Coaches Report - May 2011

The solo channel attempt is creeping up on us fast now and in my mind, this is the time when I really want to 'go for it' training wise, but everything seems to be against Karen.  The work is the biggest issue, late shifts, traffic, early starts etc. just keep getting in the way of training.  So the past month we have made the best of every spare moment we have available, albeit its small.

I've set Karen a weekly target of 15 miles and she just managed to squeeze in 14.5 two weeks ago and now this week, work has prevented her from managing 10.  It's a tough challenge that she has ahead and although there is always the saying 'you can never train enough for a channel crossing', there is certainly the worry at the moment, that you can certainly 'undertrain' for it.  So, calling anyone that has any influence at all at the hospital where she works, please, give her some space over the next month to train pretty please.  She can make up for it afterwards!!!!

This aside, the 6hr continuous cold water attempt is looming now.  Hopefully, maybe we can squeeze in a couple of them during June at Dover to make up for lost time.  She certainly has the strength and endurance to continually swim, but the cold-water distances have not seen us exceed 3hrs yet, so this will be a big test.  As the channel may take anything up to 14 hours to get across, we should be building the time up now.

Last weekend saw us in Southend sea for almost 3 hours but unfortunately the tide had turned.  I am confident that if it wasn't for the tide, we would have gone well past 3 hours.  We swam to the pier from the Crowstone and intended to swim back again.  But the strong tides/winds had other ideas.  There is Peter Pans playground on the horizon near the pier and the hardest thing was watching the Helta Skelter image for over 20 mins of continuous swimming, and not managing to get past it.  That was demoralising.  I paused to look back at her and just because I wasn't swimming for a few seconds, I drifted back in her line in an instant. We were stuck in some kind of rip-pool.  She looked up and by the time she had said, "Why cant I do this", I realised she was almost back at the pier.  Not being able to 'chat' so to speak, as we were being carried away, all I could manage was "Just Shut Up and Swim Woman".  She later asked me, "Was I really trying to compete with Freda Streeter for the Scariest Coach Award".     "No, I just thought, if I took the time to say anymore, you would have been in Shoeburyness".

So, hat's off to Karen, she put her head down and swum forever, but hardly got anywhere.  Good training though, as we have read all sorts of stories where channel attempts have seen people swim for over an hour and only gaining 400metres.

I, by now, was getting cold so was choosing to swim to a 'Hat' as we call them, (the markers at the end of the wooden posts, periodically placed along the sea front) and grab hold of it till Karen reached it.  "Lets just take one hat at a time, I instructed".   I was getting cold and struggling to hold onto each 'hat' waiting for her and felt so guilty that as soon as she got there, I pushed off and instructed "OK, to the next hat".

Imagine this in the water, it was EXACTLY how strong the tide was.

Finally, Karen announced, "acclimatisation wise Lorraine, I'm done in".  We still had over a mile to get back to the car but it was obvious it was going to take too long to swim it.  I made the mistake at this point of saying, OK, lets see if we can get in to shore.  I realised later I should have just pushed her to 'one more hat'.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  So there we were, one in our 40's in a swim cozzie and one in her 50's in a torn wetsuit, walking the promenade to so many funny looks from people as the weather was appalling.  Bonus - we got lots of 'toots', haven't been tooted in years!  It was a case of, head down, don't think about what we look like, and march back to the car.  

Nick had swum with us this day too, but being a strong swimmer, he did not see much point in two of us holding back and struggling with the cold and a groin strain, so he decided to head back ahead.  Without telling us!   Tut Tut!   We were relieved to see his bag gone from our spot on the beach when we got back coz this was the only way we knew he was back and hadn't drowned.  A lesson he will not repeat as he quickly suffered with the telling off from two nagging women when we got back, I'm sure he thought, god this is worse than being married and more agony than my groin strain.    We were seriously worried about him though as we had no idea if he had made it back or not.

We headed off to the river Chelmer last week coz

So, now, as well as scary looking things on the bottom of the river bed, I want to organise a night swim with glow sticks.  Hopefully, this will be done in next week or two.  To be extremely cold and it to be dark, I think it will have to be the River Chelmer, with Roger in the kayak.  Oh joy !!