The Swim is On

News
At last the end is in sight.  The weather is gradually settling down, the sun is coming out, but most importantly, the wind is dying down.  I talked to my pilot Paul Foreman and I will swim most likely at 9am Saturday morning, the 21st July.  He is taking a relay out Friday morning, and if they are delayed, then my swim will be delayed. I will know at about 9pm Friday night.

Crew
In the meantime, Liam & Lisa are flying into London tomorrow and will be in Dover at 4pm. Along with Riana, they make up a super-crew that I know will support me all the way, and if necessary throw things at me if I whinge or slow up. They will also be doing the very important updating of the Twitter machine so that you can keep track of progress.

How do I follow the swim?
The boat has ShipAIS tracking, which updates constantly during the swim.  Click here, and then scroll down to the map and enter Dover for the port, and Pace Arrow for the vessel.

You can follow messages on the Twitter feed on this blog site, or directly here.

Thanks
Thank you everybody for your great support and encouragement. I will do my best to get in touch with you all, but there will be too many things to do in the coming days, so I won't be able to respond immediately, sorry!  After long months of hard training I have travelled an amazing and sometimes difficult road -  I am looking forward to giving it a real shot on Saturday - to just keep swimming until I hit France...

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.

Swimming Spots - Blackrock, Galway

Blackrock diving boards

Any time I visit Galway, a trip to the diving boards at Blackrock is pretty much compulsory.  Blackrock is at the end of the famous Salthill Prom, a pedestrian path along the shores of Galway Bay that is very popular with runners, speed-walkers, rollar-bladers, dog-walkers, strollers, and anyone looking for some exercise and fresh air.  The Prom is almost 2km long, with a fabulous view of the Bay, County Clare, and the Aran Islands.  A promenade is completed at Blackrock with a kick of the wall at the end of the pathway, and an about-face for the return journey.  Except, of course, for the swimmers.  These people, usually with a small bag under the armpit and a firm gaze to seaward, take a left turn and head for the diving boards.

Changing area

Blackrock is very well set-up for swimmers.  There are benches at a changing area with hooks on the wall to hold your towel, and a roof over your head that offers protection from the wind and rain.  There are toilets, a fresh-water shower and lots of steps and ladders into the sea.  There is a constant stream of swimmers arriving, changing, swimming, chatting, departing - no matter what the time of day, the tide, or the season.  There is always water for swimming, there are always swimmers for the water.

The Rocks

Achievement is measured by rocks here.  Along the Salthill Prom a number of rocky outcrops separate the different beaches.  A swim to the First Rocks is a round trip of 250m, to the second and back is 450m, to the Fourth Rocks,  Ladies' Beach and back home is about a kilometer.  Of course nobody is counting the distance, just the number of Rocks.

Bird's eye view of the Rocks

 The next time you're in Galway, stroll down to Blackrock and come for a swim..

All-night swim done

Just a quick word to let everyone know that the overnight swim on Friday night went well, with no major casualties. I was in the 1:50 lane, with Carmel, Cat, and Craig (all training for the Channel this summer), Lisa (already done a double Channel) and Niamh (too fast for anyone to keep up with). We were also joined at various stages by Roisin, Rob and Jen - all heading to Dover in the summer. We cruised through 4 hours of 100m sprints and took a break at 2am for 10 minutes. Time seemed to slow to a crawl from 3am to 4am, but then picked up with the end in sight. By 5am we started mixing in other strokes - Rob leading 50m front crawl, followed by Carmel burning through 50m backstroke and 50m breaststroke, until sprinting to the jacuzzi at 5:30am after completing about 21km. There were triathletes doing stints on Turbo-trainers, loud music and lots of food and drinks.

Riana did an excellent 6.5 hours for 16km and though tired and creaky there were no major injuries for either of us - no new ones anyway. The swim was fueled by Mi-Wadi, strawberries, blueberries, jelly snakes, minstrels, coffee and chocolate muffins. The two casualties of the night were my togs and my dignity, as I split the rear end of my Speedos at some stage during the swim and was not informed about it until I got out of the pool at the very end. The important thing, however, was that the event raised approximately 3,500 Euro for the Moses Foundation, so a good job done by all.

Endurance Charity Swim

Tonight, Friday the 9th of March, Riana and I and about 20 others are taking part in an endurance swim for charity. The swim starts at 10pm at the pool of Source Health & Fitness in Silversprings, Cork, and continues for 8 hours throughout the night, finishing up at 6am on Saturday morning. Myself and those training for the Channel and other marathon swims will be swimming those 8 hours doing 100 metre sprints (4 lengths of the pool) over and over again. There will be triathletes there as well, swapping from the pool to a bike, or even running around the carpark a few times in the middle of the night.

There will be separate lanes for people swimming those 100 metres on 2 minutes, on 1:50, on 1:40, and perhaps a cool-down slow lane or two. I will be in whatever lane my coach tells me to be in (to be perfectly honest), but most likely I will be doing them on 1 minute 50 seconds. It will be a challenge to keep up the pace and intensity for 8 hours, but the real challenge is the mental one, to push beyond the exhaustion after a week of work and training and sleep deprivation.


The event is organised by our super-coach, Eilis Burns, and is in aid of the charity The Moses Foundation. The Moses Foundation do a lot of good work with schools in Swaziland and Uganda, and the event tonight is expected to raise thousands of Euro for them, a great achievement by one person for a great cause.

Stephen Redmond

If you think that I'm nuts attempting to swim the English Channel, then check out Stephen Redmond - a genuine all-round hero. Steve is a regular guy from Kildare, now living in Ballydehob in West Cork, who has embarked on a project to swim the Ocean's Seven. This is supposedly the ultimate list of channel swims from around the world. Nobody has completed all seven, but Steve has just finished his number six from Moloka'i to O'ahu in Hawai'i in a grueling 22.5 hours. This was after completing his number five swim (Cook Strait in NZ, where he spent 2 hours covering only 700 metres), only 8 days previously. The reason he did the two huge swims back to back was to save on the flight expenses, as he is covering the costs himself while raising money for an autism centre in West Cork.


An account of his amazing swim, in his own words, is here.
Listen to an interview with RTE's John Murray here.

The Ocean's Seven
o English Channel (34km - England to France - 20 hr 01 min for SR)
o North Channel (34km - Ireland to Scotland - 17 hr 17 min)
o Strait of Gibraltar (15km - Europe to Africa - 5 hr)
o Catalina Channel (34km - Santa Catalina to California - 12 he 39 min)
o Cook Strait (26km - South Island to North Island NZ - 13 hr 10 min)
o Moloka'i Channel (42km - Moloka'i to O'ahu Hawai'i - 22 hr 29 min)
o Tsugaru Channel (20km - Honshu to Hokkaido in Japan)