Day 4: The Qualifier

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!

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

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

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

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

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!

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!!!