Fall update

I apologize for such a long break between posts.  The weak excuse is that there has not been much happening since my 6 hour qualifier.  It was such a relief to have made it over that milestone that I have somewhat kicked back to mentally recover before beginning the next phase of the training.

The week after the 6 hour qualifier the lake temperatures quickly dropped to around 13C (56F).  I continued to do 1 hour swims in this temperature.  The first one or two were painful but the I started acclimating to that temperature reasonably well.  Two weeks after the 6 hour qualifier, the lake temperature dropped to about 11C (52F).  Again, I struggled a little at the beginning but was able to feel reasonable for the 1 hour swim.  It is worth documenting how the swims would progress at these temperatures.  The initial dive into the water was intense.  I was shocked that even though I could feel the cold, some of the cold water reactions from the previous season were not happening.  The reactions I refer to include the feeling of a constriction belt around your chest, hyperventilation and the struggle to keep the head in the water.  None of these things happened.  I could feel the cold but seemed to have trained out some of the responses.  I still had the feeling of thousands of needles pushing on my exposed skin for about 5-10 minutes.  I just had to focus my mind somewhere else with the knowledge that the feeling would go away.  After this 5-10 minutes of this uncomfortable feeling, I would slip into a very comfortable mode.  I could feel the cold on my arms and back (probably more so due to the -5C(22F) air temperature) but it almost felt like it was not actually my body feeling the cold.  There were once or twice that the skin actually would feel hot for a while. This comfortable mode would continue all the way across the lake (approximately 1 mile).  About half way back, I would notice that some of the swimmers that I was keeping pace with would start pulling away.  Basically, even though I was feeling ok, my stroke was starting to deteriorate.  It was a regular occurrence and I could count on my return trip taking an extra couple of minutes. This was an indication that I was started to hit my limit on temperature.  I would finish the swim feeling alright even though my hands had some mobility problems.  After drying off and getting dressed, I would shiver for a solid 20-30 minutes.  Another improvement over last season was my recovery was much quicker.  I would find myself feeling pretty normal within an hour. Last season, some of the cold water swims would leave me chilled the rest of the day.  It was mentally a lot easier to get in the next swim knowing that I would feel normal within an hour after swimming.

The third week after the 6 hour swim, the lake dropped down to 10C (50F).  My goal was to swim down to that temperature so I was highly motivated to complete this swim.  All the other swimmers had switched to wetsuits except Eliz and myself.  The swim progressed the same way as the previous week.  On the return trip, the stroke slowdown occurred shortly after the turn around.  When I was about 5-10 minutes from the end, I started having some very strong mental issues where I desperately wanted to stop.  I had enough mental awareness to realize what was happening and that stopping was not going to help, I had to get to shore as quickly as I could.  I fought the mental battles for that remaining 5-10 minutes to get shore, my stroke had totally fallen apart and I was barely moving.  I realized that I had crossed over the line to a dangerous situation but I had no choice but to make it to shore.  Afterwards, the shivers were pretty intense and I had the chills the rest of the day.  It was a sure sign that I was done for the season.

The following week, I did the commit the open water swimmer's sin of wearing a wetsuit.  The water temperature had dropped to 9C (48F).  I figured that it would still be funner then swimming in a hot indoor pool doing laps.  Inside the wetsuit, I broiled during the swim.  It was not as much fun as I thought it would be.  Meanwhile, my hands and feet got extremely cold.  I lost feeling in my finger tips for most of the day from where I had minor frostbite years ago while skiing.  All this convinced me that it was not a smart move for me to extend the open water swimming with a wetsuit.  Sigh....

Since then, I have been taking a mental and physical break from the long distance swimming.  I have done some cross training (running, rowing, etc) and have been more regular with the local masters team doing stroke work and sprints.  In November, I averaged about 20,000 yards a week and will move it up to 25-30,000 yards in December/January.  Sometime in January, I plan to start ramping back up with some longer swims to begin the final 6 months of training before the attempt.

6 hour qualifier completed!

I did it, 6 hours in 16C or less water!  This has been sitting on the back of my mind since my failed attempt last April.  I was definitely fighting some serious doubt demons as to if I was capable in reaching this benchmark.  It seems as if the additional physical adaptation to the cold and more importantly, more experience to arm my brain with mental weapons were enough.  I am far from done in my training but I am now ready to enter the next phase of training with more confidence.  I would very much want to thank my training partners Eliz and Katie for their support in both the training and the actual qualifying swim in which they also achieved their goals.

Now the more detailed description of the swim.  After the determination that the water temperature had dropped low enough to qualify, we scrambled to check our schedules to see when we all could make the swim.  We quickly narrowed it down to Thursday, Oct 1, very early in the morning.  We started ludicrously early in the morning for two reasons.  One was to complete before our normal work schedules started and another was to get off the lake before any boats.  Eliz had the more restricted time schedule so she started at 12:20 am to complete her 6 hours by 6:30am.  I started at 3am to complete by 9am. Katie started at 5am to complete by 9am (the qualifying requirement for her swim was 4 hours).  After we set the date and time, we checked the weather and found we picked the worse day of the week.  A cold front was coming in bringing cold weather, high winds and clouds. We briefly chatted about postponing the swim but concluded that if this scared us away, we were not ready for the Channel.  Remember, train for the worse, hope for the best.

A little before 3am, I am standing at the water's edge in 8C (46F) air temperature, 15.2C(59.4F) water temperature with the wind whipping at about 20-25mph wondering what I was doing here. The lake we were swimming in was about 1 mile long.  Our plan was to swim across into the wind then back with the wind to our back.  I jump in and start stroking away.  I struggled into the waves trying to find a rhythm in the waves that would allow me to take a breath without a mouth full of water.  It was work but the return trip with the wind to the back was refreshing.  After about 20 minutes, I started feeling cold and the mental battle began.  This time, I had more weapons in my arsenal to do battle so I fought on.  Previous training swims and some feedback from Eliz showed that at about 2 hours, I would break through the mental barrier and the swim would become easier.  Sure enough, at 2 hours, I was not comfortable but it no longer was a mental battle.  It just "was" and I swam on, focusing on letting my mind wonder onto random thoughts.  During the 2nd crossing into the wind, I was fighting the waves pretty hard.  In the back of my mind, I noticed the waves were large and it felt like a washing machine but mentally it did not bother me.  It just felt like it was what was dealt to me and to just deal with it, no problem.  At 5am, Eliz and I meet up with Katie.  Eliz made some comment about how the waves were "interesting" or something understated like that as a warning to Katie.  As we heading back into the wind, I noticed it seem to die down for about 30 minutes and then pick back up.  This had me curious so afterwards, I found a nearby weatherstation that tracked wind speed and found the following chart.

The winds had been in the 40-46mph range in the 3:30-4am range but dropped down to 10mph shortly after Katie joined us.  I think if I had known I was swimming in 46mph winds, I would have gotten out.  Instead, ignorance was bliss and I kept swimming.  It is now a great confidence boost to realize I swam in winds at that speed with no mental issues with the wind.  This will come in handy assuming that there is a good chance I will have some sort of winds while crossing the channel.

After our half hour of light winds, the winds pickup up to the 20mph range.  The water did not feel like a washing machine with winds at this speed, just some chop to fight through.  Eliz completed her 6 hours successful and heading to work.  At about the 5 hour mark, I started feeling the physical fatigue of the swimming.  I was somewhat surprised that it showed up that early but given that I had not done a swim greater the 3 hours since April, it should not have.  Battling the mental games that come with fatigue is far from new to me so it was no problem keeping the swimming up, I just slowed down quite a bit.  The last hour seemed to go on for a long time due to the fatigue but I made it and felt I could have continued for longer, even in my slow, fatigued state.  As I got out in the now 10C (50F) air, I was definitely cold and shivery for the next 30-60 minutes.   I was again amazed on how much quicker I was recovering compared to last spring from the colder swims.

Overall, this swim was much tougher then the attempt last spring in Malta.  The water temperature was about the same but we found out in Malta that fresh water will feel colder then salt water at the same temp (not sure why).  The swim was done in much colder air temperature with over 4 hours of the swim at night where you get no solar heat from the sun.  Of course, it had the added issue of the winds that were not present the day we attempted the 6 hour in Malta (it was previous days).  I don't know if I would have planned it this way normally but I felt the conditions were close to what some of the challenging conditions we could see during the channel with the exception of salt water, tides and jellies.  Given we live thousands of miles from the sea, this was about as good a simulation as we could get at this location.  It was a fantastic confidence booster knowing I was still able to complete it.

I plan to keep the cold water swimming up until the temperatures drop below 10C (50F).  It very much depends on the weather but I am hoping to make it until November.  Then I will be restricted to pool swimming and an occasional trip to Eliz's Endless pool that she plans to keep at 12C (55F).

Time for another attempt at the qualifying swim

Looks like this is the week to give another shot at a 6 hour qualifying swim at 16C or less water. I have been ramping up some longer swims since Horsetooth in preparation for the swim. I have not ramped up as much as Malta with the knowledge that the real need for training is in the cold water acclimatisation, not the endurance. I was hoping for a nice gentle cooling of the lakes here in Colorado so that I can slowly acclimatise myself to the cold water. I have not been that lucky. The temperature held close to 21C (70F) until mid September. A cold front moved in the weekend of Sept 19th. This combined with a decision by the water board to fill the lakes from colder, higher elevation lakes started dropping the temperature up to 1C (1.8F) a day. Within a week, it dropped 5C (9F). The good news is that it has slowed down due to warmer weather and the lakes are nearly full. It looks like the temperature is dropping about 0.25C(0.5F) a day, at least until the next cold front comes in a couple of days. If I want to get the qualifier in before the water gets too cold, I need to react in a couple days. In a way, it is good mental training for the Channel by having to wait most of September for the proper conditions and then having to react rapidly to get ready.

To react this quickly, I don't have the luxury to schedule a weekend at a lake, get support crew and go. I will match up with some other swimmers planning on doing various qualifiers (for Manhattan Island and English Channel) to swim together to watch each other for safety and witnesses. We will go very early in the morning (somewhere between 1am-4am) to be complete before the work day begins and boat traffic is allowed on the lakes. This will cause most of the swim to be done at night. Again, this is good training for the Channel since there will probably be night swims involved in the Channel crossing. The down side is the air temperature this time of year in Colorado drops to 2C (36F) to 7C(45F) and we will be swimming at the coldest time of the night (sunrise). Combine with the fact that fresh water feels colder then salt water (at the same temperature) makes this a much colder swim then if we could do the swim in salt water, sunny and warmer air temperature. Advice from channel gurus is to train for the worse and hope for the best. It looks like I am heading in this direction. Looking at the bright side, I don't have to worry about sunscreen.

A quick status update on my cold acclimatisation in preparedness for this swim. I was shocked as the water temperature dropped last week that I had lost some of the cold water acclimatisation I had developed last spring. I was shivering at 19C(67F) where I would not have shivered until 17C(63F) by the end of the spring cold water swimming. This made me nervous with the short acclimatisation period I have this fall but the good news is the body is reacting reasonably quickly. I was able to swim at 17C(62F) for 2.5 hours with minor shivers within a week of the temperature starting to drop. This morning, I was feeling very comfortable for at least 15-20 minutes at 16C(61F) before starting to feel cold. I would love about 1-2 more weeks of cold water acclimatisation at the 16-17C range. Unfortunately, I am guessing that we will start another 1C (1.8F)/day temperature drop with the next front due in 3 days. If I want to attempt the 6 hours at a temperature close to 16C, I need to do it now. I also had a great swim last week from a mental perspective when I did the 2.5 hour at 17C(62F). I almost immediately felt cold and wondered how long I would be able to handle the cold. I keep just thinking "hang in there for one more loop" until at 2 hours, I hit some equilibrium where the cold was not weighing on me mentally. This is a huge milestone that I can use mid swim if I start getting cold and start doubting my ability to handle it. If I just hang in there, it will get better.

After this week, the plan is to keep swimming until the water temp drops down to about 10C(50F). After that point, I will be stuck in warm indoor pools and Eliz's Endless pool until the spring time. My guess is that I have about 4 more weeks at the most of open water swimming left in this season. Need to make the most of it!

Horsetooth 10K race

As one of the race directors for the Horsetooth 10K, it has been years since I have thought of actually racing instead of just participating in the event. Usually, I approach the race highly stressed, low on sleep and having to do a lot of physical labor the 24 hours before the race. None of these things make for a good performance. This year was different. I had a more solid base then I have had since 2001 from my ramp up for the Malta Long Distance camp in April. I wondered if I might actually be competitive this year. As the race day approached, the stress level was much lower then normal due mainly to an awesome event committee that were on top of all the issues. Due to some reassignment of tasks, I had considerably less heavy lifting in the 24 hours before the race. The morning of the race, I get up at 3am to inflate buoys and set up the event. Things went remarkably smoothly so that by 5:45am, I am done and wondering what to do next. I wished the organizers of the finish line good luck and headed to the other end of the lake for the start. I was actually able to get to the starting line well in advance and was able to prepare myself in a relaxed fashion instead of the usual high speed skid into the parking lot, unload the canoe, strip and start.

The conditions for the day were nearly optimal. The earlier forecast was for cool and overcast. As we gathered for the start, it was cool but there was not a cloud in the sky. The water was flat and smooth. The temperature of the water had dropped in the last week a few degrees but it was still a pleasant 70F (21C). Shortly after we started, a wind picked up pretty significantly from South/SouthEast. For most of the swimmers, this was a great tail wind. Talking with some of the novice open water swimmers (read pool swimmers), they had trouble with the waves

interfering with the recovery part of the stroke. For the more experienced open water swimmers, we were in heaven as the waves pushed us to the finish. The real issue was with the support canoes and kayaks. They were having trouble keeping close to their swimmers in the wind and waves.

My race strategy was pretty much the same as I have used for years at this race (it was 10th year). Start off slow and then accelerate the last part as the less experienced swimmers started fatiguing. In the past several years, I have been under trained for the event so I would start out the first 4-5 miles at double dog slow pace to conserve my energy. This year I felt stronger so I decided to hold the first 4-5 miles at a strong moderate instead of slow pace. From a feeding perspective, I used the race to practice shortening my feeding speed as training for feeding in the channel. I made a concentrate mixture of Hammer's Perpetuum with hot chocolate mix.

For the start of the Horsetooth 10K, we have the paddlers move about 1000 meters down the course to allow the swimmers to separate a bit before trying to match up. This allows the start to be uncrowded and our usual relaxed start (unlike a traditional triathlon start). As the horn went

off and we headed toward the line of canoes/kayakers, I stayed a little closer to the front of the crowd then I usually did. The eventual winners pulled away quickly but I found myself in roughly the first chase pack. After the first mile or two, I was in somewhere around 8-10th place.

My feeding plan was every 30 minutes. My first feeding was a bit of a bumble but the next couple were pretty good. I had my wife and son (who were paddling for me) time the feeding. I was pretty consistent at about 8 seconds. If I can feed at this speed in the rougher channel waters, I will be ecstatic.

As we passed the halfway mark, I started slowly passing some people. My stroke felt strong and consistent. As I approached the 2.4M race buoy (about 1.2M from the finish), I was starting to mentally get ready to pick up the pace. I had been slowly gaining on the swimmer that eventually placed 5th overall. My arms were beginning to feel fatigued and tight but I still felt I could do a reasonable pick up of pace. I looked over at my canoe as it was close to my next feed. To my surprise, I found my support canoe was upside down. My wife and son were in the water trying to pull the canoe to shore to empty it. A wind generate wave hit the canoe broad side as they had their wieght shifted reaching for my feed and rolled the canoe. I swam over to them to help drag the canoe to shore. In theory, I would be disqualified from winning place for both touching the boat and touching ground but it was a moot point given I was not going to place

anyway. We emptied the water from the canoe and as I pushed them away from shore, I slipped and rolled the canoe again. We dragged it back and repeated the emptying. When all was said and done, I lost about 3-5 minutes and about 7-8 people passed me. The good news is the boat hauling and flipping gave my tired swim muscles a chance to rest. When I hit the water, I was flying. I quickly started passing people back. I had passed about 3-4 people before I ran out of water. I had enough energy to finish the last 20-30 meters butterfly.

My time was a reasonable at 2:31, my second fastest time in the 10 years of doing the event. I know that the wind helped considerably. Some swimmers reported going 5 minutes faster then expected while a slower swimmer reported nearly 30 minutes. My guess is it helped me by 5 minutes which pretty much offset my 3-5 minutes of lost time playing with a capsized boat. What I really liked was that the swim did not fatigue me like past swims had. I definitely could have jumped in and headed back. The endurance training seems to be working. Now I just need to get the cold training started again.

Update with 1 year to go

It has been a while since my last posting. I can blame it a bit on being busy with non-swimming activities and a bit on planned down time from the ramp up for Malta before I begin the year long training cycle towards the English Channel. Whichever, it is getting close to one year to go so time to get my mind back into swimming.

The cold water acclimatisation during the remainder of the spring went well. We lucked out and had a cool, raining spring (unusual for Colorado) which keep the local lakes at a good training temperature for longer then normal this year. I was able to get sub 60F training in until about mid June. When the cool rain stopped, the lakes quickly heated up to the mid 60F to low 70F. At the peak of the spring acclimatisation, I was able to handle 1.5-2 hours in 58F water with limited shivering and 2-3 hours in 60-61F water with limited shivering. Not quite ready for the channel yet but felt I made significant progress for the spring season. Now the goal will be to make these temperatures feel comfortable this fall and push down to being able to handle even colder temperatures as the lakes cool off.

A quick summary of the distractions I had this early summer. Early June, I went with my son's Boy Scout troop for a weeklong mountain biking trip at Moab, Utah. I was nervous about if I would have troubles with my limited bike training (due to swim training), extra weight on the hills and lack of heat acclimatisation. In general, I had nothing to worry about. It was tougher but still doable. The killer day was on Slickrock trail when my son's derailler broke. We swapped bikes and I ran his bike out in 90F heat for about 7 miles with limited water. I was surprised to find I lost a few degrees of cold water acclimatisation from this trip. Shortly after I got back we jumped in a lake at 58F for a little over an hour and I had some cold issues with the water that I had not had for nearly a month. Two weeks after Moab, I did a 188 mile running relay race with 5 teammates in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. I was nervous and it turned out rightfully so about the limited run training, extra weight and lack of heat acclimatisation. I ended up running about 30 miles in 24 hours and the suffering was glorious (to quote a teammate). I was a good 2 min/mile slower by the end then I usually am at a running race like this. When I returned from this relay, the lakes had warmed up to the upper 60F so I no longer could tell if I had lost significant cold water acclimatisation. The bottom line is I need to avoid distractions like this over the next year. My wife and I have already decided to skip running the New York Marathon this year which was to be my last non-swimming distraction.

Now that I have these distractions past me, I am starting to ramp up the swimming again. I am hitting the lakes 2-3 times a week and the pool 2-3 times. I just did a 3 hour swim yesterday in a local lake at a balmy 72F. I will continue a moderate ramp up to the Horsetooth 10K in August and then a more serious ramp up to another 6 hour attempt at 60F when the local lakes cool off in late September, early October. Meanwhile, I am following the Channel chat site for preparation and attempts that are happening this summer. It is hard to imagine that a year from now I will be one of those going through the final planning stages.

Early Cold Water Acclimatization

After Malta, the focus of this springs training shifted from endurance training to cold water acclimatization.   I planned on taking a mental breather from the long workouts after Malta but I quickly realized I had a relatively short spring season of cold water to use for cold water training before the local lakes warmed up.  From information I had received from the fellow channel swimmers at Malta and followup reading, every season that you do cold water training will make it easier.  I did not want to miss this spring season. 

Shortly after returning from Malta, I caught a "travel cold".  One of those colds that come from sitting on a cramped airplane with limited airflow combined with jetlag lack of sleep.  I was reasonably incapacitated for nearly a week after my return.  Finally, on Saturday I felt good enough to swim again.  Eliz and I headed for a local lake.  I measured 55F (12.5C) in the lake with an air temperature of 42F (5.5C).  It was a bit cooler then the 59F (15C) of Malta.  We hit the water for 30+ minutes.  It felt cold but doable.  We both felt we could have gone a little longer but thought that it was best to work into the colder water swimming slowly.  

The next Thursday, we hit the lake again with a goal to try for an hour.  The temperature was again 55F (12.5C).  We crossed longways across the lake (0.9miles) and back.  When we got back, we checked with each other to see how we felt.  The water felt cold but we both felt our core temperature was still ok.  We headed out along the shore line for a quick out and back to make it to a hour.  As we returned, we did start feeling some of the effects of hypothermia.  In particular, both of us hands started forming the "channel claw", a relatively common cold water long distance swimming occurance.  As the blood flow continues to be limited to the hands plus the drop in temperature in them, the muscles control drops such that the fingers start separating and bending in a manner that looks like your hand is clawing something.  We tried to control the muscles to hold the fingers straight but it was not working.  We finished the swim in slightly over an hour and headed to warm clothes.  I had a solid 40 minutes of shivering but became useful around the house within 75 minutes.  Not bad for our first hour swim at 55F (12.5C).

This morning (Cinco De Mayo), we hit the lake for a third time since Malta.  Since last Thursday, we have had a cold spell with a significant amount of cold rain(as in it was snowing in slightly higher elevations).  The water temperature had dropped to 53F (11.5C).  With the colder water, we decided that the goal would not be to go longer then last time but try to hold the same time.  Also with the colder water, we stayed a little closer to the shore in case we had problems.  We headed out on a course that was about 15 minutes out and then back.  The water definately felt colder but after about 5 minutes, the body seemed to be settling into a comfortable middle ground where we could feel the cold water but the core temperature seemed to be ok.  It ended up being a beautiful morning with the sun rising over the horizon while we were swimming with mirror smooth water.  I finally had some significant time just zoning out and enjoying.  I had not had that feeling yet while swimming in cold water.  It felt great!  After one 30 minute lap, we checked in with each other to make sure we felt ok and headed out for a second lap.  Shortly after we turned around, I started feeling the channel claw forming.  It felt as if I could not grab any water.  I was afraid I was going to slow down so I tried picking up the cadence.   I felt I was holding a reasonable speed but I kept seeing Eliz pull ahead and then slow down.  I was not sure if I was slowing down or if she was speeding up.  With about 100 yards to go, I saw her hesitate for second and then continue to the end.  As we got out, she asked if I felt ok.  I replied that I did but explained my claw issues.  She mentioned that in the last 5 minutes I had slowed down significantly and she was starting to get nervous.  The hesitation I saw was when she thought for a second about stopping me and asking but then realized it would be quicker just to finish the swim and then ask.  She checked my skin color and it was still a healthy pink.  We did not make our full hour, only about 55 minutes but Eliz was nervous enough not try to push to an hour.

This reaction does confuse me.  Obviously I was having some early signs of hypothermia.  The confusing part is I definately felt colder in Malta without the channel claw problems and slowdown.  Also, my recovery from the swim was one of my quickest one.  I had only medium shivers that lasted less then 30 minutes.  This seems to indicate my core temperature did not drop as much as previous swims.  However, I was experience more significant hypothermia issues with the channel claw and the slow down.  At this stage, I am guessing that the core is adapting quicker then the extremities to the cold water which would not be a big surprise.  From discussions with fellow channel swimmers, these symptoms will come later and later in the swim to the point they will not show up in normal training.  I just need to be patient and keep the cold water training up.

Malta Pictures

 
 
 
 

Post Malta update

I returned yesterday from the SwimTrek Long Distance Swim camp in Malta. Those that have followed my blog are probably wondering both what my mental state is as well as what my plans are for the future. The quick and short of it is I am feeling mentally motivated and still plan on making a run for it!!

During the 24 hours after the 6 hour attempt in Gozo was a very helpful for mental recovery. Of course, I started pretty depressed but tried to keep it under control to help the rest of the swimmers celebrate their accomplishments. The next morning we got in the water for a quick fun swim in the cove and finally got out of Xlendi cove to see the white cliffs just out of the cove. I had no trouble doing this and in fact felt a lot more comfortable getting in the cold water then I had in days. This says something about how nervousness and mental issues can throw you off. The comradeship of the fellow swimmers was great and seeing how what looks to be ordinary people doing extra ordinary things was real helpful. By the time I left Gozo to do a quick day of sightseeing on the main island of Malta, I was already starting developing plans on how to strengthen my weaknesses. Bottom line is I found every penny I spent on the trip valuable in teaching me where I was at and what I had to do to be prepared for the English Channel. It was a harsh slap in the face that one does not roll off the couch and hope to swim across the English Channel. It takes a lot of focus, determination and planning to be prepared for it.

Eliz and I talked quite a bit about our learnings and plans during the long slow trip back to the US. It was obvious that we were the least cold acclimated of the swimmers at the camp. All the other swimmers had their events this summer (versus ours next summer) and had at least another year of cold water acclimatisation then we had. We also found out that the Dover season is not that much longer then what we should be able to achieve in Colorado. They officially begin the first weekend in May and we should be able to get in the open water as early as mid May. This made us believe if we push ourselves to hit the open water as soon as possible, we should be able to achieve the same cold water acclimatisation this year as the weekend Dover swimmers did last year.

There are a couple of updates on the 6 hour qualifying swim status. Eliz's swim will count so she does not necessarily have to do another. However, she quickly come to the realization that she will need to do more to prepare for the Channel crossing so it was generally a moot point if it counted or not. We plan on doing more 6 hour swims in the next year where one of them will count as my qualifying swim. My goal is to work toward cold water acclimatisation this spring to fall and aim to do my official qualifying swim this fall in a fresh water lake in Colorado once the temperature in the lake drops far enough (mid-September). Worse case scenario might be a return to Malta next spring but with another year of cold water training under my belt.

Malta Day 5

April 15, 2009

We meet for breakfast at 7:15 with the bus departing at 8am. The hope is that we start swimming before 9am. The boat takes us just out of the Harbor to start the swim. The plan is to swim to the next cove west of the harbor then start circling in the cove if the cove is Jelly free. We over achieve and hit the water at 8:50am in the best weather we have had all week (very light winds, sunny and warm) The water feels cold but not as cold as when I jumped in yesterday afternoon. I hope this is a good sign. Eliz warned me that she was going to back the pace down to make it to 6 hours. I had more concerns about warmth so I took off at a solid pace. We needed to stay close to each of other since we were sharing a boat so I would periodically do a flip turn and swim back to her. By the end of the first hour, I lost feeling in my feet (which I had not had up till now) and I started shivering. I had my feed and the warmth felt great. For the next 5 minutes, I felt human again and then the shivering started again. I hung in there for another hour fighting the demons and unfortunately focusing on the fact I had 5 more hours to go. At the 2 hour mark, I got out, defeated and depressed. I had a solid shiver fit but not as bad as the previous days. Obviously, I got psyched out. The damage had been done, no qualify swim for me today. I helped with the feeds for a while. At the 4 hour 30 minute feed, I got back in to pace Eliz. Her pace was much slower then earlier in the swim. I realized if I keep that pace up, I would get very cold pretty quickly. I thought about it and realized that being able to swim the rest of the hour in a half was not as important as keeping Eliz company. I hung in there with her for an hour fighting the cold off before I got out knowing she could make it the last half hour. All the rest of the swimmers including Eliz made it to the 6 hour mark and there was much celebrating.

Quick analysis of what happened. Obviously I got psyched out and did not have the mental strength to hold in there for longer (until I was more medically hypothermic). I find this interesting since I tend to have reasonably strong mental strength. Talking with Eliz, she also had the shivers at about the 1.5 hour mark and yet she held in there to the end (tough woman). Could my mental strength have an "Achilles Heel" with the cold or is there another reason? Second, the last two days my cold tolerance was not building but quite opposite, it was weakening. One of the guides hinted he had a theory on this but I have not had a chance to talk with him about it. I am fighting demons wondering if my DNA will allow me to gain the cold tolerance. There seems to be a lot of examples around of people that seem to be the wrong genetics for cold but are able to develop it. One of our guides is an ex 1:20 half marathoner, 2:50 marathoner then took up Channel swimming. It took him 5-6 years of attempts to be successful but he was. Am I the classic American (in the Brits viewpoint) that is not patient enough? Do I want to put aside a large portion of my life (athletics and family) for that long a period for this goal? Obviously, a lot of demons are in my head and I have some serious belly button staring time in front of me.

On a side depressing note (for Eliz), in a discussion after the swim today, it came up that the qualifying swim might need to be within 12 months of your channel attempt. If this is the case, her heroics will be for naught and she also will have to make another attempt at 6 hours. We did discuss this and she pointed out that that if our training and cold water adaptation does not make the 6 hours easier, her motivation to do it again (and consequently the Channel) is pretty low. She also has some belly button staring to do.

Malta Day 4

April 14, 2009

The winds died down a bit last night. They were able to get the boats out of the Mgarra harbor. We ate a hardy breakfast and headed for the docks at 9am. Due to the fact that it was still considerably windy out, our swim options were limited. The guides started us about a mile from the south east corner of the island with the plan to round that corner and head north to a cove up the coast where would finish. The morning swim was a 3 hour swim. One swimmer put a thermometer in the water and measured 15C. It seems as if the cove we had been swimming in was a little warmer then the main Mediterranean sea. We hit the water at 10am. It was cold but beautiful since we could see the bottom as we swam. The wind was to our backs so the waves were not a significant issue. As we approach the corner, the guides realized that the sea was going to be to rough on that side to swim. We shifted the plan to cross over to Comino island that was south of us and swim in coves over there. The crossing was a little rougher but not bad. As we got close to the island, we ran into a batch of Jellies. Everybody got some significant stings but nothing dangerous. Eliz got one right in the face. It freaked her out enough that she started swimming breaststroke and slow freestyle looking for them. Hint to future cold water swimmers, this is bad news. The decreased energy output allowed her body temperature to drop. Once your body temperature drops, it is nearly impossible to warm it back up unless you get out of the water. She start shivering in the water. At the two hour mark, she got out moderately hypothermic. Another swimmer (coincidentally named Joe) pulled a muscle in his arm as he try to suddenly jerk away from the Jellies. The guides searched for a jelly free cove and had us do laps in the cove. The rest of us made the 3 hours. I got out and had one of my more serious shiver fits I can remember.

After a hardy lunch, we headed back to where we started the day since it was jelly free and to drop off the injured Joe to see a physician It was a mere 90 minutes and we jumped back in for a 2 hour swim. The good news is the extra hour she had getting out early allowed Eliz to stabilize her core temperature and she jumped with renewed desire not to slow down and let her core temperature drop. The bad news is that the 90 minutes did not allow me to stabilize the core and I jumped in feeling immediately cold. We did an out and back course that took about 15 minutes. After one loop, I was colder then I finished my 3 hours. I hung in there for one hour but was getting very nervous about how cold I felt. At the one hour feeding mark, I requested to get out. One guide did a quick review of my condition and helped me out. I was still coherent so I was still not severely hypothermic but I had an even more intense shiver fit then from the morning. The rest of the swimmers finished the 2 hour swim fabulously. There was much celebrating on the boat with a little fear but a lot of optimism for tomorrows 6 hours swim.

Of course I am nervous about 6 hours tomorrow. I have a theory that I am using to pysc myself up. When I stopped after the 3 hours and got out, I allowed my core temperature to drop due to both stopping the energy expenditure and allowing my colder blood that had pooled in my extremities to release into my core. This dropped my core temperature down further then if I had keep swimming and I was not out of the water long enough to reverse this core temperature drop. Since I will not be stopping tomorrow, this will not happen. Second, I think I might have been able to finish the second hour but I would have come out much more severely hypothermic. This crossed my mind with the fear of tomorrows swim coming up and did not want to push my body that hard the day before the big swim. So the hope is that one additional day of acclimation, not stopping and pushing myself to the limit will gain me the 3 hours I need to finish the swim. Wish me luck.

Malta Day 3

April 13, 2009

The bad news is the wind howled all night. The good news is I was so tired that I slept through it like a baby. Sure enough, the cove was not swimable when we got up this morning. We grabbed breakfast and headed to a hotel in Victoria that had a large outdoor pool. It was almost circular (closer to square) with a diameter close to 25m with an island in the middle. The painful part is the temperature of the pool was also 16C (60F). We got in for some video taping and individual coaching by one of the guides. In between our turns at this, we swam around the island and did stroke drills. We are not sure what all the reasons were but just about everyone was colder doing an hour in the pool then the 2 hours in the sea. Some of the reasons might be that fresh water does "feel" colder then salt water at the same temp and we stopped quite a bit for instruction in the pool and it was seriously overcast with a wind. We made it to an hour (barely) before we got out. Amazingly enough, most of us had numb feet which we did not get when we swam in the sea for 2 hours.

Afterwards, we headed back to our hotel to grab lunch. The plan this afternoon is to review the video taping and then have more discussion on training techniques. The waves in the cove look slightly less at 2pm today, a good sign that the storm is blowing out and tomorrow we will be back in the sea.

Day 2 Malta

Sunday, April 12, 2009

The morning came way to early with the jet lag. I dragged myself out of bed at 6:45am to shave (important to keep chafing down) and a quick snack. We meet at the beach at 7:30 for a quick swim (5-10 minute) to determine speeds to break us (14 swimmers) into 3 groups for when we have 3 support crafts following us. Eliz and I got placed in a stylish pink swim cap group together which will be fun since we train together and know each others pace. After that, we went in for a real for real breakfast. At 9am, we meet at the beach for the first real swim. The wind picked up overnight and the boats were unable to get out of the south side of the island. Swimtrek had one Zodiac that could be used to patrol the cove so we did laps in the cove. It was cloudy and windy out, windy enough that we could see white caps out of the cove but it was reasonably calm in the cove. We swam for one hour. The water was chilly but I had no signs of the cold effecting my swim. After a little break, we gather to talk a bit about the logistics of the channel until lunch. After a hearty lunch, we meet at the beach for a 2 hour swim. The good news is the sun is out. The bad news is the wind had continued to pick up so we had some serious white caps in the cove now. The decision was to only go half way toward the exit of the cove. After one loop, the Kodiak had some technical problems so they called us in to do smaller circles that were basically back and forth along the shore line with enough circle action to avoid running into each other. The wind continued to pick up throughout the afternoon. After one hour, we stopped for a Maxim nutrition break (30 seconds only). At this point the waves were challenging but only about as bad as I had fought at the La Jolla rough water. It was a workout but definitely was still swimable. Over the next hour it progressed to some serious wave action. At about 1:40, the guides said that it started to deteriorate at a much more rapid rate. I will admit that on the right hand turn into the wind, I was starting to hesitate a little before taking off to gain the mental strength to fight the waves. It was challenging and starting to get marginally swimable. At about 1:55, the guides called us and had us exit in an alternate location due to the waves being to dangerous to exit in the primary location. The wind continued to pick up the rest of the day. We meet at about 4:30 to discuss stroke mechanics on the 5th floor of the hotel. The cove facing window of the 5th floor window was getting soaked by the ocean spray of the waves coming in. After the meeting, we walked outside and found about 6" of water in the street going perpendicular to the shore for about 150-200 meters from the surf. The weather forecast for tomorrow was actually for more wind then today. The guides are working up alternate plans for the probably case that even the cove is not swimable.

A quick feedback on my condition on the 2 hour swim. I actually was feeling pretty comfortable cold wise during the swim. The challenging water was definitely giving me a solid workout but it did not seem more then I could handle. After the swim, the guides did say they had started watching me closer. My back skin color had start changing, my stroke rate was dropping and they noticed my hesitation on the turn. All these are signs that my core temperature was dropping. I have felt more hypothermic in the past so I was somewhat surprised. It will make the next rest of the week interesting if 2 hours is starting to cause problems. It might have been the conditions since I heard later that some of the other swimmers skin color was changing. I did get back to the room for a solid 30 minutes of uncontrollable shivering. I still find it interesting that this tends to start almost 10 minutes after I exit the water. Is it when the cold pooled blood in the extremities flow back into the core? Is there a way to slow this process up so that the cool blood can warm up before it gets dumped back into the core? All wonderful questions to be investigated.

Water in the streets

Look like fun to swim in?

Day 1 Malta

Saturday April 11, 2009

After a long 24 hours of travel (Fort Collins to Denver to Washington DC to Frankfort to Malta to Gozo with long layovers in Washington and Franfort), I am finally at the hotel for the swim camp. The swim camp is actually based out of Hotel San Andrea in the quaint town of Xlendi on the Island of Gozo in the nation of Malta (that is a mouthful). The drive (Eliz did it) from the airport to Xlendi was "interesting". With the British background, they drive on the left side of the roads. There were a lot of traffic circles to make this more challenging as well as very narrow roads since they were built in the 15th century, a few years before cars, especially large tour buses existed. The town of Xlendi is basically a set of buildings around a cove. At the base of the buildings are about a half dozen little restaurants. After doing a quick unpacking, Eliz, Jim and I walk down to the water front to grab a quick pizza. We notice a couple of Swimtrek swimmers (no one else was brave/stupid enough to get in the water) doing laps in the cove. I was not very hungry and had not had a chance to hit the water yet so I head back to the room to change quickly. The swimmers were out drying off when I got back but we talked for a while. They gave me heads up on an area that were full of Jellys to avoid. I jump in and the water feels cool but not painful. I hang in there for about 5-10 minutes to loosen up while wearing a watch to get the actual temperature. In the cove it was about 61-62F (16C). I was warned that the water was colder out of the cove. As I did my quick swim, I stopped to chat with Eliz who was sitting at a table by the water. She warned me not to get pysched out by the scuba divers that were wearing dry suits due to the cold water. I had quite a few tourists pointed and commenting on the crazy swimmer.

We gathered for dinner that evening with the Swimtrek guides and the rest of the swimmers. It was basically an intro dinner with the presentation for the logistics for the week.

Cove

Jim and Eliz by restaurants by the waterfront

Malta Bound

Tomorrow morning, I will be on a plane bound for Malta to participate in the SwimTrek long distance swim camp.  The pinnacle of the trip will be attempting the 6 hour qualifying swim in 59F water on Wednesday.   I am confident in my endurance for the swim with the training Eliz and I have done but the surviving 6 hours in that cold of water has me more then a little nervous.

A quick update on my back injury from the previous blog, it ended up being a relative non-issue.  It did end up being purely a muscular issue that was easily treated via physical therapy and massage.   The root cause was determined to be imbalance in muscle development from all the front crawl swimming I was doing and no offsetting muscle development via stroke work, weights, etc.  I am doing light muscle activation exercises for recovery to get me through the swim camp but afterwards I will need to add offsetting muscle development exercises to my weekly schedule.   Suggestions that have been offered to me include using a rowing machine, more backstroke in my swimming workouts and weights.  A word of warning to future Channel wannabes, have a balance exercise program in place.  

While in Malta, I will try to post some updates as I have energy and time.

Three weeks to Malta and fear

It is now 3 weeks to Malta SwimTrek Long Distance Swim camp where I will be attempting a 6 hour qualifying swim in hopefully 60F water. A fellow blogger, Julie Galloway, is heading to Malta this weekend for her camp and 6 hour swim. I am looking forward to her reports and hints.

The distance training has gone well. Eliz and I did just short of 6 hours (5:50) three weeks ago and a 6 hour swim this past Sunday, both in a way to warm pool at 83F (34C). I am estimating that we covered about 23,000 yards (~13 miles) in the 6 hours with approximately 15 minutes of non-swimming time due to feeding breaks and bio breaks. Even though we held a pretty slow pace, we were able to pick it up the last 1/2 hour. Eliz thoroughly smoked me during this pick up, a hint of what our relative times will be in the longer swims. For an endurance viewpoint, I feel we are ready for a 6 hour open water swim given we have done a 6 hour training swim in a pool. Beyond that enters the fear issue.

There are two main fears eating at my psyche now. The first is expected. How will we do when we hit the colder water in Malta? Our training so far has been in pool temperatures from 81F to 84F. The local lakes in the foothills of Colorado have been bouncing from frozen to 37F (3C) and I am typing this while looking at 6" of snow on the ground. I have been trying cold showers to prepare but there seems to be differences in opinion on the effectiveness of this. The bottom line is that we will just have to do our best once we get to Malta.

The second fear was one that I was not expecting to fight. I have been amazed with how little overuse injuries have occurred as we have ramped up the swims. I would like to believe it was due to intelligent ramp up but it probably has more to do with luck. After the really long swims, there is longer term fatigue (three days to a week) with some stiffness but nothing that hasn't gone away. On Wednesday this week, I hit the water for a short one hour recovery (meaning slow) swim. I had a tightness in my mid-back, nothing unusual after a long weekend swim. After about 15 minutes of warm up, the tightness was still there so I stopped to stretch it. During the stretch, there was a sharp spasm in that location. The pain was reasonably intense and did not go away. I decided to stop the stretch and see if could swim it out. I quickly determined it was not and I could not complete a full stroke. Here I was, three weeks from Malta and could not swim across the pool. Minor panic set in but I squelched it. I decided I had done enough damage and got out of the pool. The next 24 hours was pretty painful but it seems to be calming down now, about 36 hours later. The injury feels more like a muscle related instead of a tendon so I am hoping for quicker recovery. The next week or so will determine if I make the trip to Malta. Sigh...that is the risk on the longer events, be it running, biking, swimming or any sports where you take the body past what they are normally made to do. Why we do what we do is to see how far we can push ourselves and sometimes we find out the hard way. I just hope my lesson does not keep me from completing the swim camp.

Fighting the Demons

We are just 6 weeks away from the Malta SwimTrek swim camp. We have only a couple more of the ludicrously long pool swims left. Today was planned to be somewhere between 5:30 and 5:45. We get to sleep in and start swimming at 6am since there are no aqua aerobics today. As I am putting my suit on, my mind wonders into dark areas. I start questioning why am I doing this. It would so much easier to stick to doing shorter stuff like 10K runs and Olympic distance distance triathlons. I am doing this precisely because it is not easy. I shake myself wondering where these thoughts are coming from. It might be from exhaustion. I chaperoned my son's scout troop's ski trip yesterday. It was an unbelievable day. It was sunny, not too cold with no wind. When we got to the top of the mountain at about 12,000 ft, it was an unbelievably beautiful view. I was so caught up in the day, I pounded down through the trees and moguls until my legs are totally trashed. I then had the long drive home with cramping legs to totally exhaust me. Not the best day before prep for a nearly 6 hours swim.

As I stand by the pool and pull my cap on, it breaks. Not the best omen. After the first hour of swimming, I still had dark thoughts. My mind definitely was not in the right place. I am constantly wrestling demons that are whispering in my ear that "2 hours is good enough" and then as we get past 2 hours it whispers "3 hours is good enough". At 3 hours, I reach for a crutch, the SwimMP3 player. I know it is a crutch but I was hoping it would distract my mind. Alas, something is wrong with the SwimMP3 player and it does not work. It must be a message that I need to fight these demons myself. Eliz has been struggling with her back muscles from a hard workouts in the previous days and takes a quick break for Ibuprofen. At the next food break, I mention that my fighting mental demons is ok to keep fighting but if she is fighting physical problems, we should stop. She wants to continue. It seems as if verbalizing this helps me mentally. At the 4 hour mark, I finally seem to slide into the long distance zone. The demons have been vanquished. At the 5 hour mark, I check with if she wants to go for 5:30 or 5:45. She says she wants to go until noon which would make it a 5:50 swim (we started at 6:10am). Fifteen minutes later, another person arrives and there is no lane available in our little 2 lane pool (Eliz and I are sharing a lane). I ask if he wants to circle swim with us (typically not done in small health club pools non-team hours). He is ok with it so I slide back behind Eliz. Ahhh, the draft is great but I know that we can't do that for the Channel. With 30 minutes to go, we switch positions so that we don't get to comfortable drafting. I start trying to pick up the pace and was surprised I was able to move it from double dog slow to reasonable (still not fast) to finish the workout.

The training to battle the inner demons is just as important as training physically for an event like the Channel. From the reports of previous swimmers, there will be more then once during the swim that the demons will tempt me to get out and grab a warm cup of hot chocolate and huddle under a blanket in the boat. I need to practice doing mental battles with these demons. Experiences like today are precisely the type of training I need. Ones where there is a low but where I am triumphant and actually finish the swim mentally stronger then I start. The knowledge that if you wait it out, things will get better is one of the most powerful weapons in this battle.

Early morning swim

I woke up early this morning my regular 4:30am swim in the overly warm 2 lane health club pool and was shocked to find it nearly full.  Given the large variation in speeds that exist in non-swim club scenarios, circle swimming is awkward at best and usually avoided.  The usual mode is for swimmers to take half a lane so that maximum number of swimmers is only 4 in a two lane pool.  I jumped in to occupy the 4th and last available slot.  Minutes after I started, another swimmer shows up and has to wait.  I am pretty sure I was the only one in the pool that was motivated to swim that early in the morning by the fear of being in shape for an eventual English Channel crossing, why were the rest up that early?  Am I in a town occupied by a bunch of insomniacs?  During my brief hour of swimming , two people had to wait for a lane to open before another swimmer finished their workout.  When I left shortly after 5:30am, the pool was empty. What is the world coming to that the "rush hour" of swimming is between 4:30 to 5:30am in the morning?

Surviving a lonely long pool swim

After the boring history stuff, I will start doing some real time updates with some scattering of background information. Today I had the fun of a 5.5 hour pool swim all by myself. Usually, I have been doing the long swims with my fellow English Channel wanna-be, Eliz. Unfortunately, she had to work this weekend. This left me all by my lonesome to study the line at the bottom of the pool. For those that are open water swimmers, you are aware that it is much easier from a boredom perspective to swim the long swims outside in open water then in a pool. Unfortunately, living in Colorado, all the outside bodies of water are either frozen or just a degree or two above freezing. This makes swimming outside challenging. My normal joke is it is great hypoxic training, you break the ice on one end of the lake and have to swim across and back with no breaths.

Since I am limited to a pool, I have the additional challenge of finding a pool where there is a 5.5 hour window without some activity such as swim teams or aqua aerobics. The only pool in town that I could find is a 24 hour fitness that as you can guess from the name is open 24 hours a day. They have aqua aerobics (which we fondly call the aqua bunnies) at 9:30am. Giving some buffer to finish before they start converting the pool, I aim to hit the water at 3:30am. I set my alarm for 2:30am, grab breakfast and head for the pool. I find it amusing to see our neighbors house unloading from a night of partying as I start my day. When I get to the pool, I am once again surprised with the fact that someone else is already in the water. I don't think I have arrived at the pool early enough to beat everyone in the water. There must be a lot of insomniacs in the city. So at 3:30am on the nose, I turn on my SwimMP3 player (yes, for the purist, I use an MP3 player for the long pool swims) and start my steady strokes.

Eliz and I have fallen into a pattern where our long works are a series of 30 minute swims. We choose this interval to allow for a regular feeding interval of 30 minutes to train ourselves to feed at this rate for the Channel swim. At our long swim pace, this basically makes it a set of 11 x 2K except for the time we take for feeding and bio breaks. Sometimes I count to see how far we go during the 30 minutes but usually I avoid that and let my mind wonder. My estimate is we actually only average about 1900 yards per 30 minutes. As the hours go by, we have a tendency to slow down. With two of us, one usually has the energy to pick the pace back up. Occasionally, one of us will get frisky and pick up the pace on one of the 30 minute segments to a more aggressive pace. Today, I was alone so it was going to be difficult to keep the pace up.

For the first 2 hours, I was able to keep a reasonably good pace. At the two hour mark, I was getting stiffer and I could feel the pace slow down. At the 2.5 hour mark, I had a gel with my Infinit/hot chocolate drink mix. I was pleasantly surprised that about 10-15 minutes later, I felt perky again and picked the pace up. I know most people get that reaction from gels but I rarely do. This perkiness held for a little more then an hour so by the 4 hour mark, I was back to slugging through water. I held off on my second gel until the 4.5 hour mark. This gel did not give me the perky pick me up. I am not sure why the difference. At the 5 hour feeding, I could see the end in sight and decided to try to descend the last 30 minutes. It took what seemed forever to get the muscles to pick up the pace but by the last 10 minutes, I was able to go about 10 seconds per 100 yards quicker then my slugging pace. Even though I was glad it was done, I was surprised to feel reasonably energetic at the end of the swim. I definitely felt I could go another 30 minutes and hit the magical 6 hour mark. The time when I finished was 9am. I climbed out of the water, went home and grabbed a couple hour nap before joining the world for the rest of the days activities.

Rough Training Timeline

Now that I had a date, it was time to work out the details of the training timeline.  I still had to train and finish the Ironman I had signed up for in July of 2008.  My swim training was reasonably anemic (2 times a week for about 3000 yards a workout) to allow my limited training time to focus on biking and running.  As soon as I got back from the Ironman, I started ramping up my training. the goal was to quickly jump to 2.5 to 3 hours a workout and then start slowly building the length of the long swim by about 15 minutes every other week.  The goal was to get to a 6 hour swim by April 2010.  We signed up for SwimTrek's Long Distance Swim Camp in Malta the week of April 11, 2009.  The swim camp has a 6 hour English Channel qualifying swim scheduled during the week.  Our hope was to get the qualifying swim under our belt in the spring of 2009, back off and mentally recover for a few months before we start the more serious ramp up for the English Channel in summer of 2010.  If we have any problems during the qualifying swim, we can make another attempt in the fall of 2009.

Some issues with preparing for an April open water swim.  We live in Colorado where most outside bodies of water are more suitable for ice skating then swimming during the winter months.  The water won't be reaching the 50F (10C) range until April.  All of our training approaching swim will be in nice warm pools.   To complicate things, the local swim teams dominate the public pools so there is not a long multi-hour block that we can swim our long swims.  We solved this problem by joining a fitness club that is open 24 hours a day and typically start our long swims from 3-4am in the morning.  The downside is the fitness club main clientale are non-swimmers that want the pool temperature to be warm, 84F (29C).  This is not the best training for a cold water swim at 60F (15C).  We have discussed solutions to this including some flights to the coasts but that can get expensive.    So far, we have no solid solution but hopefully we will come up with one.

The Decision

I was approached sometime in January 2008 by a friend, Eliz, looking to see if she could find anyone willing to swim the English Channel with her during the summer of 2010 (side note: we can't swim together but hopefully can swim at the same day). My first reaction was not just No but H... No. I do wonder what that says about me that she thought I would be crazy enough to do something like this. Possibly my history of saying "Cool, that sounds like fun" for long painful events. I guess it is also shows how difficult this one was that I did hold off for over two weeks saying No repeatedly instead of immediately saying yes. I consulted a few close friends to check my sanity (general consensus was I was not sane but they thought I should do it) and more importantly, I checked with my wife Merce and son Chris. If I were to undertake this adventure, it would take a considerable amount of time and sacrifice from the family. Their general feedback was "go for it". They thought it would be a fun trip to England where they could enjoy the trip with only me being the one to suffer. I am so blessed to have such a supportive family that enjoys seeing me in pain.

Eliz was excited that she had a fellow sufferer on her journey. It is a long journey with long hours in the water where it helps a lot to have a compatriot in pain/boredom helping you through it. Once the initial decision was made, Eliz quickly caught me up to speed with some of the logistics and terminology. The first decision was the date. Attempts are made in two week tide windows. For the natical types, please forgive me if I miss this up. There are two types of tides; spring tides and neap tides. Spring tides tend to be faster/higher tides in the Channel while the neap tides are slower/lower tides. More recently, the faster times are coming from the spring tides (I am not sure why). There is also the time of year. The crossing attempts are general done from late spring to early fall. The late spring will be gentler but colder while the fall will be rougher and warmer. Eliz was already leaning toward balancing the the two and decided on the July 19th, 2010 neap tide window.

The next logistical item was the reserving a boat and Captain. The demand was high enough that you need to reserve them 18 to 24 months in advance which explains why our date seems so far away from our decision date. Eliz had already reserved Neil Streeter as her captain. I consulted with a friend that had already done the English Channel, Voni, and she recommended Neil sister, Alison Streeter. Alison is current English Channel Queen with the most personal swim crossings by a woman at 43 official crossings (more unofficial). I contacted her and with a little trouble figuring out how to wire her money, I was able to reserve a slot during the July 19th, 2010 neap tide.

A quick tutorial of why we reserve a full tide. A Captain will sign up a certain number of swimmers during a given tide. The swimmers are assigned priority order based on when they signed up. When the tide window opens, the Captain will review the tides, weather, etc and make the decision if it is safe to attempt the crossing that day. If the decision is no, all the swimmers hang out and wait until the weather clears up. If the decision is yes, the Captain goes to the next swimmer in priority order and asks her/him if they want to attempt crossing that day. If they say yes, off they go. If they so no, the next one in priority order is asked. It is not uncommon during bad weather times that swimmers wait their entire tide window never getting an opportunity to attempt the crossing. In this case, you go home and sign up again for another year. That is the just the unfortunate nature of this event where mother nature has the final word. It is our current understanding that both Eliz and I are the number one priority for our Captains/tide combinations since we signed up so far in advance. This should reduce the risk of not getting an opportunity to try.

Catchup on history before I decided to sign up

The purpose of this blog is to document more then just the actual event but the journey as well. As with most big events, the actual event tends not to be the more interesting part.

First, a little history about myself. I am not a hard core swimmer that has been swimming continuously since I was 8 years old. I did swim on a YMCA team starting somewhere around 8 years old but only swam 2-3 days a week. I lost interest in swimming in my early teens and stopped. When I moved to Ohio my junior year of High School, I re-found swimming for slightly more then a year. I never achieved fantastic times to even consider college scholarships. I briefly contemplated walking on when I went to Va Tech but was quickly tempted away with women (mainly my future wive, Merce) and beer. So I spent my college career drinking and working on my degree.

By the time I graduated from college and moved to Colorado, I was beginning to lose my youthful shape (to put it kindly). I started back exercising at the age of about 24. As I started back, swimming was part of my exercise program but running and biking were my main focus. I think it was the high altitude and sunshine that effected my judgment but my events seemed to be getting longer and longer. By the time I was approached to make the decision to attempt the English Channel, I had completed 13 running marathons, 8 10K swims, 2 Ironman triathlons and was training for my 3rd Ironman.

The historical background becomes important primarily in how it eventually shapes my preparation and training. In basic terms, endurance events no longer scared me. I had experienced 12-13 hours hour events with the Ironman and knew a lot about what worked and what did not work for my body. What I had not done is any cold water swimming past about 2 to 3 hours. This combined with the fact I was coming off a great year of doing my first Boston Marathon and Ironman Austria meant I did not have a "typical" English Channel swimmer body. I hit a low of 135 lbs at 5'8", a good 10 lbs lighter then I graduated high school. In general, this is a good thing for a 46 year old but not if they plan on surviving 10-12 hours of swimming in 60F water in the English Channel.