I could keep my hands near the heater for the whole way in...I was spoilt! I don't know if it was that warming up or the fact that I stayed in for a shorter time, but I recovered much faster today than I did yesterday. I only spent about 10minutes in the steamroom today, but I was all warmed up by the time I was leaving Actons. It was nice not to feel cold for the evening!

All in all it was a good weekend's swimming...I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but I think that it was enough given the temperatures. I never thought I'd say it but I'm actually looking forward to getting back in the pool tomorrow, the extra 20degrees will be much appreciated! I'm sure that will only last a few minutes before I'm giving out about the heat again though :)

100 laps and counting...

2008-11-23T20:38:00.003Z

Today was my 100-lap milestone in Sandycove, and what a day for it! It was cold (air was 6deg C), windy and raining-and very tempting not to get in at all! But Eilís had told me to try to get 2 laps in both days this weekend and there was no way that I was going to go up to her tomorrow and tell her that I didn't get in today because it was raining!!!

There were 8 of us down to swim, a good turnout for such an awful day. We all got dressed and ready to head in...and just as we were ready it started to lash rain...not a good start to the swim! I think that I got in today faster than I ever have before-mainly because I was hoping that it would be warmer in the water than it was standing on the slip (I was wrong about that one!). The water temperature was 10 or 11deg but felt colder-it took a while for me to get my breath, and I had a headache for the first few minutes. We had a lot of help from the wind and current out to the first corner and down to the second, where we regrouped. Finbarr was my only hope for a second lap, and he decided that instead of doing that he'd swim back towards the last guy in the group and make sure that he was ok and then just finish out the single lap. So I said that I'd join him and then do a triangle inside the island to make up the time to an hour. So back we went-we didn't have far to go though, he had nearly gotten to the corner at that stage. So we checked that he was ok and then went back in our original direction again.

By the time we had reached the front of the island I was getting pretty cold, so I had more or less decided that I'd swim to the first corner and then head back to the slip-that would be about 40mins in the water which I was figuring was good enough given the conditions. Finbarr had other ideas though. He decided that since we hadn't gone back very far at the second corner that he'd do the second lap...which I had written off in my mind at this stage!!! But I figured that my arms were still moving and not too numb...so I had no excuse not to go again! So we did...and by the time we got to the second corner again I was regretting not having gotten out...it was REALLY cold at this stage-much more so than yesterday, when we had done two laps and I had felt ok the whole time. Today I just wanted to be out of there. And the only way to do that was to put the head down and keep swimming. I started counting strokes to distract myself-I figured it was about 300 strokes from the second to the third corner, another 300 to the red house and then maybe another 200 to the slip. So I did the first 300, turned the corner...and once I could see the slip I basically kept my arms moving as fast as they would go to get me there! And then we got out to the welcoming sight of Niall MacCarthy with tea and chocolate...thanks Niall :) And of course then we headed to the hot tub in Actons to warm up...it does make it all worth it to sit in 38degree comfort...and it's so nice to not be cold for the rest of the evening too!

So all in all a good weekend's swimming-4 laps-59mins yesterday, 1hr 3mins today, in about 10deg C. And now that I've done my 100 laps I figure that I could take the rest of the year out of the cold sea...I'm not sure that Eilís will be agreeing with that one though!!

I'm still alive!

2008-11-20T15:46:00.003Z

I know, I know...I haven't posted in ages. I've been spending less and less time online lately (anyone who knows me well knows that this is very strange for me!), I just don't have the time for it-any time I sit down at the computer I feel guilty if I'm not working on the PhD! It's a good thing though I'd suppose-I've gotten very good at being organised and managing my time, I never was very good at that. Now I have to be just to fit everything in!

So...updates on what I've been doing since I last posted. The biggest one I think is that I'm now training under my coach, Eilís Burns, who has trained 8 solo English Channel swimmers (all of whom successfully completed the swim) and is one of the top swimming coaches in Ireland. It took a lot of pressure off me to have her on board because now I just do what she tells me to do, I don't have to be trying to figure out if I'm training enough or too much or if I'm doing the right types of sessions-not that I ever knew what the right sessions were anyway really! Of course now I have the added pressure of not breaking her perfect record but I'll be trying pretty hard not to do that anyway-I'm not doing all this training to not make it across!

So that brings me to the worst part of having her on board-my diet. I have NEVER been a healthy eater. It's not like I ate take-out seven nights a week or anything, but I really like my chocolate and sweet things and junk food. Not any more. Meals are healthy, snacks are healthy, I'm eating more fruit for breakfast now than I did all day before this (which wouldn't be hard since I used to eat practically no fruit!) and I've actually started eating vegetables. Maybe all of this is normal to some of you, but I REALLY miss my junk food! I know that it's doing me good though, I'm feeling really good at the moment and I have tons more energy than I ever did before. But I'm so looking forward to Christmas when I have every intention of eating chocolate for a week solid!!!

Training itself is going really well, I'm swimming 5 or 6 days a week now with 1 or 2 of those sessions being in the sea. And yes, the sea is REALLY cold now, it's down to 9 or 10degrees C (depending on whose watch you look at!) and it's not really comfortable to be swimming in it any more. But I'm still managing a lap both days most weekends for now. The biggest problem is that the days are getting so much shorter so it's getting harder to find good swim times. We usually swim at high tide since that's when it's safest to swim at Sandycove. But when high tide is at 7am it's really hard to make yourself get up for a sea swim! I actually had one morning a few weeks ago when I had to defrost the car to go down for a swim-that's never a good sign! But I haven't been seriously hypothermic yet and the body does warm back up-it might take a few days but eventually you feel your toes again!!

I also have some news on the non-training side of things...I'm in the process of setting up a website so that I can put up a bit more info about things that are going on. I figure that if I write about it on here it might spur me on to get it finished and published-I've been working on it for quite a while now and I just need to finish it off and put it out there!!

So that's probably about it for updates for now I think...hopefully I should have some news on my charity in the next week or so (for all of you out there who are just dying to give me money!) so I'll post about that when it's sorted. Until then....

Sherkin to Baltimore

2008-10-15T10:44:00.003+01:00

Last Sunday we had our last organised swim of the year...it was the Sherkin to Baltimore swim organised by Liz Buckley. I had never been to Baltimore before so it was all new to me-this whole swimming thing is doing wonders for my geography knowledge!

I headed down with my sister Sarah (who I had volunteered to help with timekeeping!) and we managed to only get lost once on the way (even with a gps telling me where to go that's a good record for me!!)! There was talk of a few people swimming out and back to the island so I was hoping to get there in time to join them (and the lazy part of me was hoping that I wouldn't!!). So we got down there for about 2pm, with the boat leaving for the island at 3pm. I went and registered and found Imelda and Ossi, who were leaving about 15minutes later to swim out, giving us plenty of time to cover the 2km distance before the others got out there. So I figured that since I was there in time, I really had no excuse not to do the extra distance!

I went and got myself ready and grabbed a towel to put in the kayak in case we were waiting around for a long time at the other side (the others were wearing wetsuits so it wasn't such a problem for them). And we set off. It was such a nice swim out-I love swimming with Imelda and Ossi because they swim just fast enough to push me and keep me on my toes (although when Imelda's in a wetsuit she could leave me for dead if she wanted to!). We weren't in a rush so we had a chance to look around and just enjoy the swim. We could feel the tide pushing against us-a good sign for when we were going to be coming back!

We got out to Sherkin in about 40mins, just as the boats carrying everyone else were starting to arrive. I thought that since everyone was arriving we'd be heading off again soon, so I didn't bother getting my towel from the kayak-unfortunately though the kayakers needed to be briefed and that took a while, so by the time we were ready to start off I was shivering like mad-I was dying to get back in there to warm up again! I was in the second group of people to start, thankfully there was only 90secs between the starts though.

The start was absolute mayhem-there were 52 people swimming altogether, with most of them in my group. And most of them were triathletes who are used to high-contact swimming races! I wanted to sprint a little at the start to warm myself up, but I soon found out that if I did, I'd just keep getting kicked in the face...so after a few of those kicks I figured I'd just hang back and let them off-I was in no rush to get in in first place!! I warmed up pretty quickly once I got going anyway.

It was a totally different swim on the way back-there was no looking around and admiring the scenery this time around! I found some people ahead of me to follow and just tried to stay behind them for the way across-I know how bad my own navigation skills are!!

I came across a swimmer who was stopped at one point and I stopped to check if he was ok-it turns out he was only fixing his goggles, but he seemed really surprised that I stopped to check on him-I don't understand that-why would anyone keep going if they suspect that someone is in trouble? By his reaction I guess he wouldn't have stopped if it had been the other way round. Some people take these races WAY too seriously!!!

I managed to pick my way around the boats near the end-that's always the part I hate most-at almost every slipway there are always boats parked and I'm always afraid I'll go head first into one of them! But thankfully I didn't this time and I managed to make my way to the slip to finish the swim. The second half of the swim took 35mins so a little faster but we had some tidal assistance I think so it may just have been that.

As usual I headed straight off to get changed after and get myself warm before joining everyone in the pub for drinks and then pizza. It was a nice end to a really fun swim. I was glad that I'd done the swim both ways, it made it feel like the journey was worth it-a 2hr journey is a long way to travel for a 2km swim!! But for 4km it's not so bad. A big thank-you to Imelda and Ossi for swimming out with me and to Derek for kayaking for it-without a kayaker we couldn't have done it.

It was the perfect end to a great swim season-let's hope that I'll manage to fit in some of the swims next year around my other training! From now on it's the pool during the week and Sandycove just at weekends...training starts for real now!

Blackrock to Cobh 2008

2008-10-11T23:22:00.001+01:00

Last Sunday I had my last long race of the season...a 12.5km (flow assisted and tide assisted!) river swim from Blackrock (my home town!) to Cobh island. I was very excited about the swim when I first signed up for it a couple of months back, I was really looking forward to swimming past all of the local landmarks that I had seen from a rowing boat many times in the past! But as the day grew closer I looked forward to it less-I remembered how much I don't really enjoy swimming in fresh water (it's much more murky and less pleasant than the sea) and how much nicer it would be to be down in Sandycove doing three or four laps instead as we've often done on a Sunday morning recently. And then the night before it was rainy and windy as I went to sleep, it sounded like it was going to be a horrible night-not very promising for the day ahead!

But it turned out quite the opposite-it seems that the storm blew itself out overnight and I woke up to a lovely bright, sunny morning, which made me more optimistic about the swim! I headed down to Blackrock village where there was already a good group of people gathered. The big question on everyone's lips-how cold was the water? I was just hoping that it was about the same as Sandycove at around 13 or 14 degrees, anything much lower than that and I knew that I'd be uncomfortable for such a long swim. But we were assured that it had been measured at 14, both in Blackrock and in Cobh, so no need to worry!

All of us listen attentively to the safety briefing!

We had our safety briefing which included a description of the course-which totally went over my head because my geography is so bad! But I just hoped that my kayaker had a better idea than me-I didn't intend to do any navigating at all besides trying to stay in the flow as much as possible to make it easier!

My mother looks frozen as she waits for us to head off!

The start was handicapped (faster people start later to kinda give everyone an equal chance of getting in first) with four starts, each 10 minutes apart. I was in the second group to start, so once the first group headed off I headed off to get myself ready. Then there was the big decision-do I want to jump in or wade in? We had been advised to jump because of the possibility of glass on the slip but I decided that I'd take my chances with the glass and give myself a couple of minutes to get used to the water while we were waiting to start!

A crowded start

The 10-minute mark came quickly and we headed off-I think ours was the biggest group, there were 9 or 10 people all starting at once, so between all of us, the kayakers and the boats scattered around the place, the first few minutes were mayhem! But we soon spread out, found our kayakers and headed off at our own pace. I was pleased to find that the water wasn't as murky as I had thought it was going to be-it was actually quite pleasant, like the sea on one of the not-so-clear days. I didn't want it to be too clear since I didn't really want to see what was under me!

As we swam down towards the castle, I fell into pace with Jen Hurley, who's training for the 19km Rottnest Channel swim in February. It's always nice to have someone to swim with, it makes it easier to keep the pace up and I'm sure that it's nicer for the kayakers to have someone to chat to too! We passed by Blackrock Castle and headed down towards Loughmahon. By the time we were in line with MahonPoint shopping centre, 45mins had gone by and it was time for my first feed stop. I was having warm High5-the same drink that I'd had on the Inishbofin swim, but this time it wasn't going down so well-I was gagging on it and it didn't go down well. I need to find a replacement, but I knew that anyway-High5 has electrolytes in it and when used for a long period of time these can cause an electrolyte imbalance in the body which will cause sickness, apparently it's better to use a pure carbohydrate drink and just take electrolytes every few hours-so it's time for me to go and order some Maxim I think.

So after the first feed stop I was basically lost-my geography is useless, I knew the Blackrock/Mahon area because I've lived there all my life, but once we passed Rochestown I had no idea what was coming next! So I just trusted that my kayaker would know where we were going and I figured that the river would eventually take us to Cobh anyway!

It turned out that the next town we were coming to was Passage. As we got into Passage the river got narrower so the flow got much stronger and made swimming much easier. Unfortunately it made navigation that much harder because we were moving faster and the kayak was being pushed by the flow-plus the fact that there were a whole load of small boats in the way-I thought I was definitely going to crash into a few of them! Thankfully I didn't, although I did hear afterwards of a couple of people who did! I stopped for my second feed at that stage, and as I was stopped I was still drifting down past the boats-it was a great feeling to be still making progress and not having to put any effort in!

My next big adventure was passing the Rushbrooke ferry-there's a ferry that brings cars from the Passage side of the river across to the Cobh side and back, and our big warning that morning was "do NOT race the ferry-you will not beat it!"...so basically, we were to keep out of its way! So I spent about half an hour watching for the ferry (as I said, my geography is useless!). And then I saw it-taking off from the other side and heading towards us. At the same time one of our safety boats passed us going upstream and didn't seem worried about where we were, and my kayaker was still going forwards, so I kept swimming. But I could see it coming closer and it seemed to be coming straight for us and I was really getting quite worried that I was going to end up under it at this stage! So...very stupidly...I stopped to shout at my kayaker to make sure that we were actually going to make it-not realising that the place that I stopped was the very place that the ferry was heading for! He was very calm and told me that yes, we were fine and to just keep on swimming. So I put my head down and swam as fast as I could until I saw the ferry swing back towards Passage and I could see then that we were well out of its path. Big lesson there though-don't stop in the path of a big huge boat that could potentially kill you! And another big lesson-trust your kayaker...that's a hard one for me because I like to know exactly where I am and exactly where I'm aiming for. I don't like following someone without being totally sure that I'm going in the right direction. But I just need to get used to the fact that they can see a lot further ahead than I can from the water!

After all that drama and a big apology from me to my kayaker for being so silly, we continued on down the river towards Monkstown. At this stage the river opened back up and we needed to cross the channel to head towards Cobh. This was a more difficult task than we imagined as, just as we were getting to the point where we were supposed to cross, the river suddenly got busy and we had a number of large fishing trawlers heading out of the harbour. Since I didn't really feel like racing any more ships(!), we waited until they had gone, and then, with perfect timing, one of the safety boats appeared and told us that there was nothing due for a while so we could head across.

At this stage I could see Cobh harbour in the distance, but I'd been warned by a few people that did the swim last year that it was further away than it looked! I had my last feed and decided to stop trying to figure out where the end was and to just keep swimming and following my kayaker. We passed a stony beach and I could see some people looking at us-I thought that it was just some people out for a walk curiously looking at these people swimming past, but it turned out that it was my grandparents who had come down to see us as we finished! So I stopped for a couple of minutes, and then continued on only to see Ossi a few minutes later shouting encouragement! Having people on the bank like that always gives such a boost, it was great :) So then I figured I'd better start putting a bit more effort in since I was nearly done anyway...so I upped the pace a bit and soon the tugs that we were swimming towards were in sight...and so were the long line of seaweed-covered steps that we had to climb up!!

There was a great crowd at the finish-the good weather on a Sunday afternoon made sure of that! I hurried to get dressed before I got cold-it was such a nice day though that I warmed up quickly. We hung around and watched the rest of the swimmers finish (there weren't too many after me though!) and then headed for yummy soup and sandwiches to replenish any calories that we may have burned along the way (a very important task!)!!!

Tadhg is trying to get every bit of warmth from his cup of tea!

It was a really enjoyable swim-I was so glad afterwards that I did it...the water wasn't at all horrible the way I'd dreaded (much better than the Lee Swim even) and it was such a beautiful day for it. And of course I got to see some of the gang that I'd met from other swims over the summer, and a couple of new faces too which is always good!

The (approximate!) swim course

364 Days To Go

2008-09-11T12:24:00.004+01:00

I just thought I'd mark the fact that my tides start a year from today (September 11-16th, 2009)! I can't believe that this time next year there will be 4 of us from Cork sitting in the Varne Ridge caravan park waiting for call from our pilots, hoping that the weather will allow all of us to swim. It's going to be a hectic year trying to get all of the training but I'm enjoying it so far. So let's hope I feel the same way through the winter with those long pool sessions!

Inishbofin Swim

2008-09-08T16:18:00.002+01:00

I know it's a long time since I've updated...I've had a lot of stuff going on recently-more than anything I've been trying to get plenty of time in the sea before it gets any colder than it has already and before college starts up again for real! So here goes about Inishbofin....

I traveled up on the Friday on my own unfortunately-I couldn't carpool with the others since I was going to be heading to the airport to head to Dover on the way home on Sunday. So I got up in the evening to find that everyone else was already there and had had a quick swim-the water looked lovely and calm at that stage and we were just hoping that it would hold for Saturday so that we'd be able to swim to the island. We went for dinner that evening which was lovely, there was a big group of us including Ned, Niall, Julieann (who's also signed up to swim the Channel next summer), Eddie (who had just swum the Channel and was full of useful advice!) and his wife Nora, Graeme (who swam the Channel last year) and a few others who were sitting too far down the table for me to remember! It was a lovely dinner-I think Ned totally confused the waitress by asking for just a big bowl of plain pasta for the table-I'm sure that they don't get that as an everyday request!

When we left to head back to the B&B afterwards the weather had changed for the worse. It was drizzling rain and the wind had started to come up. Through the night I could hear the wind howling through the window, which was not a good sign for the swim! We got up to a dry morning the following morning, and it seemed to be much calmer than the night before. We had breakfast (which consisted of huge bowls of porridge along with cereal and eggs and much encouraging from Ned to eat it all-I thought I'd never be able to get up after all the food!), got ourselves ready to go and headed down to meet Martin Cullen who had traveled over from the island that morning.

Unfortunately he had bad news for us. He had decided that, for safety reasons, it would be too risky to swim from Cleggan to Inishbofin. So it was decided that we would head out on the ferry and do four two-mile laps of Inishbofin harbour-the same distance but much safer. When the ferry was leaving Cleggan all seemed very calm-until we got outside the shelter of the land and then the ferry started lurching from side to side more and more and we realised why exactly Martin had made his decision! It was very rough out there and it would just have been too dangerous for both swimmers and kayakers.

When we got to Bofin, we were paired up with our kayakers, there were a couple more swimmers than kayakers so I was sharing a kayaker, Ann-Marie, with Sharon, who trains with Martin in Cavan. We were briefed on the course, which was basically a wide square from the slip out towards the mouth of the harbour, across and back down towards the slip. We then went and got ourselves ready to swim.

Starting out-I'm on the right with the orange cap-Ned and Julieann are off in front already!

13 of us began the swim around 12 noon. The first few minutes were mainly concerned with keeping together with Sharon and trying to find Ann-Marie but once the crowd had thinned out (in other words, the fast people had left us!!) we got into a rhythm. It was nice swimming up towards the harbour, we swam up past an old fort towards a white tower at the edge of the harbour which made it easy to see where we were aiming for!

(As an aside...the two photos below were both taken during the swim-notice the difference in the weather-talk about 4 seasons in one day-we had 4 seasons in 4 hours!!!)

The lovely views as we swam towards the mouth of the harbour

It was much rougher as we swam across the mouth of the harbour, it made it hard to see the buoy that we were swimming towards...thankfully Ann-Marie could see it! Swimming down towards the slip it got much calmer again and before we knew it we had a lap done and we were able to have a nice hot drink-I was starving even though I had thought I'd never be hungry again after that breakfast!!!

Rough water near the mouth of Inishbofin harbour

Sharon's plan was to do two laps, so when we came in after the second lap she was undecided as to whether or not to go again. Up until then I had not felt cold at all, but in the time we were waiting around while everyone was encouraging her to go again, I cooled down a lot and by the time she had decided to go for one more I was quite cold. I really needed to speed up to get warm again or this was going to be my final lap too. While most people tend to start off quickly and get slower, I tend to start off slowly and then build up...I don't know if that's me warming up or just speeding up as I get closer to the finish because I know then that I can get out of the water sooner! So when we were half way around and another kayaker showed up (some people doing 3 laps had finished at that stage) to keep Ann-Marie company, I decided to take that as an opportunity to up my speed a little and warm myself up. So unfortunately for Ann-Marie she was on her own with me again and the other kayaker stayed with Sharon as she finished out her final lap.

At this stage I wasn't sure how many people were still left swimming and if I was the last one doing 4 laps or not. So I figured I'd try to catch up with Niall, who I knew was maybe a quarter of a mile ahead of me-if I don't have something to aim for then I just get lazy! So I sped up to Niall and caught up with him close to the mouth of the harbour on our last lap. And I figured then I might as well keep going as fast as I could to get to the end-at this stage the weather was turning horrible and, while I didn't mind (or even notice) the rain, my poor kayaker (a different girl who had taken over from Ann-Marie at this stage) was getting soaked! I feel sorry for the people taking care of us at swimming events-they have the boring job of traveling around slowly (whether it's by boat or by kayak), in this case in circles, and then when the weather turns bad they're much more badly off than we are in the water! So I ended up doing that lap in about 55 minutes (the first lap had taken 1hr 10mins in comparison!)...I "sprinted" (my sprinting isn't very fast-especially when I've already swam 7 and a half miles!) between the old pier and the new pier at the end, thinking that it might take about 100 strokes-it took over 300-bad estimation! But while I was tired at the end, I still felt like I could have done more, so I guess that's a good sign.

As I came up the slip, Sharon came to meet me drinking a hot whiskey-I was glad to see that she had finished comfortably and was "sensibly" warming herself up! I got into the waiting ambulance-the local ambulance driver was very kindly spending his day transporting us to the community centre where we had showers and food waiting, so that was great! I had my shower, drank hot tea, had yummy cookies and chatted to the others who were all nicely warmed up at that stage.

That evening we had a lovely dinner in the Dolphin Restaurant and then there was a presentation with a prize for everyone who took part, which I thought was really nice. Julieann had finished first in a time of 2hrs 58mins in what was her longest sea swim to date, which was an amazing achievement. And Ned came in soon after at 3hrs 7mins. I completed the 8 miles in 4hrs 23mins which I was happy with. 9 of us in total completed the 4 laps, and 4 people did 3 laps. And we mustn't forget Eddie, who did a lap to "loosen out" after his Channel swim 3 weeks previously! For most of us it was our longest sea swim to date. The night of chatting afterwards did some good too-we have at least one swimmer, Breccene Ennis, who has since announced plans to do a Channel swim in 2010, another person to join us Channel aspirants!

All in all it was a fabulous swim-it was disappointing that we couldn't swim from the mainland but swimming is always weather-dependent and we were lucky in this case to have a safe alternative where we could do the equivalent distance. I met some great people, and I'm sure that I'll be seeing some of them in the coming year as I train.

I want to say a huge thank you to Martin Cullen, who organised the who swim so well, to Graeme who harassed us to keep swimming after each lap, to all of the boat crew and kayakers who made the swim possible, to the ambulance driver who gave up his day to drive us around and to anyone else who helped with organisation. I'm looking forward to next year's swim already!

More Congratulations

2008-08-08T01:20:00.004+01:00

And I almost forgot....congratulations to the second Channel Swimmer of the summer from Cork....Eddie Irwin completed his swim on July 31st in 13hrs 47 mins. His swim was originally supposed to be in September but he was offered the slot at the end of July and went for it...good choice...now he has two months less of training! Well done Eddie!

A Proper Update...

2008-08-08T01:13:00.001+01:00

The one time I'm half way through a big long post and Firefox goes and crashes and loses it and Blogger hasn't autosaved it....ick! Golden rule...save often! So here goes again...

I've been swimming lots since I came back from Madrid. Mostly all in Sandycove, in differing temperatures...it got nice for a while but has been feeling cold again the past week or so, my watch is telling me that it's back down at about 14degrees C now...I'm sure that I'll be wishing for that temperature when winter sets in, but for now I'd prefer it to go back to 16 or so!

I've had a few swimming firsts in the past few weeks. One of these was my first time swimming in the Lee Swim, which I have already posted about. Another first was a jellyfish sting...I knew it was gonna happen sometime, I've been dreading it for so long! A couple of weeks ago I was coming to the end of a lap with Tadhg and we stopped to chat for a minute about something and while we were chatting I got stung on the arm...that set me swimming again pretty fast...anything to get out of there!! It wasn't so bad though...so much so that by the time I'd gotten to the slip the pain was more or less gone. I've had one pretty bad sting since, it was on the inside of my forearm and it left me with long red marks, I assume from the tentacles. I was swimming for an hour after and by the time I got out it was still sore. In fact, about 5 minutes before the end of that swim I got stung again on my ear and between my knees (by the same jellyfish!) and by the time I'd gotten to the slip those stings were gone but the earlier one still hurt like hell. I guess it depends on the type of jellyfish or maybe the length of contact time. I've also gotten stung across my face, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either. It would be a hell of a lot worse without goggles I'd imagine!! So now I'm trying to convince myself that stings really aren't so bad and I need to get over my jellyfish fear...maybe I'll have gotten over it by next summer!!

We've had a couple more swimming events in the past few weeks. Two weeks ago we had a swim out in Gougane Barra, it was by far the most scenic 2km I've ever swum...it's really gorgeous there. I'd actually never been there before...another first for me...even though it's so close-shame on me! It's where the River Lee begins and where Saint Finbarr is said to have founded a monastery back in the 6th century. I can see why he would have wanted to live there anyway...it's so pretty! Here are a couple of photos that I've found online to show just how nice a place it is (I forgot my own camera that day!)....

After the swim we went back to Tadhg's relative's house for yummy dinner and a few hours of chatting before facing the road home...it was a nice end to a really fun day...thanks to Tadhg for the organisation and hospitality :)

Last weekend was the weekend of the Kinsale regatta, and the regatta committee organises a race-a lap of Sandycove. Since I was heading down for a swim anyway I figured I might as well take part! It was handicapped (slowest swimmers start first to give everyone a chance) and I was in the middle group to go, which is probably right...I'm faster than some swimmers down there but I'm slower than a lot of others too!! I swam it in 31:06 altogether and was the 10th person finished overall and the 3rd woman. Which meant that I got another medal :) I'm starting to like these medals...I know that the only reason that I'm winning any is because there are so few woman open water swimmers out there in comparison to the men...but the medals are still pretty!!

So now my next event is coming up this weekend-I'm swimming from Galway to Inishbofin...8 miles long...out in the Atlantic Ocean...off the west coast of Ireland. It's gonna be tough. But I can't wait! I've been training for it the past while...I did a 3 hour swim a few weeks back (the one where I got the horrible sting!) and that went well...thanks to Tadhg and Paul for swimming with me on that one...it was a dull and dreary evening and it was quite rough out there so I really appreciated the company :) I wasn't too cold or too sore after, which was good. Then this weekend just gone Niall, one of the other people doing the Bofin swim, was saying that he'd like to do a long swim on Sunday. So I said that I'd head down and swim with him-he was planning to do 6 laps in about 4 hours...I wasn't sure that I was going to do that much but I figured I'd swim as long as I felt comfortable and not push it too much with the swim itself coming up so soon. It was quite cold that afternoon...made a little more comfortable by the fact that the sun was shining but still enough to cause brain freeze for the first few minutes! We stopped after two laps to have some drinks (Niall had brought a "picnic" box over to the island...there's a little cove that people use to store a box with energy drinks and whatever else rather than having to head back in to the slip...very useful!)...and again after the 4th lap. At that stage I was still feeling good...cold but not enough to want to stop. And the hot drink really helped with that too! So we did the 5th lap and then made the decision to go for the final 6th lap...I'm not sure if it was a sensible decision on my part or not since I actually spent some of the lap shivering as I was swimming, but it felt good afterwards to have done it. It took us 3hrs 57mins to do the 6 laps (about 9km) so Niall's estimate was spot on! I recovered really quickly once I got warm clothes on and had a warm drink...I had stopped shivering before I even left Sandycove. So that was good! I'm pretty convinced that I'm ready for Bofin now...I'm sure that I'll question myself once I actually start swimming away from land towards something that I can't see tho! But it will be a good challenge, a good experience. And hopefully good fun too! Now let's start crossing our fingers that the weather allows it to go ahead :)

And my last update (I think) is that I'm heading to Dover on Sunday to crew for Joni Storer on his channel attempt next week. So I'm spending a week in Dover, and I'll get to put faces to some of the names that I've been hearing for so long! Mark has the same tide window so it will be great to see himself and Kelly again. And on top of all of that I'll hopefully get to do lots of swimming! I'm going to be Joni's support swimmer, so I'll not only be seeing the whole process as a crew member, I'll also be in the water with him if he needs me to give a bit of a push at any stage...the whole think will be a really good experience for me I think.

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Galway so it's probably time to be getting to bed now...I've an exciting week ahead :) I'll update when I'm back from Dover and life is back to normal...

You Did What?!

2008-08-03T21:58:00.002+01:00

So I've been back in Cork for a while now and I'm back to Sandycove training most days and loving it! And a couple of weeks ago I had my first Lee Swim. For those of you who don't know...the River Lee is the river that Cork is built on. The Lee Swim is a 2,000 metre swim through the city that was first held in 1914. Bad water quality (due to the raw sewage that was being pumped directly into the river!) stopped the swim for a nu

mber of years, but the swim was resurrected in 2005 after a huge cleanup of the river. Most people in the city are not fully convinced that the river really is clean and give you very funny looks when you talk about swimming in it, but the swim is now in its 4th year and noone has grown any extra limbs after swimming in it so far-or lost any for that matter-so it can't be that bad!!

The swim course

This year was the first year since the swim restarted that I've been in Cork for it...so naturally I signed up. The day began with registration where we got our bag of freebies...including a bottle of coke which I figured would kill anything bad that I swallowed on the swim anyway! Then after a safety briefing at the finish, we all walked to the start. On the way we had some interesting entertainment...

There was a big seal in the river (in all my years living in Cork I've never seen a seal in the river-it figures that the one day I do is the day that I'm swimming in there!!). The seal had just caught a salmon that looked like it was a foot and a half or so long. And, as we watched, it tore the salmon to shreds. In minutes. I was just hoping that if he was still hungry he'd go for the fast people in the first group of swimmers and not me back in the sixth group lol!

When we got to the start we got ourselves ready to go and had another short safety briefing and then it was time for the fast people to head off. We were in groups depending on the time we had put in for ourselves-I had no idea how long it would take me...normally 1,600 metres is about 30 minutes for me in a pool so for 2,000 metres in open water I figured 45 minutes would be a comfortable time. So I was in the 6th group of people to start (with 30 people per group).

We watched the fastest people head off down the river with the seal swimming around the front few people! The organisers were great and we weren't waiting long before we were called to get to the start. I expected when we dived in that the water would smell horrible...we've thought of the river as dirty for so long that it's hard to believe that it's not! But it really didn't smell bad at all...it was very murky-you could only see an inch or so in front of your face-but that was probably a good thing, I didn't really want to be able to see to the bottom anyway! It was nice and warm too, about 16degrees C I think, so it didn't feel cold at all :)

I wasted no time getting in to the water...I'm causing the splash that's circled in red!

It was really nice swimming through the city-on every bridge there were lots of people watching. It's great to have lots of support when doing an event like that-although I'm sure that lots of those people were just curious as to what was going on! It was a gorgeous day for it too, as you can see from the pictures...

Enjoying my swim!

It still looks strange
to see so many people
in the river-especially
when I'm one of them!

We had been warned to save some energy for when we had to turn around and swim 300metres upriver at the end. I swam down to the turning point at the Port of Cork comfortably, and expected a bit more of a push when I turned but I must say that I didn't really feel it at all. I guess because the tide was coming in it would have countered some of the flow from the river.

I finished with people from the 4th and 5th groups to start, so I had obviously overestimated how long it would take me-it took just over 34mins, much less than the 45 that I had estimated! I found out later that I came 2nd in my age group-out of only 8 tho!

All done!

It was a really fun day and night after....a big thank-you to all of the organisers who did a really great job! I'm looking forward to next year already :)

Congratulations!

2008-07-16T14:52:00.001+01:00

On Sunday, July 13th, Finbarr Hedderman became the first Irish person to cross the English Channel this summer, in a time of 13hours 21minutes-an amazingly fast time! All of those long days in Sandycove really paid off. Well done Finbarr!

Greetings from Madrid

2008-07-07T18:30:00.003+01:00

I know, I know....it's been a long long time since I've posted! I'm in Madrid and have been for almost a month now. Not that that's any excuse I know, but it does mean that I've done less swimming and especially less open-water swimming so I haven't been in any rush to put stuff up here!!

I've been really enjoying it here, the weather is beautiful, the people are great and I'm getting lots of work done while still enjoying myself. And the celebrations after Spain won the European Cup for the first time in 44 years were just amazing! The only downside to being here is that my swimming has suffered big time.

I joined the university pool here where I'm working, it's an outdoor, 50metre pool. I haven't taken any of my own photos of it so the ones from the university website will have to do!

<- The dive pool

The 50m swimming pool ->

The week that I arrived here was the first week that it was open for the season, and it was perfect for swimming at that stage. Approximately 17 degrees C (62.6 degrees F) and absolutely empty-the weather here wasn't great at that stage and 17 degrees is considered to be ice-cold for most people here! So I was alone in the pool for most of my workouts with someone joining me for a couple of hundred metres every so often and the lifeguards giving me very funny looks for staying in for an hour at that temperature...of course it was nice and warm for me after being in the sea at home so much before coming here!

However, things have changed since then. The weather has gotten much, much better since then (we're up to 40 degrees C-104 degreesF-some days) and as a result the pool temperature has risen to about 24 degrees C (75 degrees F). So lots of people are training in the pool now, and even more are using it to cool down while sunbathing-and there are no lanes to distinguish between the two. So swimming there now is like swimming through an obstacle course and it's impossible to do a full length without having to dodge at least two or three people if not ten! So it's very hard to train there now, and that's probably one of the better pools for training-at least this one only has college students and no children! It's nice there for about the first 30 minutes after it opens and the last 15 minutes before it closes so I've been trying to do my workouts at those times. I'm looking forward to getting back into the Irish sea though, however cold it may be there right now!

And speaking of the sea...we went to the beach a couple of weekends ago-to a town called Oliva near Valencia. It was gorgeous, perfect Spanish beach minus all of the big hotels and tourists...we stayed at a campsite just behind the sand dunes, it was perfect.

Oliva Beach

The water temperature was incredibly warm, around 24degrees C on my watch which I really wasn't expecting from the sea in June (even in Spain)! I did a 45 minute swim on the Sunday, it was very nice....warm, calm, not so many people. But jellyfish instead...and I was told that the jellyfish that were around have a very painful sting so I was none too happy swimming close to them. I did notice that they were swimming fairly deep whenever I saw them so I tried to stay out deep also so that they would be well below me! It worked well, I didn't have any come too close to me. Overall, it was a nice swim, I didn't want to stay in too long though because it was close to 40degrees C (104degrees F) in the sun and I didn't want to end up burning badly.

So that's been the extent of my swimming for the past month. I'm home at the end of this week so I'll need to really step up the pace then to get ready for my big swim in August! I've got some other swimming news to write about but I think that will have to wait til later...if I wait til I've finished writing everything this will never get posted...I'm on holidays for the next few days so I'll try to fit in some time to write some more and post it when I get home....adiós for now!

Just keep swimming...

2008-06-03T22:02:00.007+01:00

It's been an interesting week's swimming....

I woke up last Sunday to find that I couldn't move my left arm and shoulder, and I had to get up and go teach lots of 4-year-olds how to swim! The morning was hell, I spent the whole time trying to keep my shoulder as still as possible, which is not an easy task when you've got six kids hanging out of you! The warm water did help a little tho, and I stretched it out a little in the pool when the classes were over. When I got home I rubbed plenty of tiger balm into it and rested it for the rest of the day. That really helped to loosen it out and reduce the pain and by the time I was heading to bed that night I was feeling much better. I had arranged for a swim Monday morning with Finbarr (who's swimming the Channel in July) so I was hoping that I'd wake up pain-free!

When I woke up Monday it was sore again but nowhere near as bad as the morning before. I put on more tiger balm and got ready to head down for the swim anyway-I figured that I'd see how it was after a few strokes and decide then if I was going to head around the island or not. Finbarr was out for a short break when I got down there so I got ready and we headed in. I wasn't sure if it was the cold numbing it or just that it needed to be stretched out-but my shoulder felt ok when I started swimming so I decided to head around-Finbarr was on his last lap of the day anyway (at the end of a 6-hour swim!) so he was at a nice slow pace for me. I managed the lap with no problems, I was actually much more comfortable than I thought I'd be. I got out happy that I hadn't made a bad decision by carrying on swimming after I felt pain on Saturday.

On Tuesday I was back to the pool for my Sunday's Well Masters swimming session, it had been a while since I was there so it was nice to see everyone again. Swimming in the pool was doing my head in tho after being in the sea so much recently...I don't know how I'm going to make myself get back into the pool routine next week when I'm in Madrid! It was a good session though, we did some timed frontcrawl sets which I always enjoy.

Then on Wednesday it was back to the sea with Finbarr...it was a lovely calm morning which was a big change from the few previous swims! I found it quite cold though, colder than it was for a few weeks. My watch was showing 56 degrees F which is about 13.5 degrees C so I guess leaving about a degree for body temperature the water was probably at about 12.5, at the lower end of Saturday's range. I think too the fact that it was early in the morning my body just didn't want to be in cold water so that probably played a big part! I was the first time in a long time though that I had an "ice-cream headache" when I dived in first. We did a double lap and the cold wasn't so bad after a while...I definitely appreciated the tea that Mike Harris had waiting when I got out though! Finbarr didn't seem to feel the cold at all...he had done another full lap by the time I was leaving and was starting to go around for another as different people came to join him.

On Thursday it was back to SW again, there were only two of us in the lane so that's always nice, I like not having to speed up and slow down the way you have to when there's a big group. We did some timed 200s which were fine and then later on some sprints, which are always tough! I really was never built for sprinting! It was a fun workout though.

I talked to Finbarr Thursday night and he said that he was planning to head to Oysterhaven the following morning (a little closer than Sandycove) for a 2-hour swim and if I wanted to come along there would be a boat with us so I could get out before then if I needed to. So I decided to go...thankfully I have a nice new sat nav which could tell me where to go, otherwise I'd probably still be trying to find the place now...I don't know my way around most of West Cork that well!! So we met there at 10am on Friday morning, it was a cloudy morning, not too cold, but with lots of fog, especially as I got closer to the coast. We were supposed to be swimming from the red circle marked on the picture below out to the big "island" (it's really just an extra-big rock!), which is known as Big Sovereign (Little Sovereign is the smaller one off to the right), which is about 2.5km out according to my measurements on Google Maps. However, we couldn't see past the corner in the headland due to the fog! Thankfully we had a boat with us so we (hopefully) couldn't get too lost. We decided that if we got out to the mouth and we still couldn't see the island, we'd take a left and head the shorter distance towards the smaller island instead.

"The Sovereigns"

We got in and started heading in the right direction, and thankfully we found that when we got out a bit we could see the island. I let Finbarr do the navigating and I just followed him...if it was me navigating we could have ended up back at Sandycove!!! I got a rather unpleasant surprise as we headed out further from the land...there were jellyfish swimming under us! There weren't many of them and they were small and they were down a decent amount I think...I didn't exactly stop to check! But they freaked me out anyway...every time I saw one I sped up dramatically...normally I just use my legs for balance when I'm swimming but when a jellyfish passed under me I'd kick like my life depended on it! Maybe it's a good training technique to make me swim faster lol! I guess my big fear is not knowing what a sting feels like...maybe once I've been stung once I won't be so freaked out by them after that!

We got out close to the island and the guy driving the boat (whose name I never found out...oops!) took some photos...there were a couple of seals in the water closer to the island and he wanted to try to get them in the photos with us. Unfortunately I couldn't see the seals apart from a couple of times when I got the right vantage point over the waves...he had an advantage being up on the boat! I do need to get my hands on those photos tho, I think there might be some cool ones in there.

We turned around and headed back in to land with Finbarr making sure that we didn't miss the opening to get back in! The whole swim (about 5km) took about 1 hour and 45 minutes, with the water temperature about 57 degrees F (14 C) so probably 13 degrees C in reality...to me it felt much warmer than Wednesday in Sandycove...I guess a lot really does depend on what you're body temperature is like and how you're feeling at the time. It was a great swim, it was interesting to swim right out from the land rather than staying close like in Sandycove...it's a bit scarier this way but more fun too I think. I just need to get rid of those jellyfish!

Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous days here, I headed down for the organised swims both afternoons, making sure to put on plenty of suncream! On Saturday I did a single lap, the water temperature was lovely, nice enough to laze around in and do a little breaststroke or relaxed frontcrawl without getting cold. My watch read at 60 F (15.5 C) so it was probably around 14.5 C, the warmest we've seen so far this year. On Sunday myself and Sylvain headed down and managed to get a puncture just entering Kinsale...thankfully he was there because I'd never have managed to get the nuts open myself! I do know how to change a puncture, but every time I've had one I never have the strength to open them. Thankfully Sylvain managed ok tho while I busied myself swapping out the spare from under the car! When we got there we headed around for a double...again nice water temperature, much more fluctuation than Saturday-the cold spots were colder but the warm spots were warmer...I saw variations from 58-62 F (14.5-16.5) on my watch at different stages going around...so it wasn't just my imagination!

Yesterday I didn't get a chance to get near the sea...with it being a bank holiday I knew that it would take a long time to get through Kinsale and even longer to get home since everyone would be traveling back from West Cork in the evening. So since I had a ton of research work to do I figured I couldn't really spend so much time driving there and back...although I really wanted to be down there, the weather was gorgeous!

Instead I headed down this evening, it's been another lovely day today so I headed straight down from work, the swim was at 6pm. It was a great evening for a swim, with the sun shining down and not a cloud to be seen. The water was back at 57 F so about 13 C after adjusting and it was lovely and clear-I'm not sure why it's so unbelievably clear some days and not at all on others. I used to think that it just depended on how calm or rough it was, but it was rougher today than it has been all weekend but much clearer. The wind was in a strange direction too, it was pushing the water back against us as we were heading back towards the slip, it was kinda fun fighting with it tho! I was starving after missing my dinner so I only did the one lap and headed home for a nice big feed!!

There's another swim tomorrow evening and again Thursday...I've got an appointment to give platelets in the morning tho and sometimes I don't feel great for the rest of the day after that so I'll have to see how it goes as to whether I'll head down or not. And then on Friday I travel to Dublin to fly out to Spain on Saturday for a month...I'm doing research at the university in Madrid for a while. It will be nice to be in Spain but it means no open water swimming the whole time there :(

But at least I've got the whole summer ahead of me when I get back...and the water should be even warmer by then :)

Sandycove Champion of Champions 2008

2008-05-25T18:16:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, Sandycove was host to the much-anticipated Champion of Champions race...5 laps, then out and back in for 3 laps, then out and back in for a final lap. I think that it would be easier mentally to just do the 9 laps at once, it's hard to make yourself get back in after being out and warmed up. But then 9 laps without a rest would be tougher physically I guess. Regardless, it was a huge challenge...one which I'm definitely not prepared for yet! My plan was to do 2 laps out of the initial 5 and then enjoy watching everyone else completing the challenge for the day and help out wherever I could.

I traveled down with Sylvain, who was hoping to complete the day. It was a lovely morning, sun shining and not too cold...no wind in Cork but then it's always a different story down west! We arrived at Sandycove around 8am to find Ned's wife Ann parking the huge horse trailer in front of the wall...not exactly an everyday sight!

Our dining room for the day!

We got a nice parking spot just across from the slip (good idea to be early!) and waited for Ned to be ready for our briefing. He began with a welcome and some introductions, the most notable of which being Kevin Murphy, "King of the Channel". Some of the group had previously completed relay and/or solo EC crossings, and many others were signed up for an attempt this year or next. It was great to be part of such a distinguished group of swimmers! He went on to talk about the initial 5 laps and wished us luck for the day ahead.

We all then headed back to the cars and got ready to get in...

Ready and waiting!

At about 9:15 the first swim of the day began at high tide. Conditions seemed relatively calm and the water wasn't too cold (the temperature range for the day was 12.5-14.5degreesC - 54.5-58degrees F). We all headed out for the first corner, where everything changed rather quickly...rough water hit us and we were thrown around like rag-dolls! It felt like a (very big) washing machine!

It was like that for the whole of the outside of the island...when I turned my head left towards the island to breathe all I could see was the waves crashing on the rocks and most of the time when I turned my head right all I was getting was a wall of water in my face. So I stuck with breathing to the left most of the time, it's my preferred side anyway! Looking at those waves breaking was kinda freaking me out though, I kept having mental images of me being thrown up onto the rocks by one of them...so as a results I was doing a VERY wide lap of the island, I was probably swimming a couple of hundred metres more than I needed to but I wasn't going for a time or anything and I felt much safer out there!

Our Giant Washing Machine!

Once we rounded the second corner things calmed down a lot and by the time I was around the front of the island I'd almost forgotten how rough it had been! So I swam around again and had the not-so-nice experience of Ned lapping me, he was on his third lap and I was only on my second when he passed me at the third corner!! A couple of others must have too judging by times afterwards. But I was happy to just be completing my first double, it didn't bother me that it was a very slow one! I headed back into the slip and got warmed up and dressed and then waited for the others to start coming in. Soup and sandwiches arrived, provided by the RNLI. The soup was great for warming everyone up!

People soon started arriving in...and the general feeling was "I'm not getting back in there"!! It had been a tough morning and the thought of getting back in for 3 laps and then again for a final lap was a horrible one. But by the time 2pm came most people were ready to get back in...it's amazing how much the mind buries over time...we forget how painful something was the first time around and then go do it again! I'd suppose it can be a good thing...I'd probably never have gotten back in the sea again if my mind had remembered how cold it was that first day!!

The original rules for the day didn't allow anyone to get in for the second session if they hadn't completed the first 5 laps. However, when it came to it, people were going ahead anyway since many people had missed some of the earlier laps due to the horrible conditions. So after much coaxing from Sarah and Kelly (who had lots of experience after coaxing Mark to get back in!) I decided to get back in too for a lap. It's so hard to get back in after just warming up and getting comfortable, and it was made even harder by the fact that conditions were still horrible (although we were assured that things had calmed down a little on the outside...I think that was just to make sure that any of us got back in at all tho!!). But most people got ready and headed in...at this stage the tide was at its lowest so we had to walk out to get to deep water and then we ended up walking around some of the rocks as we headed out to the first corner. I was happy that I'd been down there with Mark the day before at low tide, it really helped with knowing what to expect and I wasn't quite so freaked out swimming through the seaweed this time around!

We decided that walking out to the island would be easier than swimming!

Things were just as horrible when we rounded the corner, but I managed the lap and even decided to do a second. My left shoulder was hurting quite a bit-I'm never sure whether to keep going or to stop when I'm in pain like that, I'm afraid of doing damage but then again I know that I need to learn to swim through a certain amount of pain...there will be plenty of pain to go through on the day that I swim the Channel! In the end it decided for itself though, after I finished the second lap and was contemplating doing the third I was talking to Finbarr and Imelda...and when I went to swim again it seized up-I could move it but definitely not enough to get around again. I'm not sure if it was the rough conditions or the cold or the fact that I'd swam more than I have had before in my life or just a mixture of all of these factors...but I headed for the slip anyway, very happy with the amount that I had done...it was twice the number of laps that I had planned to do and I did more laps on that one day than I'd done in total up until then in tough conditions so I think that was a pretty good achievement!

I got warmed up for the second and final time that day and put on my many layers of clothes (helped by Sarah-thank you! It's horrible to not be able to dress yourself properly...but with the shoulder having given up there was no way I was getting my layers on without help!!). And from then I on was just sitting back and watching others do the hard work for the rest of the day!

Conditions apparently started improving a little for the last lap of the day...the wind had died down a bit. Some people headed out early so that they could get back to watch Munster in the Heineken Cup rugby final (which, incidentally, we won!) and the last few got in at 5pm. I have great respect for anyone who got in for that final lap, there was nothing going to make me get back in there again at that stage!

The day ended with many happy, some disappointed but everyone truly exhausted. It was a great day overall...the weather was good (besides that wind!) and the people were great. Only 4 people completed the day without wetsuits and 8 with wetsuits out of a total of 35 people (the results can be seen here). This year was more of a learning experience for me than anything else, and a chance to meet lots of people whose names I have only heard in passing up until now! I planned to do 2 laps, I ended up doing 4. Next year I'll be hoping to do all 9 tho!

And last but definitely not least...thanks to Sarah who gave up most of her day to come down and be my volunteer for the day...and to Kelly and Ann and everyone else who helped out and made it a great day for us swimmers! :)

The day before the big one...

2008-05-23T16:47:00.012+01:00

It's been a busy, busy week! Not on the swimming front though :( There's a reason for that...but first, last weekend...

I swam on Saturday, a group of about 7 of us headed around the island. It was nice, not as clear as the weekend before, but I'm not sure that that's a bad thing...it was nice not to be getting spooked every few minutes! The temperature felt about the same, maybe a little warmer, so maybe 12 or 12.5 degrees C (with the usual warm and cold patches!). I swam with Sally, who did an EC relay a couple of years ago. Her big warning for me was that I'm going to have no social life for the next year!! But I'm used to being busy anyway, all the extra training just seems to make me organise my life better so that I have time to do the other things I want to do. I realise that next summer's going to be pretty busy with all the training and I'm hopefully going to be finishing up my PhD then too...but I'll just deal with it all when it comes to it I guess!

Then...on Saturday night I did something really silly. I was getting up from a chair and as I was standing up I sneezed. And pulled something in my back. So silly but so painful too! So I spent most of Sunday lying down and I've been trying to rest it since then, I only swam a few lengths on Tuesday evening to stretch it out. It's been getting better, I'm finding that sitting for a long time really hurts though, which makes both working and driving difficult. But once it's getting better it's all good.

So in the last couple of days I've been talking to Mark who's coming over for the Champion of Champions here at Sandycove this Saturday. And we arranged to meet up today for a chat and for him to have a look at the island and maybe a swim. So I met himself and his partner Kelly in Kinsale and we went for coffee and had a chat. It's always a lot of fun for me to chat to people who either have swam the Channel or aspire to...it's a great way to learn more about what I need to do over the next 15 months. Mark has his pilot boat booked for August 8th-15th so he's training hard and it was great to hear about all that he's been doing!

We headed for Sandycove after coffee...tide was at its lowest which was very strange for me to see, it showed me where the name came from anyway...normally there's just the slip and some gravel and rocks at the water's edge...today there was plenty of sand in view! Mark had decided that he wanted to do a lap to check out the island so we got ready and headed in. It was very strange to have to walk through the shallow water to get in rather than just being able to dive into deeper water from the slip...I definitely prefer getting it over with quickly! I've heard that you can actually walk out to the island at low tide...I never believed it before but now I do, we walked out for ages today before there was enough water to really swim in! We swam for a bit out towards the first corner but then we came to those rocks that are normally submerged and found that swimming between them and the island was close to impossible, it was very shallow. So we ended up walking on the island around the rocks and then getting back in, it was all very strange for me! We headed out to the first corner and when we turned it we found that it was pretty rough out there. I guess up until now I've been spoilt by the nice weather and calm conditions...the whole wind and waves thing took a little getting used to! But we managed ok. Mark is much faster than me so I was following him most of the time...except for the couple of times he headed out into the Atlantic Ocean away from the island...I wasn't sure if it was intentional to swim a little extra and let me catch up or just the fact that he was breathing to the right and losing track of where he was but regardless I was staying nice and close to the island! As we rounded the third corner and started heading for the slip we found a few very shallow areas, it was weird to be standing up in places where I normally would be struggling to see the ground! Overall it was a nice swim, I was happy to see the way the island at low tide too, a very different experience. As regards temperature...it felt pretty comfortable, I forgot to check my watch but Mark's was reading at 60 degrees F (15.5 degrees C) so after taking a couple of degrees off for body temperature it was probably around 14 degrees C, pretty nice. There was also some nice sun on our backs when it chose to come out of the clouds, so all in all a very pleasant swim! No photos unfortunately but I'm sure that Mark might post a couple!

So now we've just got tomorrow to look forward to...my plan is to swim two laps in the morning and then just hang around and help for the day...it's going to be a very tough one for people. Next year I'll be aiming to complete it but for now that's a bit out of my reach!

1 lap down....

2008-05-16T18:59:00.006+01:00

It's been another interesting week on the swimming front...

We've been getting some lovely weather, I was swimming Friday, Saturday and Sunday last weekend in Sandycove and the water is starting to get that little bit warmer, people are reckoning that it's up at about 12 degrees C (53.6 degrees F) at this stage. And hopefully with all of the good weather we've been having that figure will keep rising!! Friday and Saturday I swam on my own as others swam around, I just stayed inside the island and swam in circles! I stayed in for 40 minutes on Saturday, so I was pretty happy then that I'd be able to go around the island sometime soon. So on Sunday when a group were swimming I decided to head out to the first corner with them and see if I keep up! They were at a nice pace so I decided to go around. So around we went...

The water was clearer than I've ever seen it, we could see the bottom all the way around...sometimes that's not such a good thing though, I still always get a fright when I see something moving that I wasn't expecting!! I need to get used to having crabs and fish and seaweed moving under me without missing a stroke each time...I'm much too used to pool swimming! It was really cool though, when we got to the third corner there was a shoal of those tiny fish that move really fast darting around the place and shimmering in the sun, all you could see was the silver glitter as they quickly swam out of our way!

The times that I've swam inside the island I've never really come out tired, I guess because I'm not swimming with someone it's easier to keep a slower pace and just wander around. But after this swim my arms were actually a little tired, I had pushed to keep up with everyone and I could feel the effects! We swam around in about 32 minutes (it's about a mile around or a little more), which is not too far off my normal pool pace (I'm a very slow swimmer!!!). So I definitely had a good group to swim with, I could do with that push more often!

I went down to Sandycove again yesterday with my sister, Sarah, who decided to try out her new wetsuit. It was a very pretty day back in the city, a little windier down west though! But the sun was still out, and you could feel its effects in the water, the top inch or so felt nice and warm as my arms plunged down into the colder water underneath!! It was nice to have the sun on my back too, I was careful to put on suncream before I went down, I don't want to get burned this early in the summer! We headed out towards the first corner and then came back in and Sarah got out to get dressed while I headed out for another while. I think it was the first day that I wasn't thinking about how cold I was as I was swimming around, I was just enjoying the swim. I swam around the inside triangle and came back in, I swam for about half an hour altogether. It was a very enjoyable swim!

And then like a fool I came home and went to a pilates class...I went to my first one last week and was stiff for three days so I'm not sure what made me go again!! It's supposed to be great for strengthening up your core muscles, and I've been having a little trouble with my lower back...nothing major thankfully, but enough to make me realise that I should get the muscles there working! It's a really enjoyable class, and I find that I come out of it and feel like I haven't really done much...until the next day!! Today wasn't as bad thankfully...last week I was worried that I'd actually managed to bruise my ribs somehow...it hurt that much!!! This week I can definitely feel that I've done it but it's easier to move today!!

And then after that I was going to go to the Master's swimming but I got up there and realised that I'd forgotten my swimsuit so I figured that it might be a good idea to head home again! But I'd probably done enough for one day at that stage anyway.

I also got my car inspected yesterday, I expected them to come back with a big list of things that were wrong with it, it's been off the road for almost a year and it's making some...let's say interesting...noises!! But they said that the engine is fine, the only thing that was wrong was some rust under one of the doors, so I need to fix that and bring it back for them to check again. But it was a much better outcome than I'd hoped for, so I'm very happy with that...I really am back on the road now :)

The plan for this evening is to head to the pool and try for maybe 4,000 metres, it does depend on how busy it is but usually Friday evenings are pretty ok. And I'm in Sandycove tomorrow and Sunday. And then next weekend is the Champion of Champions at Sandycove...where people do 9 laps over the day...5 laps beginning at 9am, then 3 laps beginning at 2pm and then one final lap at 5pm. There's a time limit for each section: 4 hours for the 5 laps, 2:30 hours for the 3 laps and 40 minutes for the final lap. It's going to be a very tough day! I was originally signed up to do it, but I have realised that I have absolutely no hope of managing that so soon! So I talked to Ned a couple of weeks back and he said to just start away and then hang around for the day afterwards. So I'm going to try to make that the first day I do a double lap, but we'll see how it goes! It will definitely be one of the events that I'll be aiming for next summer though...for now I just need to concentrate on my 8-mile Inisbofin swim in 12 weeks time!

Back in the swing of things....

2008-05-07T14:21:00.002+01:00

Hope everyone's long weekend was as good as mine :)

First of all, my sore throat is gone...at least it hasn't been bothering me since Saturday, so that's a good sign! I'm not sure if it was the active manuka honey that Mark kindly suggested for me to take or just all the cold water over the weekend scaring my body into getting better or even just the long weekend and unexpected nice weather making me feel better!! But regardless I'm feeling a hundred times better than I was last week :)

It was a great weekend, managed to get four open water swims in....

I was in Sandycove on Saturday, the weather was only ok and the water was rough, so not ideal conditions for my first swim back after being sick! But I got in and swam for 8 and a half minutes, so still a little longer than my last open water swim and much tougher with the rough conditions. The water was considerably warmer than my last swim (probably three degrees C or so), it didn't feel warm though after being out of it for so long again!

Sunday was a much nicer day, the kind of day that you hope for on a summer long weekend and don't always get here in Ireland! I think it encouraged lots of people to get back into the water too, Sandycove was jammed...I don't know what parking is going to be like in the summer when it was already pretty much full up there on the first nice day in May! The water was nice too, still got the usual cold headache but it felt warmer than the day before, probably more of a psychological thing than anything else! The temperature was measured at 11degrees C (51.8 degrees F) but since I hadn't taken a reading on Saturday I can't compare and see if it's just all in my head or not. I swam for 10 and a half minutes, did my own little mini triangle which was probably about 500metres, it was pretty rough again even with the nice day so I was pretty happy with what I'd done. It was so nice too to get out of the water and to be warm heading to the car rather than shivering!

Then on Sunday evening I got a call from Ned to say that there were some people swimming in the river in Fermoy on Monday morning and would I like to come along. So I jumped at the chance...even though I was going out Sunday night! I was home relatively early and relatively sober Sunday night but it was still a drag to get myself out of bed on Monday morning...not helped by the fact that it was cloudy and there was a light mist outside, I just wanted to snuggle back under the covers instead! But I made myself get ready and went to meet Ned who was driving down. By the time we got there the mist was gone, it still wasn't particularly inviting weather though! There were 5 of us swimming, myself, Ned, Sylvain (who's attempting the channel swim on the same set of dates as me), Eddie (who's attempting the channel this September) and Ciaran. Two in wetsuits, three of us in just swimsuits. Ned reckoned it was probably about 12 degrees C (53.6 degrees F) so a little warmer than the sea at the moment. We set off, I was planning to try to stay in for about 20minutes in the warmer temperature. Since we were swimming upriver it was much tougher on the way than on the way back so I was thinking of swimming for about 15minutes and then turning around. But it turned out that me and Ciaran were about the same speed, so after about 15 minutes we chatted and decided that we'd try to get as far as the half-mile marker and turn there. Which ended up taking us about 28 minutes! But it's amazing the difference that the extra degree or so made, even after the 28 minutes I was more comfortable than after 10 minutes the day before! So we turned, and literally swam twice as fast back! It felt great having the flow with us, it was so much easier! We got back in 14 minutes so just over 40 minutes altogether, which was a huge improvement for me. I think that having someone there really helped me to stay longer because I knew that if anything did happen there was someone there to realise it! I just need to find someone (or a few people) in Sandycove now that are a similar speed to me so that I have someone to swim with there.

Monday morning was a huge boost to my confidence, I knew then that I could do a mile in the open water pretty comfortably and that after 40 minutes in the water I was fine, I wasn't too cold afterwards or anything. So then when Tuesday came around I figured that I'd try to get to Sandycove that evening. I organised a lift down and headed off around 6pm...it was a nice sunny evening in the city but a lot colder by the sea! I was swimming on my own with Sarah watching so I headed out to the corner and back in a small triangle...but by the time I got back in I'd only done about 9 minutes and was feeling fine so I headed back out again in in the other direction this time...by the time I got back in I'd done 17 minutes altogether and had to get out then because I was caught for time. But I was almost as cold after that 17 minutes as I had been after the 40 the day before...I really never realised how much a degree or two's difference makes!
So now...today is a day off after swimming the past 8 days without a break, and then I've got pilates tomorrow evening and master's swimming after, I think the plan is to video our strokes and analyse them so that would be good, make me admit to all the bad habits!! And then I'm back in Sandycove again for the weekend-Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

And the last piece of good news...looks like I'm finally back in business as regards a car: it's taxed, insured, inspection booked for next week and a few small problems are fixed. So I'm mobile again :) No more excuses now for missing training sessions!

Sick again :(

2008-04-24T13:20:00.003+01:00

So up to a couple of weeks ago my training seemed to be going pretty well, I was getting some distance in in the pool and starting to get used to the cold of the sea....and then I got a head cold. And I can't manage to get rid of it :( It started out as a sore throat and progressed to a full head cold. And the sore throat just won't go away-a few days I've thought it was gone only to wake up to it being there again the following morning.

So last week was a disaster as regards swimming, I got into the pool on Tuesday night to find myself as sick as ever Wednesday morning. So I took it easy for another few days and got back into it again this week just gone. I'm finding that my fitness has gone way down in that short amount of time, workouts that should be easy are killing me! And my throat is still sore most days, but it seems to be that way regardless of whether I swim or not....so I'm going to keep swimming and just hope it gets better!

So the plan is to get back down to Sandycove this weekend, it's a long weekend here so there are swims all three days, so for now I'm going to try to make all three but we'll see how it goes. The weather is supposed to be horrible all weekend (typical for an Irish long weekend!) but I'm going to try to make myself go anyway-the weather might be horrible the day I swim the Channel!

I'll update after the weekend and hopefully report on how the three swims went!

What I've been up to....

2008-04-15T13:09:00.006+01:00

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted so here's a bit of an update....

Douglas pool opened at the end of last week, so I can get back to training with my club again, which is nice. I was there Tuesday and Thursday last week and the plan is to head there tonight. It's nice to swim there because I can see how much my other training is paying off in comparison to the people only training there the two nights a week! I'm going to move up to a faster lane tonight and see how that goes-unfortunately my breaststroke and butterfly are only ok and I almost drown doing a length of backcrawl so I may end up moving back because of that!

Last Thursday was the most swimming I've done in a day so far, I swam Thursday morning and evening, with a total of over 5,000metres (over 3 miles) swimming that day. I was a bit sore that evening but it felt good. I'm trying to get my metres up a bit during the week at the moment since I'm probably going to be going to Sandycove a lot at the weekends from now on.

And speaking of Sandycove....

First of all, Ned uploaded a great panorama photo of the island during the week that I'm including here. It makes things much easier to explain when I've got a picture to help me! Basically the slip is where the photo is being taken from. People swim out to the right, around the back of the island and back in towards the slip passing the red house on the left. This swim is somewhere between 1,700 and 1,900 metres (depending on how close to the island you swim!)...that's a little over a mile.

Panorama of Sandycove Island

I've been down there four times now, twice since my last post. The first of these two times the water was at about 9 degrees according to my watch. I stayed in the water for 6 minutes (I'm starting to time myself now so that I know that I'm staying in longer each time!) and those 6 minutes felt like forever!! I swam out towards the red house to the buoys, I turned back when I reached the second of the two buoys that are next to each other in the picture. On my way back I realised that I'd probably gone too far, my arms and legs were getting very numb and I thought I'd never get to the slip. And of course as soon as I started thinking that I started to panic so that only made things worse!! I got in fine though and warmed up pretty quickly so it was just all in my head...it really made me realise the importance of having others around when I'm swimming though just in case!

I went down again then last Saturday morning, there was a big gang of people going in before me, most in wetsuits though! I walked down the slip and put my toes in and they were numb in seconds...it was a very cold week here last week so the water temperature was down to 7.5degrees (someone told me that after...thankfully I didn't know that when I was getting in!). So it took a while to make myself get in and when I did I had the usual feeling of not being able to breathe for about 20 strokes...I'm not sure if that ever goes away in water that cold...it's probably just my body's way of trying to get me back out of there as soon as possible!! I swam out to the right this time in the direction that I'd go if I was going to swim around the island. I had decided to swim for 8 minutes, adding on 2 minutes from the swim before, so at about 4 minutes I turned back, I was almost at the corner of the island at that stage. Getting in was a bit harder, I kept swimming crooked so after 20 strokes or so I'd look up and find I wasn't swimming towards the slip anymore at all!! Definitely something that I need to work on!!! So it took a little longer to get back, I was in for about 8.5 minutes, I really enjoyed that swim though, no panic this time! I found that the palms of my hands got really numb, I guess from pulling through the water, it felt really weird though!

I'm going to try to get down there again over the next few days, tomorrow is looking busy but maybe Thursday, and maybe swim out the same way as on Saturday but then across the inside of the island towards the buoys and back into the slip from there. That's the swim that most people do before doing a lap so I figure if I do that a couple of times over the weekend I might finally be ready for a lap the following week!

Sandycove Again!

2008-03-31T18:05:00.004+01:00

Two days since my first sea swim of 2008 and I returned to the place of torture...Sandycove...to remind myself of what it feels like to jump into a freezing cold body of water and try to make my arms and legs move fast enough to warm myself up to where I can feel them again. Am I crazy? At least I wasn't the only crazy one there, we arrived to Sandycove to find two people getting ready to swim, one of whom was Finbarr who plans to swim the Channel this summer. They headed off as I got ready to swim (and as my poor dog, Fallon, went crazy in the car because she couldn't understand why we weren't letting her near the water that she could plainly see!).

The water looked nicer today, it was very calm...the air temperature felt much colder though, which wasn't very helpful in encouraging me to get in! But get in I did, had the same feeling that I'd never breathe again for my first trip out and back and then I settled into it and made another two trips...by that time my arms and legs were getting pretty numb! So Sarah left Fallon out of the car down to me and I tried to get her to swim out to me...totally confused the poor dog, she's used to having us on the beach, not in the water!! She wasn't too impressed by the deep water off the pier either, she got in and then panicked when she was out of her depth right away, resulting in me having to rescue her and show her how to get out!

Fallon looking at the deep water off the pier with disdain!

Sarah ended up having to take her all the way around to the shore area so that she could paddle away happily while I got dressed and warmed up!

My plan is to head down to Sandycove next on Friday, there's an organised swim on Friday evening. So I'm hoping to do a little more that evening-maybe swim out some of the way with the others and turn back when I'm too cold rather than just swimming in and out close to the pier. I'm already shivering thinking about it though!!!

My First Sea Swim!

2008-03-29T14:23:00.017Z

Way back at the end of January I made a promise that I'd try to get into the sea over Easter. And since I haven't finished my Easter Eggs yet, it's still Easter to me!! So I took the plunge (literally!) this morning. There was someone else going in for his first time too, so I figured at least I wouldn't be the only one. So I headed down there for a little after 10am this morning, it was actually sunny as we were driving down there and the picture makes it look like it was a gorgeous day, but it wasn't anywhere near as warm as it looks (the air temperature was about 10degrees C-50degrees F)! The sea wasn't quite as calm as it looks either, but I wasn't too worried about that since I wasn't planning to go in for that long anyway!

Sandycove Island on a "beautiful" March morning!

By the time I got down there, the other new guy, Paul, had already gotten in and was swimming in and out from the slip in his wetsuit. He got out soon after so I was all on my own-the others were going to wait to make sure that I got in and out ok before heading off for their mile-long swim! So I took Ned's advice and got changed quickly before I got too cold or lost my nerve!! I wasn't wearing a wetsuit, so it was just my swimsuit, two swimming caps (0ne thermal) and a pair of goggles...take off the thermal cap and you'd have my Channel swimming outfit!!

Me with Ned as I'm fixing my thermal cap!

I walked down the slip to dip my toes in and nearly got back out again...it was SOOOOOOOO cold!!!

Shivering as I tried to get up the courage to dive in!

I knew it was a case of 'now or never' so I dived in (not so gracefully as you can see) and began swimming for my life (literally I think).

My oh-so-graceful dive into FREEZING cold water!

Once I got in my major thought was "when will I be able to breathe again?"...the cold just totally hit my chest and I couldn't get a proper breath. I don't think that the rest of me felt the cold at all at that stage because I was concentrating so hard on trying to breathe (maybe that wasn't a bad thing?)!! I swam out 20 or so strokes and then came back in (that was the advice Ned had given me...no point in swimming half-way to the island and then finding that my arms were too numb to bring me back in), and by the time I got back to the slip my breathing had gotten a lot better. So I made a second trip, which felt much better because I wasn't as panicked, I felt like I was swimming out of choice instead of out of necessity to keep myself alive!!

Swimming out as fast as I could .....

..... and back at a more relaxing pace!

I swam out about the same distance again the second time, had a bit of a headache from the cold but Ned had warned me about that. By the time I swam back in to the slip my hands and feet were starting to really feel the cold and it was time to get out while I was still enjoying it so that I wouldn't dread going down the next time!!

Everyone was so great, Ned was there to help me onto the slip and Owen had my towel ready so that I could get warm straight away. I'm sure that I was shivering like crazy, but I still wasn't as cold as I expected to be, I guess that I was in for just a good length of time-enough to get a feel for it but not too long that it would take ages for me to warm up again. I headed straight for the car and thanks to Sarah was lovely and warm very quickly...I love a car with a heater that really works!!

Smiling because I got in to the sea or just because I'm not in there anymore?!!

Once I got myself layered up with clothes I was warm very fast and I found that with the two swimming caps on my hair had stayed dry, so that helped a lot too.

While I was getting dressed the others were all getting dressed too, but getting ready to get in rather than getting out!! We stayed around for a while when they headed off, we were talking to Paul who had been in before me. He told me that they had measured the sea temperature-it was 8 degrees C (46 degrees F)!!! Now...who wants to join me for a swim on Monday? Don't all volunteer at once!!

That was about two degrees lower than I'd been expecting-if I'd been told that the temperature was that low before I swam I'd have been much slower to get in!!! But it was nice to find that out after...it means that it really can only get better from now on!!

So overall a very successful morning....while I didn't put in much mileage, I think that this was far more beneficial than a Saturday morning pool session would have been. Now I need to start planning to get in again soon so that I can start building on this morning and staying in a little longer!

And by the way....thanks to my great friend Sarah for escorting me all the way to Sandycove and for taking lots of photos of me freezing to death....and for feeding me chocolate all the way home to "warm me up"!! :)

Bad News :(

2008-03-24T20:40:00.003Z

So the pool closest to me where I do my lane swimming has closed "indefinitely"...there was some storm damage done to the roof recently and they've closed to fix that, but the place could do with being renovated anyway so there's some talk that they may keep it closed to do that now. It would be nice to have the place done up but it's really annoying that the only place I have to swim now is the college pool on the other side of the city. It also means that I have no structured swimming sessions in the week for now.

Other than that everything is going good, I did a nice long session yesterday afternoon, I'm stiff today from it! I really enjoyed it, it was nice to be able to really push myself while the pool was quiet, I got out of the pool absolutely exhausted but it was a great feeling! I need some more of those sessions to keep me motivated...I find it WAY too easy to be lazy!!

Catch-up!

2008-03-12T01:36:00.002Z

I went back to swimming tonight after a break of a couple of weeks, so I figured it would be a good time to update this blog too!

Things haven't been good for swimming lately. I've had lots of things going on, both work and personal stuff, and then I got sick, and then I had my trip to Florida last week (not complaining about that one at all!). The week before last I didn't get to the pool at all, and I only got one swim in last week while I was away...I was planning to swim much more but the pool constantly had kids in there and since it was a hotel pool it didn't have a swimming lane. So I got one swim of 2,370metres done but I spent more time dodging people than swimming so I figured it wasn't worth it trying again.

So that brings me to tonight...first night back at Sunday's Well. I had a good group in the lane tonight, only 4 of us so we pushed each other way more than a bigger group would. I didn't realise how much my fitness had dropped in the space of the couple of weeks, the workout killed me! I'm probably going to be stiff and sore tomorrow :(

Now that life is back to normal (whatever that means!), I'm going to try to get into a swimming routine of doing lane swimming on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights and then a long swim on my own on Friday nights, I've found that that's one time that's consistently pretty quiet at the pool (most people have better things to be doing with their Friday nights!). And then a shorter swim Saturday and possibly weights one day a week, I think that would all work out well. It's a lot of training but once I get into the routine it will be fine I think.

Time to post this and get to bed I think...wish me luck for being able to walk tomorrow!

Slow week

2008-01-28T15:14:00.002Z

Well, despite joining a swimming club and also having a nice long 3,600 metres swim on Saturday morning, it's still been a pretty slow week for my training. I only managed to get in 3 workouts with a total of 7,100 metres over the week. A big part of the problem is that my car is off the road for good and so I'm relying on lifts and borrowing a car and buses to get everywhere, which means that I don't have as much ability to squeeze in a trip to the pool between things. Once I get a car sorted I should have a bit more flexability...or at least less of an excuse anyway!

The workouts themselves are going well, I'm finding that I'm a little faster than I was and I'm getting used to timing myself and pushing myself to get a distance done in a particular time. I really enjoyed the longer swim on Saturday too, I think that at least until I start getting into the sea I'm going to try to put in at least one of those per week. And speaking of the sea...I think that I'm going to aim for the Easter holidays to start getting in there...it will still be very cold at that stage but at least it will only be getting warmer from then on!!

Swimming club

2008-01-24T23:59:00.002Z

Since I started looking into Channel swimming I've had lots of people ask me what club I swam with. And when they heard that I don't swim with a club, their big piece of advice was..."join one"! It's good for making sure that you don't get bored of swimming on your own, it's good for giving you a push...even if you never want to swim competitively...and it's nice to not have to figure out a workout a couple of times a week.

So I went along to the Sunday's Well Master's swimming tonight and really enjoyed it. After swimming on my own the last while it was nice to be in with lots of others who were all doing the same program and not getting in my way!! And it's good to make me realise that there are 3 other strokes out there too!! I HATE backstroke, so I tend to keep away from it and when I swim breaststroke on my own I take it way too easy. And butterfly kills me!!! So this will be a challenge for me to keep up with the others on those strokes.

I can't ever see myself swimming competitively (I'm too slow!!), but I think that I'm really going to enjoy the training. A couple of sessions a week that I don't have to plan myself...lovely!

Rant...

2008-01-20T20:22:00.001Z

It's been a very busy week, lots going on with college and other things...I still managed to put in a decent number of metres though, a little under my target but I'm happy enough with it for my first week back swimming properly. It's been nice to get back into the pool and push myself...the whole lane swimming thing is driving me crazy already though...I have yet to find a quiet time at the pool that works well for me. It's really annoying when I'm trying to get lengths done in a particular time and people are in the way!! And I'm certainly not a particularly fast swimmer by any means...but I know that and I make sure to let people who are faster than me go ahead of me whenever they catch up with me. Why can't everyone just do that?!! There's nothing more annoying than a person swimming breaststroke slowly up the fast lane and blocking up the whole thing for people who are trying to put in a training session. And I'm finding that my college swimming pool quite often takes over the slow lane for swimming lessons or aqua aerobics so that means that the other two are even busier than usual. Oh well...enough of my rant, I guess I just need to find a quieter time in the day to put in my lengths. A task for this week!

Back to normality

2008-01-13T15:14:00.001Z

Christmas is over, it's 2008, I'm back to college and Thor has gone home. So now it's time to really get into a routine where I'm managing to put in a decent amount of metres in every week. I put in a couple of short sessions this week but no hard training. I need to put together at least a couple of weeks worth of training programmes so that I'm not doing the same thing over and over again each session.

I'm adding a list at the bottom of the blog for each week and the number of metres that I've done that week (my goal is about 10,000 metres a week at the moment) so that I'm more motivated to keep up the training...having to admit publically that I've had a lazy week is good motivation for not having one!

Booked =o)

2007-12-20T09:48:00.001Z

So looking at my lack of structured training so far, I've decided that 2010 isn't the best idea, it's too far away and too hard to get motivated for. So I decided to ask Ned about my options for 2009, at least then if there was nothing available my decision would be made one way or the other. So he very kindly emailed Mike Oram (one of the best Channel pilots) for me and asked if he had slots on either his boat or his son's boat in 2009. And he responded with some dates in September 2009 :) So I'm now booked in with a 3rd place slot for the 11th-16th of September, 2009!!! So what that means is that there are two people ahead of me for that timeframe, and when both of those have swam then it's my turn. I have a pretty good chance of getting to swim with a 3rd place slot and it's a good time of year because the water will be warmer than earlier in the summer. Just fingers crossed for the weather!!

I don't think that it's actually sunk in yet that I'm after making a committment to do this. But I'm sure that it will eventually.

So I guess that my New Year's resolution is going to have to be to get into a proper swimming training programme...at least it's one that I can't afford to break!

Long break

2007-11-29T14:11:00.001Z

So I haven't posted in a long time, but then again I haven't been swimming much either! I've had a chest infection for the last 4 weeks and eventually got an antibiotic last week for it. So I decided to go for a swim on Monday, I was staying in Dublin in a lovely hotel and figured that I wouldn't waste the facilites! Bad idea. I swam for about 45 minutes, maybe too long after a long break, but I felt fine. However, the cough that seemed to have been just about gone has been back since then. So I think that I need to rest a bit longer before getting back into things. Which is a pity because I was planning to get into the sea this weekend, I'm going down to Sandycove on Saturday and then for a seminar after that Ned Denison is holding for us channel aspirants on Saturday afternoon. Still, I'll head down anyway, meet some more people.

Sandycove is a little coastal area near Kinsale in West Cork for those of you who don't know. There's a group of people who swim there all year round (some wearing wetsuits!) so once I'm enough to, I can swim with them. I went down there about 2 weeks ago to see what was going on and meet some people, I couldn't swim though since I was sick. It was a windy day, the sea was rough, it was freezing cold (even for me with my layers of clothes on) and 4 people still got in to swim, 2 with wesuits, 2 without. Afterwards then (and this is the part of the plan that I like!) they went back into Kinsale and went to a leisure centre to use the hot tub for a while. Sounds like a good plan after swimming in about 11degree C (52degrees F) water for over half an hour!

Anyway, while it all seems rather crazy, I'm still looking forward to getting in to the sea! Or even back into the pool would be good at this stage!! Another week or so and I'll try again....

Some more info...

2007-10-24T16:51:00.002+01:00

Well, today I swam a mile (that's 64lengths in a 25metre pool)....not that that's particularly interesting really! I need to start getting into a training routine, I need to be swimming most days but doing some weight training too. Life is starting to get back to normal now so it will be easier to get into a proper routine.

So...for those of you who have no idea about this....the shortest distance across the Channel (from Shakespeare Beach, Dover to Cap Gris Nez near Calais) is about 21 miles. However, with tides and boats and weather and all those other things to take into account, it can end up being over a 30-mile swim! It usually takes somewhere between 12-16hours to complete, with the record being just under 7 hours. The water temperature is usually 15-18degrees Celcius (that's cold!!!!). The main reasons for people not completing the swim are bad weather and the cold.

There's also the issue of course of all of the weird and not-so-wonderful things that can be found floating in Channel waters...here's a paragraph from one of the training articles:
"Whilst you may have a completely uneventful day other swimmers may report jellyfish, some oil, tar, seaweed, plastic bags, pallets, fridges(!!!), floating timber and even pink elephants".

While I'm not not so worried about the elephants, the thoughts of jellyfish freak me out, I guess on the day you just keep on going though. Also...
"Our observers frequently report seeing shoals of fish, seals and dolphins, turtles have also been reported and there is always the remote possibility of sharks, swordfish and whales, all of which are seen from time to time in UK waters."

Now...fish don't bother me, and I actually think that the dolphins and turtles would be kinda cool...but sharks??? I thought that they only liked warm water...and warm it definitely isn't!! And I'd imagine that it would be pretty scary coming across a whale too...

Anyway....even with all of that I still want to do it....it all adds to the challenge! Any other volunteers?!!

What is this all about?

2007-10-23T21:50:00.002+01:00

I'm planning to swim the English Channel in the summer of 2009. Why? I'm insane I guess...or I just like a challenge. It's always been on my list of things that I want to do, and I figure now is as good a time as any to start training for it!

I'm currently in the planning stages, I've been reading lots of websites about what's involved and now I'm starting to get in touch with people who may be able to help me with training and advice. I'm starting to put lengths in in the pool, but I also need to start getting into the sea (brrrr!) once I find people to swim with.

Anyway, I figure that this will be an easy way of keeping people updated on what I'm doing and how it's all going...