Channel Swim Report

Monday, August 15 2005 @ 10:44 PM IST

Lisa Howley writes in with her report on swimming the English Channel:

Thursday July 28th - The longest day of my life!!

Well, it's two weeks later and my shoulders have finally stopped paining me at every twist and turn so I can now sit at a PC for long enough to write an account of my longest day ever!!

For me this swim started in 2001 when I was all geared up to go but unfortunately illness prevented me from going ahead with my attempt. Never one to be beaten by something as trivial as my health, I decided last Summer that I would try again and spent the last year wet more often than dry - such was the amount of training required to attempt this swim...

I arrived in Dover on Tuesday July 26th, at that stage hopeful that the weather for the week would be as it had been for the previous 3 weeks - hot, sunny and calm. Unfortunatley this wasn't the case and a quick phone call to the 'pilot' - boat man - confirmed my fears. He informed me that it was too windy to go anywhere, probably until Saturday at the earliest. While hearing this was something of a disappointment it also came as a slight relief, as I needed a bit of time to focus myself on the task ahead. However, the Channel and the weather that goes with it is very unpredictable and at 4pm on Wednesday I was informed that I was on standby to swim on Thursday morning if I wanted to take the chance. My initial reaction was one of terror!! I thought, 'no way, i'm not ready, I need another day'. However, thankfully common sense prevailed and I realised that you only get one chance in this game and I had to take it.

Once the decision was made it was action stations. One member of my support crew (Jenny) still had to travel over from Jersey so once we organised a flight for her I got around to preparing my drinks and food for the next day. At around 7pm we went out for a very plain meal of pasta with tomato sauce and I went home (well, to the B&B) to check and double check everything and then to go to bed in the hope of getting a good nights sleep!!! That was wishful thinking however. I lay awake all night - and I mean, all night! It was horrible. I wan't even thinking about the swim but just about trying to sleep. I eventually got up at 1am and forced myself to eat a bowl of porridge. I usually love porridge but this tasted like the most horrible bowl of lumpy glue you could imagine - every spoonful made me feel sicker and sicker, but i forced it down none the less. I went back to bed in the hope of sleeping for the last hour and a half before I was due to get up but it was more of the same. Eventually I gave up and sat up looking out the window at the amazing thunder and lightning storm going on outside. It was great!! All I could think of was 'great, they'll never let me swim in this weather. I'll be back in bed by 3.30am and can sleep for the day'!!! Little did I know that this was all part of the weather forecast and the pilot had planned my swim start time to coincide with the end of the storm - I never did get back to bed!! I put on my togs and applied a large amount of factor 30, anti jellyfish sting suncream - and yes, I did feel totally daft putting on suncream in the middle of the night while a thunder storm was raging outside!!

My friends Sally and Charlie from Jersey were staying in the same B&B as me so they brought me, my sister Elaine and my crew member Jenny down to the boat for 3.15am. It was there that we met the pilot, Mike Oram, his right hand man Derek, and the official observor for my swim, Kevin Murphy (Kevin himself is one of the greatest male channel swimmers of all time having completed 32 solo swims, including 3 two ways!!. I was honoured to have him on my boat and it felt like a good omen for the day). At this stage it was absolutley bucketing out of the heavens so I got onto the boat and switched myself off from the world by listening to my CD player (I had Spandau Ballets 'Gold' on repeat on my CD - that's an 80's band for some of the younger members reading this!!!). It was about 45 minutes before the decision was made that the swim would definitely go ahead and I think that time was probably longer than the rest of the entire day and night put together!! My stomach felt really sick and I was totally knackered - and all I could think of was 'How can I possibly swim for the entire day to come?' I think I must have looked rotten because at one stage Derek came in and gave me a cup of tea - which I must say helped greatly in the stomach settling stakes!

At 4am the boat started up and we motored around to Abbott's Cliff which was to be my starting point for the swim. It was still dark but the rain had eased considerably and thankfully the storm had passed. Usually people start their swims from Shakespeare Beach but as I was swimming at the tail end of a 'Spring Tide' (usually you swim on neap tides so that there is less of a flow of water across the Channel but they often let quicker swimmers go on the crossover of neap and spring tides) we went to a different start point as Shakespeare beach is under water on a spring tide. About 10 minutes away from the start point the pilot instructed me to get ready so I stripped down to my togs and Jenny generously applied my grease - a mixture of lanolin and vaseline - to the possible friction points around my neck, arms and legs. Contrary to popular belief the grease does not keep you warm but it definitely helps prevent friction burns.

When I was all greased up, hat and goggles on, ear plugs in place I was given the nod to get into the water and swim to beach. I tentatively climbed down the steps into the dark abyss below! The boat could only go in so far so I had to swim about 30 metres in to the beach, stand clear of the water, indicate to the boat I was ready and when the hooter sounded at 4.46am off I went. The first few strokes were rotten. In fact, the first hour was a nightmare!! The wind was blowing the waves and diesel fumes from the boat into my face and all I was thinking was 'I can't do this. What am I doing here' This is horrible'!! Gradually the light began to appear and the wind seemed to ease a little. I had my first feed ( Blackcurrant flavoured PSP22 mixed with 2/3 hot and 1/3 cold water! - very appetising!) which was a bit of a disaster because the string that was tied to my bottle was too short and the waves were pushing me backwards behind the boat and into the fumes - it was all a bit of a mess really but thankfully we got the routine sorted out shortly after this so the rest of the feeds went 'smoothly'. I was fed after the first hour and then approximately every 50 minutes after this. I had decided on this routine before the swim as a way of confusing me so that I would have no idea of how long I had been swimming for or how much time had passed - and it worked. When you are stopping to feed at no stage are you allowed to touch the support boat or crew so you just have to tread water to keep afloat.

At the second feed I commented to my crew that I felt much more comfortable and they agreed that I looked much better - i think the first hour had worried them so they were glad to see that I actually could swim after all!!! I had advised the pilot before the swim started that i hoped to swim about 3,600 metres per hour at a stroke rate of 61 - 63 per minute. After the swim was finished I discovered that I maintained this pace and stroke rate for the first 12 hours so I was really pleased with that.

It's hard to describe the swim itself as all i did was move my arms, kick my legs intermittently and stop to feed every so often!! At various stages during the day different parts of my body ached - most notalbly my left shoulder which had been giving me some trouble, along with my elbow, since Italy. For some reason tho my elbow didn't hurt even a tiny bit either before or after my swim!! Whenever I stopped to feed, my crew shouted encouragement to me and let me know who had phoned or texted to see how I was getting on. It was great to get these messages as it gave me the feeling that I wasnt really here on my own but had all these people behind me, spurring me on and supporting me. It was definitely very encouraging.

After about 4 hours (I think) we crossed the South West shipping lane - it was amazing to see some of the ships that passed - luckily I had faith in the pilot and knew they wouldnt come too close!! You do feel insignificant tho when surrounded by giant container ships!!

In the separation zone (the area between the two shipping lanes) it was quite dirty - there was lots of sea weed and at times it felt a lot like the upper liffey!!! There were also loads of Jellyfish but thankfully I managed to avoid them all until quite close to the end when it didn't matter.

The swim continued pretty much in this vein for 12 hours. The sun came out and went in, the wind picked up and died down and the rain started and stopped. I 'Just kept swimming', as Dory (finding Nemo) would say! I thought of lots of silly things, made up games, concentrated on stretching out my neck etc, but at no stage (once the first hour had passed) did I think that i would fail! i don't know why I was so sure but I felt really comfortable and confident - and i was actually enjoying myself!!! How sad is that??? I could see land for about 4 hours but it never seemed to get closer which was a bit frustrating but I was so happy just swimming that it didnt bother me! After about 12 hours unfortunately my left arm gave up and was worth almost nothing. I could hardly lift it out of the water so this obviously slowed me down. My stroke rate dropped to 47 per minute and I was veering to the right as I was really only pulling with one arm. Even at this stage tho I never thought I wouldn't make it - I was still happy to keep swimming and didnt care how long it took to get there!! Unfortunately because my pace dropped so much I missed the intended landing point in France - Cap Gris Nez - which is a headland that juts into the sea. As a result we headed for the next neares point which is a further 5km inland to a beach in Wissant Bay. Jenny got in to swim with me for a while to keep me company - her timing was great as she jumped in just as we came upon a shoal of horrible jellyfish!!! I got stung a few times, most notably on my face, but at that stage of the swim it didnt matter. The beach gradually got closer and evntually the water beneath me turned to sand. I tried to stand up to walk in the last few metres but the muscles in my lower back and legs did not want to comply so I ended up dragging myself through the sand to finally stand clear of the water on the beah in France!!! I turned around the wave to the boat - which had stopped about 100 metres out from shore - and they sounded the hooter again - at 6.07pm to indicate I was finished! I had finally done it! Unfortunately at that stage I was too tired to comprehend what I had achieved and without thinking about it, just got back into the water and swam back to the waiting boat! I was hooshed very ungracefully up the ladder and immediately covered in towels, both to prevent me from getting cold but also to protect the boat from the grease that still covered me!

Amazingly enough, at no stage during the swim did I feel cold - not even when I got in in the dark so many hours previously. I was very pleased about that as I was worried that I might.

When I was dressed I went inside the boat and began to read some of the 97 text messages in my inbox!! It is amazing how quickly word spreads because all that night and the next day my phone never stopped going - it was really great. I fell asleep on the return journey to Dover and only woke up when we were pulling into the Marina. There was a great welcome committee awaiting me, made up of friends, other swimmers and the owners of the B&B where I was staying. It was really nice and lots of photos and videos had to be taken. We finally returned to the B&B about 10pm once the boat was unloaded and I had a very welcome bath followed by tea and toast. Not the most exciting celebration but it was really all I was fit for. Besides, I couldnt lift my arms higher than elbow level so I would have been no good at a toast anyway!!

I hope this account of the day gives people who may have no idea about long distance swimming some clue as to what goes on. I hope it may inspire others who aspire to similar feats to focus on them and I hope everyone who reads this remembers through long hard race days or other difficult days that 'IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING' - I kept saying that to myself all day and it's true!

Related Links
Larger pictures in gallery
1st Posting on Club Website

Comments (11)

PiranhaTri
http://www.piranhatri.com/article.php/20050815223448975