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...

Around Spike Island Swim

The first of the season's long training sea swims took place today. Danny's father has a boat and has kindly offered its services on a number of long swims for us. First on the list - a circumnavigation of Spike Island, the former naval fortress guarding Cork Harbour, and sometime prison. Danny's father lived on Spike for 23 years, so he had plenty of local knowledge of where he was going.


The day was a beautifully sunny spring day, but with a lazy north wind. The thermometer on the boat gave a constant water temperature reading of 9C for the duration of the swim. Jennifer swam in togs (respect!) but Danny and I were happy to don wetsuits. I think it's fair to say that between the three of us we don't have an awful lot of body fat to spare, so we were happy to see so much of the sun on our way around. The swim was about 5,300m long, swimming in an anti-clockwise direction.


Here's Jen, Danny and me, all looking very contemplative on the way to the start.. Plenty of cold wind here.


Jen at the start. More smiles at this stage, as the north wind is blocked by Great Island behind us. A jump from the boat here, and we're off..


Swimming past the gun position on Spike. We were well matched in pace and stayed together for the whole swim. The public can get tours of the island during the summer and see the extremely large gun which points out to the mouth of the harbour. In the old days they used to tow an old boat or some such target into the harbour and have the navy fire live rounds from the guns to try and sink it - an interesting day for the locals living in the harbour area..


Heading back to Cobh at the end of the swim. We were benefiting from an incoming tide at this stage, and calmer waters were much warmer than cold waves at the back of Spike. We even got a small crowd of people at the finish point. All in all a great swim and another rung in the confidence ladder.