The Crossing

Ali had left me a text to meet her at the marina at 4:30am in the morning.  We set the alarm for 3:15am.  I got up, shaved twice to get my face as smooth as I could.  Merce then coated me with sunscreen to give it a couple hours to soak in before hitting the water.  A quick bowl of oats and we were off to the marina. The previous morning, I had tried to find Ali's boat, ROCO, but never spotted it. This time, she had it docked right in front. We quickly loaded the boat with our food and water.  Just about the time we finished, my observer (person that makes sure I follow the rules) shows up and it is Kevin Murphy, the reigning King of the Channel with the most crossings of any male swimmer. By pure chance, I had both the King of the Channel (Kevin) and the Queen of the Channel (Ali) on the boat.  I truly felt unworthy. On the boat, we had Ali (captain), Kevin (observer), two crew members for Ali, and my crew; Merce and George.

Kevin and Ali

Shortly after Kevin boarded, we were motoring off to Shakespeare Beach.  Before I knew it, Kevin indicated we were 5 minutes from the beach and to start greasing up.  I had Merce put on Zinc Oxide on the surfaces that were going to face the sun (back of legs, back of torso, etc).  She then applied a generous amount of Vaseline on my chafe points (armpits, inner thighs and shoulder/chin region.  Ali gave me the signal to enter the water and splash, I was in the water swimming to shore.  Shakespeare Beach was a rocky beach but I had no trouble climbing out to clear the water. Once I was clear, Kevin did a count down to start the swim. At zero, I re-entered the water and my Channel swim official began.

I started at 5:08am and the conditions were slightly overcast, sun just rising and virtually no wind.  It was like glass out there, one of those days Channel swimmers dream about.  I could not have asked for better conditions.  The temperature at Shakespeare Beach was 61F(15C).  I felt the cold but it did not feel uncomfortable.  I slipped into a steady rhythm of about 60 spm (strokes per minute).  For me, this was a little fast but the adrenaline was running. At the hour mark, I had my first feed.  Further from shore, the water temp had dropped to 58F(14C) but I did not notice it.  My stroke count had settled down to a  57-58 spm.  At the two hour mark, I had my second feed.  Kevin yelled to me to stay closer to the boat as I kept wandering about 100m away from the boat and had to swim 100m in to get a feed.   The tide was pulling me North-East so I was covering some serious ground, just not all toward France.  By the 3 hour mark, I had swam approximately 8.7 miles.  I had settled into my "all day" stroke at about 54 spm.  The water temperature had dropped to 57-58F (14C) but again, I did not seem to notice the cold.  At the 4 hour mark, as Merce and George feed me some diced peaches (to give an alternate taste to the Maxim and Perpetuem energy drinks), the container filled with salt water.  That was the end of the peaches since we did not bring another container of them.  I was down to just energy drinks for feed and mouthwash for cleansing my mouth. 

Swimming with ferry in background

My first challenge began at the 5 hour mark.  Shortly after the feed, I did my first projectile vomiting. I had experienced this in my La Jolla training swim so I was not surprised with it nor did it concern me.   At the 6 hour mark, Merce tried to give me some sweetened (with honey) hot tea to give me something different to help flush the body.  The sweetness of the tea was too much and I immediately vomited again.  This time, it was some serious stomach emptying, even Merce was impressed.  Again, I did not panic.  Merce decided to switch to 100% Maxim and the was the end of the vomiting for the rest of the swim. 

At the 5 hour mark, I had made a comment to George that my legs were beginning to feel crampy.  At times, my stroke rate would drop down to 52 spm.  Other then the stroke rate and associated slow down, the cramping did not seem to have any more serious effect on me more for several more hours.  At the 10.5 hour mark, my legs cramped up to the point I was momentarily swimming in a semi fetal position (the legs were pulled up in the fetal position). I stretched them out and continued but my stroke rate dropped to 47-48 spm.  The good news as we were getting closer to France the water was warming up.  It was now around 62-64F (16-17C).  At the 11 hour mark, the tide had gone slack enough that we turned out of the French shipping lane to head directly to France.  I was struggling along trying hard to avoid the fetal position cramping from occurring again.  At the 11.5 hour mark, I approached the boat to ask to get out expecting them to yell at me "NO!".  Before Merce and George could speak, Kevin matter of factly said "You will need to pick it up to beat the tide to make it to the Cape".  These simple words hit the exact spot I needed.  I knew that if was going to make it to France, I had to pick up the pace.  Missing the Cap would result in adding up to 6 miles to the swim which frequently would end the swimmer unable to continue for the extra distance.  I put my head down and picked my stroke rate back up to 52 spm.  I knew I still had hours left to swim so mentally I could not quite put a "sprint" into the stroke but I did pick up the pace.

The next couple of hours were a blur.  I was struggling to keep my pace up without pushing too hard and have the heavy cramps hit again. The water temp felt virtually balmy at the 63-64F (17C) range but every once in a while there were thermals that dropped the temp what felt like 5F (2-3C).  This was particularly painful since the first reaction to hitting the thermals was to tighten my muscles which would bring the cramps on.  I would grit my teeth until I got out of the thermal into the relatively warm water.  At the 13.5 hour mark, the tide had turned and we starting heading North-Eest again parallel to the French coast.  The bad news is that I had not made it close enough to have the tide take me to the Cap.  The good news is I had made it close enough that once we passed the Cap, the eddy current caused by the Cap would pull me toward shore.  The extra distance added about an hour to my swim but this was much better then adding 6 miles to my swim.  As we got withing 400m of the coast, Kevin asked Merce if she wanted to swim with me to the shore.  Merce inwardly chuckled but said no.  To our surprise, Kevin stripped down to swim trunks and grabbed a pair of goggles.  Before I knew what was happening, I had the King of the Channel escorting me the final 400m to the shore.  We landed on the shore to round fist sized rocks.  I struggled for several minutes trying to crawl up the shore with my cramping muscles.  I tried sliding on my butt, did not work.  Tried standing, did not work.  Finally found a way to crawl on all four limbs in a very ungraceful manner but got past the water line and officially crossed the English Channel in 15 hours 8 minutes.  I had covered a distance of over 33 miles even though the direct line across was closer to 21 miles .  I tried lifting my hands in a Rocky style victory stance but it was weak at best as I dropped back to all fours.

I then crawled back to the water until I could float again.  The 400m swim back to the boat felt easy and unusually normal, as if it was more natural then the attempt at standing I did.  I climbed into the boat and my crew quickly got me out the wet swimsuit and into dry clothes.  They handed me some warm tea and I was set.  A little later, I did empty my stomach one last time but basically felt great as I laid down on the floor of the boat enjoying the night breeze.  I recovered enough in the two hour trip back to Dover to stand up and look at the lights shining on Dover Castle in the night air.  It was a magnificent view and I will remember it forever.

Tired and trying recover

No story about an event at large as crossing the English Channel goes without a long list of thank you's to the many people that made it happen.  First of all, many thanks to my family, Merce and Chris, for putting up with the long hours of swimming I had to do to prepare.  A special thanks to Merce and George for being there on the boat as my crew.  As for the Captain, observer and crew, I don't think I could have dreamed of having a better team.  They were awesome throughout the entire day.  I can not forget to thank Eliz for being the best training partner anyone can want.  This includes approaching me two and half years ago with the simple question "Interested in swimming the English Channel?".  It continued through many 5am cold morning lake swims when all we wanted was to skip the swim and get a double stack of pancakes.  There is what seems an infinite list of other people that have trained with me, encouraged me and put up with me during this time period that would be too long to list but each and every one of them made a huge difference.

What is next...learning how to enjoy a nice recliner in front of a television.  The training was intense and long enough that I will have trouble signing up for something this large again and take away as much time as I had from my family and friends.  I will focus on simpler, shorter events and enjoy double stacks of pancakes.

Eliz made it

Eliz made it in slightly over 12 hours!!!!!

Update for Sunday, July 18

I apologize for the confusion.  I posted on the blog and twitter that I was going 3am this morning.  Later on Saturday, the captain changed the plans when the winds did not die down as we hoped.  I was did not have access at that time to an internet connect so I only updated the Twitter account that is displayed in the upper right corner of this blog.  As a dry run on communication, this worked out to highlight that Twitter will be the most up to date information as we go forward.  Once we are on the boat, the only communication out will be via the Twitter account.

So the lastest plan (as of 3:46pm GMT) is that Eliz meets at the dock at 3:15am Monday morning to begin her journey and I meet at the dock at 5am Tuesday morning to begin my journey.  As we found out with recent events, these plans can change on a moments notice. 

The uncertainties of swimming the English Channel is one of the big differences between this event and many others such as the Ironman.  Early on, people have warned me about the ability to handle the curve balls thrown at you as a critical success factor.  Athletes that require everything perfect (perfect water temp, perfect weather, perfect logistics, etc) should not attempt swimming the English Channel.  You have no idea of the day, time, weather, conditions or worse yet, what will challenge you the most during the swim until it is happening.  Many times in the training, I felt like I was being trained for this and sure enough the uncertainties are happening.  The good news is it does not seem to be affecting me.  The panic yesterday did not seem to bother me at all.  I momentarily froze when Ali asked if I was ready to go on Sunday, 2 days earlier then I thought but I recovered and said yes.  We then scrambled during the afternoon to finalize our prep and some worry about George (my second crew member) showing up in time.  He did show up in plenty of time and we were ready to swim when we got the call to stand down.  I did not feel any frustration or disappointment, just reset my mind for Tuesday.  It did take down some of the stress knowing we were prepped and ready to go on a moments notice.

Otherwise, I have been jumping in the Dover Harbor for about 30 minutes of stretching out each day.  On Saturday and Sunday, Freda holds swims for channel swimmers so I got to meet a lot of friends I made during my training swims in Malta.  One of the guides for that swim (Andy) has the slot right after me on Ali's boat.  I talked with one person that completed an Ironman just 3 weeks ago that is doing a channel relay in a month that was trying to get her 2 hour qualifying swim in.  I was surprised when she was not able to complete it on Saturday when she got too cold.  Meanwhile, I easily had done a 1:30 minutes a couple days ago without even shivering when I got out.  It actually was a confidence builder realizing how far I have come in cold water adaptation. 

Time to swim !!

Change of plans. I am going Sunday morning at 3am!!!!

Arrived in Dover

We arrived in Dover yesterday. Between settling in and eating, did not get a swim in.  Today, we missed the chance for morning swims to pick someone up at the airport but pushed ourselves to still get in this afternoon for a short one.  The wind picked up significantly overnight making even the harbor a bit choppy.  In the states, we call the white, airy foam that forms on top of waves during high winds "white caps".  Here, they call them "white horses".  Out of the harbor, there seem to be some serious white horses, Clydesdale size.  Looked like it would be interesting to swim in them to say the least.  We just had small white horses in the harbor.  It mainly made breathing a little more challenging as the chop would force an occasional wave in your mouth.  Otherwise, it was refreshing and felt good to get back into the water after the longest break (3 days) I have had from swimming in over 7-8 months.  The water did not feel as cold as I feared.  It just felt...refreshing.  Used the word twice but it seems to be the best to capture my reaction to it.  I am looking forward to a little longer of a swim tomorrow morning

Eliz got a call from her captain and he said that Monday was looking good for her to go and that the long range forecast was good for all of next week.  If my priority position stays the same and the weather holds, it will be Wednesday that I will get my chance.  It is beginning to become real.

Heading to England

The 2.5 years of planning, early mornings and cold swims are about to come to an end.  We leave this weekend for Dover to begin the waiting for good weather.  Eliz should arrive on Sunday while I will spend a couple days in London before heading down to Dover on Wed.  As is frequently said, it is the journey that is important and it has been a memorable journey.  Now it is approaching time to finish the journey by climbing up on the shores of France.

I am not sure how easy it will be to access the internet while in Dover but I will post on this blog (possibly via the Twitter window on the upper right) updates including the announcement of the day I will get the opportunity to give the Channel a go at it.  Our official tide window is July 19-27.  I am currently in the number 3 slot on Ali's boat ROCO. Just below the Twitter feed on the right are links to AIS tracking website for both my boat and Eliz's.  It should allow you to track us once we are underway.

Wish us favor of the Channel weather gods!

Cold Water Panic

We had just finished the 10 hour swim and were enjoying our recovery week with easy swims in the lake when a Colorado team we knew flew out to Dover to swim an English Channel relay (http://www.milehighchunneltoppers.com/blog/) and completed it successfully in 10 hours and 48 minutes.  The concerning part of their swim was the water temp was a chilly 53F (12C) at the coasts but an even colder 50F (10C) in the middle.  This was just a little over 3 weeks away from our tide opening and the water was still that cold!  Eliz and I realized that it had been 6 weeks since we had swam in temperatures that cold and it was only for under 2 hours versus the 12-14 hours it will take us to cross the channel.  The current temperature of our favorite training lake was already above 72F (22C).  Eliz's Endless Pool at about 8000 ft (2438m) was climbing into the 63F (16C).  The 10 hour swim gave us confidence we had trained well enough for the distance, now we started panicking about our cold water training.  We started shifting our plans to get in as much cold water as our schedules would allow.

First thing we did was reduce the number of days we planned to swim in the warm lake which was climbing toward 77F (25C).  The coldest water we had time to drive to during the work week was Eliz's Endless pool so we planned to hit it 3 days a week.  As the temperature of her pool was raising to 63F (16C), we even tried bringing bags of ice up to cool the pool down.   It would drop it a couple of degrees but it would warm back up quickly afterwards.  It was a losing battle.  On the weekend, we drove up to the lake that the Colorado relay team was training in that they reported to be 55F(12C).  Unfortunately, it had warmed up in the two weeks since they trained in it and it was now 67F(19C).  This lake was theoretically the coldest local lake we had. We realized to find colder water, we would have to be willing to travel much further the next weekend, the last weekend we had before traveling to England.

After reviewing our options on places to go, we decided to go to the top of Cameron Pass to a set of lakes up there.  It was a bit risky since we did not know the temperature of the lakes that high up (9000 ft or 2743m).  These lakes are directly feed from the local snow melt and frequently are just above freezing.  Our plan was to try to get a 3 hour swim but we were aware that if the water temperature was in the low 40F (4C), it would be difficult to swim that long.  We prepared for cold with Eliz's husband coming along with a camp stove to warm up water and plenty of warm clothes. We planned to get off the lake by 7am so as not to attract the attention of the local forest rangers and to avoid any fishing boat traffic.  With our goal of a 3 hour swim and the nearly 2 hour drive to get there, we meet at 2am to drive up.  As I was leaving the downtown area to meet Eliz, I was having to avoid the drunks leaving the bars and the DUI checkpoints.  It was a little surreal.  When we got to the Chambers lake, we measured the water in the 54-55F (12C) range, perfect for training.  We jumped in the cold water and for the first time in weeks we experienced all the tingly side effects of entering the cold water.  When it came to feeding time, we climbed out of the water to get our water bottles of warm feed.  In hindsight, we realized that we had gotten lazy with the speed of our feeds and hung out in the cold high altitude air for a bit too long and got chilled. Shortly after the hour mark, Eliz started pulling away from me as she picked up the pace to re-warm and I started my cold water slowdown.  It had been so long since I experienced this, it psyched me out and I got out at the 1:40 mark.  Eliz held in there until the 2:30 mark.  It was a bit disappointing and scary considering we were just 2 weeks from our tide opening.  Once we got back to town we made plans to do it again on Sunday.

After our swim, a cold front moved in with clouds and rain.  As we got to Chambers lake on Sunday, we found that the water had dropped about 2 degrees to 53F (12C).  We got in with more mental resolve to handle the cold better.  The swim went much better without the mental battles of the day before.  We got out after 1:20 due to a combination of achieving our primary goal and a group of fisherman were loading boats into the lake.  We did get the usual weird stares as we got out of the water next to the group of fishermen wearing winter jackets to ward off the cold high altitude air.  Our primary goal was to get over the mental battles and to realize that we should be able to regain most of our cold water training endurance with a couple of swims in the cold Dover water.  To achieve more cold water endurance would not be something we could do in the last week before we left but in gaining more seasons of cold water swimming.  Our training was now complete and it was time for the taper!

Long training swims of June 2010

The goals in June were to continue cold water training to the best of our ability but add a couple of long swims to mentally prepare us for the challenges that occur late in the swims.  The plan was to do a 7 hour swim 6 weeks out from our tide opening and a 8-10 hour swim 3 weeks out from our tide turning.  We assumed that the water temperatures would be cold enough in Colorado in early June to do the 7 hours swim locally.  By late June, we knew the water would be pretty warm for the 10 hour swim in Colorado.  We decided to book flights to San Diego to do the 10 hours in La Jolla cove to better emulate Channel conditions with cooler water, salt water and rougher seas.   

A quick diversion into two different training plans.  I have heard of two different approaches to training for the channel (I am sure there are many more I have not heard of).  One that is commonly used by the Dover training crowd lead by Freda is to do back to back Sat/Sun swims of increasing distances to a peak of 7hr/6hr combination over a weekend.  The second is to build up to a 10 hour continuous swim.  We were bucking the current Dover trend by choosing the 10 hour swim versus the 7hr/6hr consecutive day swim.  Part of the argument was that that we wanted to experience both the physical and mental challenges that were well publicized to occur at the 8-9 hour mark.  

7 Hour Swim

As we approached 7 hours swim, it became evident that the water temperatures were going to be much warmer then we originally were hoping for.  The lake we gained access to for such an extended swim (most lakes in the area would require us to be out of the water by 7am due to motor boat traffic) was a smaller lake that had warmed up to around 68-70F (20-21C).  Not even close to Channel temperatures but it what was dealt to us.  The swim went pretty much uneventful for 4-5 hours.  At this point, both our shoulders started stiffening up.  I started feeling the bicep muscles becoming pretty tight.  At about the 6 hour mark, it had tightened so much that I could not fully extend my right arm above my head.  I kept on stroking with a full stroke on my left arm but about 3/4 stroke on my right.  Despite what seemed like I was "limping", our crew on the shore could not tell and we were still able to hold close to a 1.9mph pace.  A little off of our full "all day" speed (2.1mph) but not a bad pace.  We made it to 7 hours with mixed feelings.  The good news is we finished with plenty of energy and also learned that we could keep swimming even when the muscles tightened up significantly.  The bad news is the muscles did tighten up significantly starting at 5 hours.  We did wonder why we had the tightening up of the muscles in this swim when we did not have them in the 6 hour qualifying swims.  Could it be the warmer water or did we start out too fast?  Not sure but it did make us a little nervous about the upcoming 10 hour swim and the much longer Channel swim.

10 Hour Swim

For the 10 hour swim, we accelerated it by one week so that it was 2 weeks after the 7 hour swim and 4 weeks before our tide opened.  This was partly due to schedule issues and partly to give us more time to recover from the long swim.  As we got to La Jolla, we found out that they also had a warm early summer and the water temperature was warmer then usual at 67F (19C).  Once again, significantly warmer then the channel but our plans were set and we would deal with what was dealt to us.  This swim was planned to be as close to 100% dry run of our Channel attempt as we could get it.  

As part of this dry run goal, we had our primary crew (spouses) to handle the feeds with the feeds on the schedule for the channel and with the mixtures we were planning for the channel.   My plan was to feed once an hour for two hours and then every half an hour after that.  I planned to alternate between Perpeteum with Hot chocolate and Maxim with fruit juice for the feeds.  I feel more comfortable with Perpeteum but the Channel chat group regular warns about having too many electrolytes from feeds like Perpeteum. Thus the electrolyte free Maxim.  I was hoping to discover which one would go down better after 8-9 hours of swimming.  Bottom line is it that neither one tasted good nor especially bad throughout the entire swim.  I had my crew mix the feed at double strength which would result in about 500kcal per 20 oz bottle and I planned to drink 1/3-1/2 of the bottle every 1/2 hour.  This should result in 400-500kcal per hour.

In addition to the normal feeds, I also experimented with some solid food, ibuprofen, and mouth wash.  For solid food, I did try having small cubed peaches in juice served in a Gatorade bottle with a wide mouth every 2 hours.  This worked amazingly well and found it refreshing relief from the salt water.  For the ibuprofen, I tried 100mg every two hours.  I have never taken ibuprofen in athletic events and generally planned not to for the Channel but wanted to test it out in case I needed to.  I actually only took the ibuprofen at the 2 hour mark and just skipped it for rest of the swim.  I did not see any direct issue with it but I also did not see the need for it.  For the mouth wash, I tried a splash of Listerine every 2 hours.  The bottom line on the Listerine is that it was amazing. It became the highlight of the swim, something to look forward too.  The refreshing feeling that it gave to the mouth was unbelievable.  It definitely reduced the salt water damage to the mouth as well as keep the tongue swelling to a minimum.

The morning of the swim, we greased up with sunscreen and added Vaseline to critical rub points and hit the water at 5:30am in the morning.  Conditions were overcast with a minor breeze and about 2-3 ft swells and an outside temp in the mid-50s.  We decided to cross over from the La Jolla cove to the pier and back to start. We went slightly under 3 miles round trip (did not make it all the way to the pier) in about 1.25 hr.  This caused our feed to be slightly longer then the 1 hour.  It also put our pace closer to 2.4mph which seemed fast given we felt we were doing a slow all day pace.  Best guess is that the salt water was allowing us to go faster.  After our feed, we headed to do another out to the pier and back.  Again we did it in 1.25 hr which resulted in a 6 miles in 2.5 hours. On our way out on this loop we had some fun sea life experiences.  We had several sting rays swim under us.  At one point, I looked back and saw a sea lion face behind us.  On my next breath, I saw the sea lion had a dolphin with it.  I stopped Eliz and we watched for a little bit as they frolicked in the water.  As we resumed swimming, I noticed that the sea lion started following us. I stopped Eliz again and she decided to see if the sea lion would let her approach it.  This scared it and the two swam away.  This definitely became the highlight of the swim.

As we were about 1/2 mile from the end of the second lap, Eliz's shoulder tightened up on her.  She started doing breaststroke for about 1/4 mile to try to loosen it up.  Of course this had us a little concerned this early in the swim.  After a 1/4 mile, she was able to loosen it up and it never bothered her after that.  First lesson learned from the day.  If things tighten up, don't panic, we can loosen it up and recover from it.  After this feed at the 2.5 hour mark, we decided we needed to go to 30 minute feeds which made going to the pier not feasible.  We started just doing 15 minute out and back.  This made measuring our distance/speed from here out impossible since we did not swim to a marker of any sort.  Shortly after the 3.5 hour mark we started having to swim around a Pier to Cove 1.5 mile race that was going on.  Since we were toward the end of the race, it was not that crowded so we were easily able to avoid the swimmers as they were coming in to the finish.    It was nice to have some fellow swimmers out with us as a distraction.

As we were returning toward the shore swimming in the same direction as the race at around the 4 hour mark, my stomach started to really churn.  I worked my way to the outskirts of the swimmers and proceeded to hurl a large quantity of Perpeteum and Maxim.  Believe it or not, it felt great.  Right afterwards, I quickly rejoined Eliz feeling better then I had in a while.  I decided to continue to feed as planned assuming it was the salt water causing the problem.  Second lesson learned, hurling does not mean the end of your swim.  At the 4.5 hour mark, our crew joined us on rented kayaks to kayak beside us for about an hour.  They had feeds on the kayak so we decided to swim toward the pier for as long as they could stay with us before they had to return the kayaks.  It was again nice to have a distraction to break up the day.  Sometime during the time they were kayaking beside us, the cloud cover broke and the sun came out.  The hours started slipping by after they left.  The crowds at the cove started getting thicker so coming into the cove started to become a challenging obstacle course as we had to avoid snorkelers as they would randomly change direction while trying to follow some fish swimming in the kelp.  As we approached the 7 hour mark, my stomach started to churn again.  Sure enough, had a second bout of hurling.  Once again, I felt great afterwards.  I almost made me look forward to hurling.  Mental calculations put the first one at 4hrs and the second 3 hours later.  Projecting forward, I was probably going to hurl again before I hit the 10 hr mark.  I got a chuckle talking with Eliz afterwards.  She dreaded when I stopped to hurl.  It was not because of the actual hurling but the fact that I would pick up the pace afterwards since I felt so good.  It became a mini sprint session for her.

Again, the hours started passing by.  At the 9 hour mark, it started becoming mentally a little more challenging to head out for another loop but our speed did not seem to have dropped too much.   Our crew commented that our strokes still looked strong and smooth.  We did two more 30 minute loops without incident including no more hurling.  Amazingly, we did not have the tightening of muscles like we did at the 7 hour swim but actually felt pretty loose at the end.  As we got out, I realized that I still had plenty of energy to continue.  This was a serious mental boost that we had done 10 hours in salt water with solid swells and still had energy.  I was particularly amazed given that I had feed the fish with a lot of my nutrition with my hurling episodes.  This should have left me in a calorie deficit that should have caught up with me by the end of the swim.  Instead, it felt like I was close to calorie neutral (ingest roughly what I was burning).  I know that was not quite the case since we did find the last hour slightly more mentally challenging which is an indication of starting to run low on nutrition.  But it was not an energy crash like I usually would have at the 9 hour mark in an Ironman.  

In a retrospective view of the hurling, there are a couple of theories of what caused it.  It could be ingesting salt water (no way to avoid this).  It could be motion sickness from the rolling ocean.  It also could be trying to get too many calories in per hour or too high of a carb to water ratio.  I have no way to discount the first two but I am suspicious that the third (calories/carb ratio) was the dominant issue. The fact that I could throw away as much nutrition as I did without a energy crash seems to indicate that I did not need as many calories as I was taking in.  We debated decreasing the calories, increase the water in the mix (which lowers the carb to water ratio) or just holding to the original feeding plan.  I seem to have a disadvantage of the number of calories I can absorb per hour relative to other athletes I know but I also seem to have an advantage that my body self-adjusts itself by hurling the excess calories with no obvious side effects (except of speeding up afterwards :-)

After the swim, we did not have the serious muscle soreness I have felt in other long swims.  We did back down the speed and distance of our swims over the next week as a recovery week.  The one longer term effect Eliz suffered was serious 2nd degree sun burns on her ankles.  She had blisters that were over a 1" in diameter on her ankles that made it extremely painful to walk for several days. This has scared us to invest in some Zinc Oxide for the Channel instead of just plain sunscreen.  She blistered with normal sunscreen on a day that had the sun out for only about 5 hours.  What will happen if we have a full 12 hours of sun light while crossing the channel?  It was not worth the risk and thus the move to Zinc Oxide.

Catching up on the Spring of 2010

The goal in the spring was to transition from base building high volume training to cold water training.  We still held our volume high (50K/week) for most of the weeks but we would allow it to drop below 50K in interest of spending time in cold water.  When we got in water at 50F (10C) or lower, we found that we had to allocate more recovery time (shivering and rewarming our core) from our allocated training time.  We also had trouble pushing our bodies to do multi hour swims at those temperatures on the weekends. Each time we went out at the lower temperatures, we would try to push ourselves a little further to the edge of serious hypothermia without going over.  It was a tense time period as we keep a close eye on each other to insure we were safe.

We did our first lake swim of the season on April 7th at a temperature of 46.9F (8.3C).  We decided the day before that we were going to do it but when we got to the shore, it was blowing snow with about a 1" of snow on the ground.  The desire to bail and work on building fat by getting a double stack of pancakes at the local diner was very large.  We finally convinced ourselves that if we got up that early and drove to the lake that we should get in.  We negotiated that we would do at least 6 strokes out and back.  It was minor and we could have gone further but it was the first step in getting back in.  Two days later (no longer snowing), we jumped back in for a solid 15 minutes to start our slow, conservative re-introduction into the cold water.

I am not sure how others people's bodies react to the cold water but here is a brief description of how mine did in that 48-50F (9-10C) temperatures.  As we walked into the water, the leg bones actually hurt at what seems to be the bone level.  Not sure what the physiological explanation of this.  We would frequently stand in the cold water with only our legs in until the legs numbed.  Our excuse was to reduce the mental shock so that only half the body would be "hurting" at a time.  Once the legs numbed, we would submerge the rest of the body.  At first, we were conservative and would not dive in head first so that if we had the gasp reflex from the cold, we would not ingest water.  We found that our previous cold water training had trained out the gasp reflex at these temperatures so we quickly went for a dive in and stroke away rapidly.  Once we dove in, we would instinctively stroke like we were sprinting.  Not sure if it was due to desire to get out or generate more heat.  The skin would tingle like a thousand small needles were being pushing in.  It seemed to be about minute or two into the swim, the arms would start slowing down.  It actually felt like I was starting to swim through mud.  I could not keep the high cadence up and went to my normal cadence.  For the next 5-10 minutes, the tingling of the skin continued.   Slowly, the tingling would go away.  I would notice the cold on the skin but it was almost a detached feeling, almost as if it was someone else body that was experiencing it.  As the swim progressed to the 20ish minute mark, the core would start to feel warm and I would feel like I was a little heater.  It actually would feel like the heat would extend to my limbs and the skin was hot.  This felt great but would last for only about another 20 minutes or so.  Somewhere around the 40-45 minute mark, the warmth feeling would go away and I would start feeling cold again.  At this point, my body reaction seemed to diverge from Eliz's.  My speed would drop considerably about 5 minutes after the cold would set in and Eliz would pull away from me.  The first time this occurred, I panicked a bit thinking it was a sign that I was getting very close to dangerously hypothermic.   Over several swims, we would push the time I would go after this slow down.  I was able to go at least 30 minutes past this point in our experimentation with no further digression.  We had to stop the experimentation when the lake water warmed up enough that I no longer experienced the slowdown (mid to upper 50F or 14-16C).  We also tried to figure out why.  My cadence did not significantly slow down nor did my stroke mechanics changed noticeably from what Eliz could tell in the murky, dark water.  We are guessing it was related to stroke mechanics and my ability to "grab" the water but could not narrow it further then that.  Mentally, I just learned to accept it would happen, not worry but focus on other more obvious signs of hypothermia such as significant cadence change and mental sharpness decreasing.

Back to the progression of the spring training.  Quickly (within a week), the lake temp rose to 50F (12C).  This is where the unpredictable Colorado weather started the first of its curve balls.  We had an unusual cold and wet spring where the temperature in the lake stayed relatively close to 50F (12C) with an occasional day where it would warm up to 52F (13C) just to have a snow storm come through to cool it back down.  It stayed in this temperature range for nearly 5 weeks.  We were hoping to start getting multi-hour swims up to 3 to 4 hours in the lake but were hampered by the cold water and my slow experimentation on how long I could continue swimming after the slow down occurred.  It was great cold water training but we were looking forward to a least a minor warming to the mid-50s (14-15C) to get some long swims in.  Finally, mid-May the water started warming up.  This is when the Colorado weather threw the second curve ball.  A major switch was thrown by the weather gods and almost overnight the temperature outside jumped to the mid-80F (29C) range. Within 2 weeks, it moved from 50F (12C) to above 60F (15C) and then up to the mid-60F (18C) a week later.  We were hoping for several weeks of training with the temperature between 56-60F (14-15C) range.  Instead, it was only a matter of days.  We entered June with the temperature in the upper 60F (18-19C).  We now had 7-8 weeks of training ahead of us in considerably warmer water then the Channel.
 

Catching up on the winter of 2010

Here the promised update on how the winter training for the English Channel went.  Again, apologizes for the delay.  I have been basically exhausted ever since about February and could not find the extra energy to update the blog.  One of the biggest challenges I seem to be fighting during this period is being perpetually tired from burning the candle at both ends and training hard.  Usually when training increases, the best practice is for an athlete to increase sleep time instead of decrease sleep time.  When I signed up for this crazy adventure, I did not anticipate sleep deprivation as one of the components.

As mentioned in the December posting, I slowly started ramping up the weekly yardage to reach 50,000 yards a week by April.  My training regiment during this period was to swim with a Master's team twice a week, swim on my own 3-4 times a week and swim in Eliz's Endless Pool that she kept at 59-60F once a week.  The Master's workouts were to keep some speed and stroke work in my regiment.  I would usually get in the pool early (as soon as the pool opened) as well as stay an extra 1/2 hour afterwards to add distance.  On my own, I would work on LSD (Long Slow Distance) sets that would usually consist of sets with a minimum distance of 30 minutes.  I head to Eliz's Endless Pool with the hope that the once a week would slow my loss of cold adaptation.  Not sure if it worked or not.  I did notice that as the winter went on it was getting tougher and tougher getting into her pool.  As a side note on the temperature of her pool.  It is frequently reported that fresh water will feel colder then salt water at the same temperature.  Not sure how much is real versus perceived.  Eliz and I noticed that her Endless Pool at her house which is at an elevation of approximately 8000 ft (2400m) felt even colder.  We were not sure if it was the forced current over the body (like how a wind cools you down in air) or if it was the altitude.   The bottom line is it made jumping in her pool in the dark early morning in the middle of winter with multiple feet of snow outside a mental battle each time I got in.

As the winter went on, my weekend swims would get longer and longer as the weekly yardage crept toward 50,000 yards.  By the end of February, I was doing 3 hours, mid March it was 4 hours.  The second week of March, I did my first greater then 50,000 yard week, 3 weeks before my goal.  Part of the reason was a had a week long vacation in the Caribbean to celebrate my 25 wedding anniversary and I knew I would not get a lot of swimming in that week.  Except for that week off, I was able to maintain the greater then 50,000 yards a week until first week of May when I finally took a recovery week (only a mere 36,000 yard week). This was a solid 6 weeks in a row of greater then 50,000 yards to set a solid base of training before the serious cold water training was to begin in the spring.  One amazing thing that I would guess could be attributed to a rigorous adherence to a steady ramp up was that I did not have any overuse injuries show up during this spell.  I will also admit to adding a reasonable amount of backstroke into the training to help balance my front/back muscles since I had a misbalance problem that resulted in an overuse injury showing up just before Malta the previous year.  Whatever the recipe was, it felt great to hit a solid training period with that high a mileage given my age with no twinges in my muscles.  I exited this training period feeling a confident and ready to start hitting the cold water!

10 hr training swim complete

I know, it has been a very long time since I have posted an update.  One big learning I have had over the last 6 months is how exhausting it is to train for an event of this magnitude with family responsibilities and a full time job.  I have been burning the candle at both ends for months trying to get the training swims in and family/work responsibilities.  I am sooo looking forward to the taper phase where I can sleep close to a full night.  As I get more time on my hands in the upcoming weeks, I will update the blog with events over the last 6 months.

The quick update for now.  Eliz and I went to La Jolla Cove this past weekend and did a 10 hr training swim in rougher, salt water then we get in fresh water lakes in Colorado. We hoped for closer to channel water temperatures but had warm 66-67F (19C).  It felt nice but cooler water would have been better training.  The swim went extremely well and we both got out of the water feeling good and able to go further.  That will be the last major swim before the channel.  We leave for England in just 3 more weeks.