Swimming the English Channel – Training

It’s a strange feeling pushing off from the beach knowing that the next time your feet touch anything you will either have achieved a mammoth feat that will live long in the memory or you will have failed, there is no middle ground. This was my thinking as I stood on the beach at Dover waiting for the captain to sound the siren, signalling that my Channel attempt had officially begun. Of course, the journey to get to this stage started many months ago, back in the sun kissed lands of Dubai.

The Channel swim was the original section of the trip, the foundation that the rest of the journey was built and certainly the section that has garnered the most attention. In September 2015, when I first decided to do this trip, I set myself three specific goals for the swimming section.

1)  Get fit

This might seem like quite a broad goal, but I think it sums it up quite precisely. When I first decided to do this trip, I was not in great physical condition, the heat of Dubai had made me lazy and the brunches had made me podgy. This had to change and fast. The cycling and rowing training that followed in the months after certainly improved my overall fitness, but it was also important to improve my swim fitness with specific swim training. The first thing I did was search out for any open water swim groups in Dubai and immediately came across the TriDubai triathlon club. TriDubai is a great organisation, run entirely by enthusiastic volunteers, allowing people to get together and train for the three disciplines. Of course, it was the swimming that I was most interested in and I quickly got involved. Although the conditions were far from identical to the English Channel, practising in the sea was extremely important. Sea swimming is completely different from swimming in a pool and from now on, the only reason for me to do any pool swimming would be for stroke improvement. I soon became a regular at the TriDubai sessions, the main obstacle to my attendance was the sadistically early times which the swims took place. The group generally met at sunrise, which meant that after an hour and a half swim, I was still able to go home and sleep for 45 minutes before work. I do have to begrudgingly admit that swimming at that time of the day was extremely pleasant. In addition to the organised swims, we also formed our own little swim group where the meeting times were slightly friendlier. Xavier, Dragon, Maca, Lucky and I became frequent visitors to JBR for our early morning dip.

As Dubai headed into ‘winter’, the swims increased. The water temperature was perfect for swimming, hitting an all-time low of around 21 degrees in February. In the winter months, in a group of around 60, it was common for me to be one of only a few swimmers to be without a wetsuit. My initial assessment that they were all soft has been vindicated now that I’ve spent some time swimming in Scotland, where the majority of people swim with nothing but the skimpiest of apparel.

The sea swimming was proving beneficial, I could feel myself becoming fitter, able to swim for hours at a time without any issue, but soon the water was getting too warm. I remember one swim in particular, I had done quite a long swim, around 10km. The water was warm and the air temperature was extremely hot. I swam continuously without food or water and when I got out I felt tremendously weak, this was to be my last long swim in Dubai. With the sea water now too hot, I switched back to the pool for the final couple of months. This is where I discovered that I was ‘swimming against myself’.

I discovered the Dubai Masters swimming group, which offered group training sessions multiple times per week, in the mornings, evenings and at lunch time. It would be perfect for me to keep my swimming fitness up until I returned to the UK and could get back into the sea. In my first session there, a woman swimming in the lane next to me pointed out that my arm pull was far from perfect and in essence, I was swimming against myself. The coach agreed and gave me some advice on how to improve. Basically my swimming stroke was hugely inefficient, something that I had long speculated. With only a couple of months to go until the swim, it was not too late to dramatically change my stroke, I tried to make minor adjustments but my awkward technique would have to do.

In May 2016, I returned back to the UK and began my cold water acclimatization.

2) Get acclimatized to the cold

The normal body temperature is 98.6°F (37°C). Hypothermia develops when the body temperature falls below about 95°F (35°C). It accounts for an extremely large amount of unsuccessful Channel crossings and was one of my main concerns throughout the whole planning stage. At the time of my swim, the English Channel would be approximately 15 degrees, many miles away from the bath like water in Dubai. In addition to this, the Channel Swimming Association (CSA) have strict rules, one of which is that the only clothing permitted is a swimming costume that is “A ‘Standard Swim Costume’ (for both sexes) shall be of a material not offering Thermal Protection or Buoyancy and shall be Sleeveless and Legless: ‘Sleeveless’ shall mean the Costume must not extend beyond the end of the shoulder onto the Upper Arm; ‘Legless’ shall mean the Costume must not extend onto the Upper Leg below the level of the Crotch.” (Taken from the official website).

I am from a cold country, I prefer to be cold and I am more comfortable in cold weather, but three years in Dubai has certainly made me soft. In a desperate attempt to reverse the acclimatization process, I began having cold showers every morning. I will never know if the cold showers had any positive effect on my acclimatization (I suspect not), although they certainly wake you up and reduced time spent in the shower to the bare minimum. However, for a lack of better options, this would have to do and they did help, in my mind at least.

Once I returned to Scotland, the cold water acclimatization could begin, and it began on the beaches of Aberdour, with a thud. It was a typically dreich day the first time I ventured down to the shores of the River Forth for my first dip. To our surprise, there were two lifeguards on duty and apparently are always on duty throughout the summer. They watched as I stripped down to my trunks, put on a swimming cap for the first time in my life and headed into the sea. The water was around 8 degrees, which for those of you who aren’t aware, is cold. Within seconds, my hands and feet felt numb. I splashed around for about 10 minutes, entertaining a seal who had popped up to see what had dared to enter its world and then I was out. On the CSA website, it says 1 minute in May, is worth 1 hour in August, so theoretically, I had just down 10 hours, a good start.

My next attempt at cold water swimming came the next day when I went to the group session held at Lochore. It was a disgusting night, the rain was lashing down and as I pulled into the car park, I was secretly hoping that the rain would’ve put everyone off and the swim would be cancelled. I was forgetting how crazy Scottish people are. There was around 40 swimmers already there, preparing to enter the loch. I did notice however, that every single one of them was wearing a wetsuit. I was more than willing to be the only non wetsuited swimmer in Dubai, but if these mad b**tards were wearing wetsuits, there was no way I was going in without one, I headed home with my tail between my legs.

Over the next couple of weeks, my tolerance for the cold water increased dramatically. With the help of Jenny, I was now able to comfortably stay in for over an hour and happily joined the groups at Lochore and Kinghorn Loch without a wetsuit. In fact, as the weather improved (I was extremely lucky with the weather over these few weeks), the number of wetsuits decreased quite quickly. However, due to the cold, I was still finding it difficult to train for much more than an hour, so I made the decision to start the trip early and get down to Dover with plenty of time before my swim for some last minute preparation. A huge thanks to Jenny for all her advice and braving those cooooool Scottish waters with me.

It is highly recommended to put on weight in preparation for the Channel swim. I remember reading with glee an article headed ‘how to healthily put on weight’, it was basically a list of all the things that dieters would normally be recommended to avoid, ‘eat late at night, eat lots of carbohydrates etc’. This won’t win me any fans, but putting on weight proved to be more difficult than expected. In my last couple of months in Dubai, I was doing around 15 hours of extreme exercise every week, which is of course detrimental to putting on weight. Any weight that I did manage to put on, was quickly lost as I cycled down to Dover and the process would have to start again.

Dover is a real Mecca for open water swimming (to those who don’t really understand what Mecca is), the harbour is always bustling with swimmers, on weekends the number of swimmers climbs up towards 100. Many of the people here share the same dream, to cross the narrow stretch of water that separates us from mainland Europe. With the warmer water (still not very warm), I was able to increase the time I spent in the water, while the rest of the day was committed to eating. To attempt to swim the Channel, it is first mandatory to complete a 6 hour training swim, which must be completed in water below 16 degrees. With the help of my mum, who would be waiting with a hot drink and food every hour, I completed the swim and was feeling good. I really have been amazed at how quickly the body acclimatizes to cold water. With the training swim completed, and the real swim approaching it was then a case of doing shorter swims of 1,2,3 hours to keep the body active until the big day.

3) Learn bilateral breathing

Bilateral breathing is hugely beneficial for open water swimming; it means that you can swim on either side of the escort boat using the shelter of the hull if the wind gets up or avoiding the exhaust fumes if the wind is in the wrong direction. I did try briefly to learn this skill, but was relatively unsuccessful, fortunately the wheel is on the right hand side of the boat, so breathing to the left (my favoured direction) is the preferable direction.

I went through several phases of varying emotions, particularly once I’d reached Dover. Some days I would be completely sure that I’d make it to France and others I would question whether I’d even make it out of the harbour. Dover is a great place to practise swimming, but it is an even better place for you to realise how unprepared you are for the mammoth challenge of swimming the Channel. Every weekend, there are teams of people down at the harbour, who know a great deal about swimming the Channel, most of whom have already swam the Channel. They are a great group of people that take time from their lives to help others achieve their dreams, with nothing expected in return. However, initially all the chat about Channel swimming can be a little overawing. “Have you done your 10 hour practise swim yet?”, “have you done a three hour no feed swim?”, “have you practised your feeding technique?”, when the answer to all their questions is no, it’s a little disheartening, you suddenly feel extremely apprehensive about your own swim. I didn’t realise that this group existed until I went to meet my pilot, Eric, there one morning. Talking with Eric was Maria, who will be attempting the Channel crossing with Eric at the end of August. Maria is an incredible person, six world records, summits of Everest and Kilimanjaro and a successful trek to the North Pole (among many other achievements), she will be attempting to swim the Channel despite only learning to swim last year. She does all of this in the name of her charity where she supports hundreds of children living in poverty in the slums of Bangladesh. You can find out more about Maria and her foundation at www.mariacristinafoundation.org. Maria had arranged to meet Loretta Cox later that evening to get some advice about swimming the Channel and invited me along as well. Loretta has swum the Channel six times, swum the length of Loch Lomond and Loch Ness (All without wetsuits), swum around New York and many many more. As you can imagine, Loretta has a wealth of open water swimming advice, particularly about the Channel and what we could expect. That evening, she offered to take Maria and I out for a night swim, which we gratefully accepted. Swimming at night can be a bit daunting for some and it’s a good idea to get some practise in before the big day, as it is more than likely that some of the swim will be in the dark. The night swim was actually very pleasant, swimming at night really focuses your mind, there are so few other distractions. Over the next few days, as I waited for the weather to improve, I spent quite a bit of time with Maria and Loretta learning from them and hearing about their past adventures in awe. Their sporting achievements only begin to scratch the surface of these two amazing people, both of whom have led incredibly selfless lives. Loretta’s husband Geoff, the author of a Channel swimming manual, also proved invaluable with advice over the days preceding my swim.

With the help of these kind people, who were strangers only a few days previous and the unwavering support of my amazing parents, I stood on the beach of Dover with a sense of calm. Months of hard work had led to this moment, preparation complete and it was time to go. “I am going to do this” I told myself, I had absolutely no doubt in my mind. I stepped into the cool waters, with the White Cliffs of Dover providing a dramatic backdrop, feeling every pebble with my feet as if it would be my last. Then, as the clock ticked past 7am on Friday July 15^th 2016, I pushed off from the shores of Dover, my English Channel swim had officially begun.