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.

Laps of Sandycove Island

Sandycove Island, for those who don't know by now, is an island close to shore just outside the mouth of Kinsale harbour in Cork.  It is about 18 acres in size, is inhabited by goats and one or two small trees, and is circumnavigated fastidiously like a school of hungry sharks by the Sandycove Swimmers, triathletes and of course English Channel aspirants (ahem..).

A swim around the island is a mile in duration and a lot of people swim around the island a lot of times.  Some even count the number of times they do so.  In recognition of the dedication of these people and their swimming stamina a list is kept of life-time achievement counts of 100 laps ('C' in roman numerals), 500 laps (D) and 1,000 laps (M).  Yesterday, however, the list had to be updated.

Here's a group photo of the early swimmers on the slipway (there were plenty more swimmers later on). Carmel, Alan, SleepSwim, Finbarr, Riana, Lisa and Catherine.  We started early because we wanted to do a long swim.  The sun was out, but so too was a rapier north-easterly wind, which whipped up huge swells at the back of the island, and all the way down the inside too.  Water temperature ranged from about 10C outside the island, to a truly tropical 12C at the beach on the island.

Here's Fin enjoying the sunshine at the slip.  In the end Carmel did 5 laps - a new best for her this season, Alan did his first 2012 lap, myself and Cat swam for nearly 3 hours, and Fin and Lisa stayed in for an astonishing 6 hours.  They both clocked up their 100th laps of the year, with Lisa completing her 500th lap, and Fin passing the Red House for the 1,000th time.  Well done to both.

Ten weeks to go

Well, from today there are 10 weeks left to the start of my swim tide, the 10th - 18th July.  After months of training and hard slog, suddenly it's right there in front of me, only 70 days away.  I am 4th on the list for my pilot, and you never know what the weather will be like, so my actual swim date is still an unknown - nothing to do but hope for good weather and a short wait in Dover.

What will happen in the next 10 weeks?  The transition from pool to the outdoors will increase drastically, even though the weather is terrible at the moment and the sea water temperature about 9 or 10C.  Soon there will be no more pool swims - a great relief to the sinuses and lots more space in the pool for the regulars.  There are some organised swims coming up in the next few weeks - repeats of the Round Spike swim, a 6-hour sea swim in 2 weeks' time, and a 9-day Distance Camp with daily long swims in June, including another 6-hour sea swim.

Preparations for the swim will also start in earnest - booking flights, co-ordinating crew, planning swim feeding schedules, making sure equipment and backups are all ok etc.  This is a busy month for fundraising for me also - two table quizzes to hold, plus a few other ideas as well.

Ten weeks to go.  These are the weeks to hold the nerve, look after the shoulders, keep to the training program, enjoy the long outdoor swims, and hopefully watch the water temperature rise and rise.  In the meantime, as Muhammad Ali says - "Don't count the days, make the days count."

One million metres

Yesterday I swam my millionth metre since training started back in September. That's Cork to Dublin and back. Twice. Like most swimmers I keep a log of how much I am swimming - a very useful document to track how much I've done, and how much I need to do in order to meet the training program. Passing the million metre mark is a nice boost to morale, and it's interesting looking back on the training done so far - all 'money in the bank' for the big swim in July. In general, training effort increased as a monthly coaching review meeting drew closer, and sea swim times expanded and contracted in harmony with the sea temperatures. Sea swimming continued almost every weekend through the winter. Sea swims are a rough estimation in distance, but here are some stats from the past seven months -

o Number of days - 221
o Days in the sea - 42
o Days in the pool - 142
o Metres in the sea - 52,000
o Metres in the pool - 948,000
o Pool lengths swum - 37,920

100 days to go

Today is an interesting day. There are now one hundred days left to the start of my Channel tide of 10-18 July. That's just over 14 weeks. It's unlikely that I will swim on the first day, as I am number 4 on my pilot's list of swimmers for that tide, and you never know what the weather and swim conditions will be like, but at the same time, who knows? It's just as likely that the weather will be perfect, someone may pull out between now and then, or the swimmers on the list in front of me may choose to let me go first. So, I may after all be swimming in 100 days' time - a sobering thought. After 8 months of hard training the goal is in sight, the weather is improving, the sea is getting warmer, and the end of pool swimming and chlorine-filled lungs is within reach. It's all good..

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.

Newsflash: Channel Swim now longer

Following a collapse of a section of the famous chalk cliffs of Dover, the Mail Online has breathlessly announced that 'Now France is even further away'. This rather upsetting news means that for this year's Channel Swim Aspirants, their swim will now be even longer. There are already rumours on the Twitter machine that coach Eilis is busy creating a newer, tougher training schedule to prepare us for the extra distance. Aspirants have responded to these rumours with what can only be described as a collective, exhausted, sigh..