Coping with The Cold - a decision

Cuskinny

"Nothing great is easy".  That's what they say about swimming The Channel.  How right they are.  Since the sea training schedule started on the 1st May I have struggled to keep up.  I've always kept up. In the pool I spent hours and hours ploughing up and down doing the training program that coach Eilís has mapped out for her channel aspirants - 142km in February, 165km in March, 146km in April.

Sandycove the day I swam 4:20 hrs - before the rain.

Then May arrived and I swam twice a day to keep up the mileage - 6:30am in Inniscarra lake, 45 minutes in 11C water, 6pm in Sandycove, 45 minutes on an overcast, windy day.  Sunday 1 hour at Inniscarra ploughing through chop, Monday at Myrtleville, 31 minutes swimming through jellyfish of all description, Wednesday 7am at Cuskinny for 64 minutes in fresh, cold water.  Every day trying to increase the time in the water, every day feeling the cold, the cold, the cold, getting cramps in the water and afterwards shivering and coping with muscle spasms.  A 45 minute swim would mean 30 minutes of shivering before I could drive home or to work.

Garrettstown

With a lot of effort, Maxim and the help of Riana and friends I pushed out my times to 1 hour 25 minutes, 2 hours, 4:20, 4:40.  That's about 14km, but it took everything out of me physically, mentally and emotionally, and it wasn't enough - the qualification time to be allowed to swim The Channel is 6 hours.  I was exhausted and battered, took a break and contemplated giving up, but with the help of coach, Riana and friends, came up with a decision - I would still do the swim, but I would wear a wetsuit.  I contacted my pilot and CS&PF and they are ok with that - it just won't count as a Channel swim - it will be an 'unorthodox' swim, so no qualification swim, no observer, and no certificate at the end.  But swimming in a wetsuit allows me to swim without the cold stopping me, and for that I am grateful and actually excited about the swim again.  Onwards and upwards from here...

Sea Swimming

Something has changed.  Friends, work colleagues and family have noticed it.  My physio has remarked upon it.  The swimmers at Source Health & Fitness have commented upon it.  There has been a change.  There is a disturbance in 'the Force'.  That disturbance has been caused by coach Eilís handing everyone their sea swimming schedule on the 1st of May.  No more pool!  Outdoors from now on, and not only that, but a huge jump in the mileage as well - 55km, 75km, 88km etc etc.   Ok, deep breath, how can I make this work?  I need to habituate myself to the cold water (about 11 C at the moment) even though the Channel swim will be much warmer (hopefully 14-16 C), but as I am a skinny person I am currently having huge problems with lasting a long time in the water, and endure shivering and muscle cramping after each swim.  Mentally and physically this is exhausting, and my muscles are paying the price, as my physio has seen.

In order to keep up the mileage, though, I have to now swim twice a day, and do long swims in a wetsuit when I have the time or opportunity.  It's also not advisable to swim on my own, so a bit of organising with others is required as well.  So since the 1st of May I have been doing a lot of driving to do relatively short swims, lots of shivering, then repeating again after work, while keeping an eye on the tide times so that I have enough water in which to swim.  Then home to prepare enormous quantities of food and prepare for the next morning's 6:30am swim.

Needless to say this has consumed an enormous amount of time, and I have been worried about increasing my duration in the cold water, and how to maintain the mileage when this duration is still short.  This is the real challenge.

The real training has started.

Food, glorious food

With all this training going on, something has got to give. One of the many side-effects for me, from the first week of training in September, was that I started to lose weight. I know, I know, lucky me, but when you're training it's really not such a good idea - not only did I have problems keeping my pants up, but it meant I felt physically tired all the time. My body of course reacted to all this exercise by giving me an enormous appetite - the Channel Hunger. I now eat huge quantities of food, usually directly related to how much swimming I am doing. Supermarket shopping trips have become more frequent, large quantities of cash have been spent, and I benefit from an extra workout trying to lift the shopping bags into the car. When I eat with friends they may be shocked at the amount of food I get through at a sitting, and I suspect some may be reluctant to invite me for dinner for fear I will eat them out of house and home. I know that it's the same story with other aspirants, famously one whose family food bill went down 90% when he was away for a while.


But of course not all food is the same. The picture at the top is from a recent trip to Dunnes Stores. While it may look like a lot of yoghurt, fish, biscuits, fruit, vegetables etc, to me it's like looking at The Matrix - I look and I see protein, fibre, carbohydrates, slow-release sugars, quick-release sugars (and of course beer - don't tell coach). In the days before a big swim, I consume carbohydrates and protein, though I may eat pasta and chicken. This is the new way I think. In fact, while George Orwell uses the word doublethink in his book 1984 to describe the holding of two contradictory views simultaneously, I use doublechocolatechipthink to describe looking at food and seeing swimming fuel.


And while we're on the subject, Michael Phelps, the dude who won 8 gold medals at the Beijing Olympics, famously stated that he ate 12,000 calories a day. This is about 9,500 more calories than the recommended average intake for men, and amounts to a serious quantity of food. In a famous article from 2008 Jon Henley from the Guardian newspaper makes a heroic effort to eat like a champion. It's worth a read - here.

Training

So how do you train for a marathon swim as long as the English Channel? In my case I went to an expert - master coach Eilís Burns. Eilís has been training Channel aspirants for a number of years now and this year she has taken 10 of us under her wing, a considerable commitment, for which we are very grateful. Eilís has set out a training program in order to build up strength, endurance and mental toughness. Training began in September, with weekly distances of about 25,000 metres in the pool and sea.


Those weekly distances have relentlessly increased, and my highest total (so far) was about three weeks ago, when I swam 52km in one week. This involved a number of days swimming in the pool for 4 or 5 hours at a time, sometimes before and after work, so the time commitment is considerable. Also, once a month or so a long distance pool swim was required of all the aspirants. These were between 20km and 24km long - about 7 or 8 hours of swimming up to 1,000 pool lengths. All in all, we have clocked up about 900,000 metres since September, or about 36,000 lengths. Sea swims have continued all winter long as well, in all weather and water temperatures. All of this makes Channel aspirants easy to spot if you bump into them on the street - they are the ones that are hurrying somewhere with a bag of swimming gear, look tired, smell vaguely of chlorine, and are eating large quantities of food.