It’s been a good month. We are slightly ahead of schedule, and apart from a niggling arm injury, which seems to be settling down, things are looking good.
At the end of August, we headed off for 3 days camping, trekking and swimming across Crummock and Buttermere in the Lake District. This was more for the benefit of getting used to the cold water (14 degrees), rather than distance training. The highlight of the weekend had to be when Karen decided to wear a wet suit after hypothermia almost settled in on the first day! About 400metres out, she realised she was extremely uncomfortable and needed to get it off quick. I had the opportunity to swim on this day, rather than be my usual ‘human kayak’, swimming beside her with all her little luxuries, so I had moved on ahead. Just as well I took a sneaky check on her because way, way back in the distance was this little hat bobbing around, not swimming. I quickly realised she was in trouble; so a quick dash back to the rescue and a quick unzip of the suit was called for. This wasn’t sufficient though. She was still uncomfortable and the panic attack kicked in! She couldn’t breath and needed to get it off. Our safety kayak whizzed over and insisted that she held onto the side, while I doggy kicked backwards as hard as I could whilst tugging at her wet suit. I almost disappeared under the kayak myself a couple of times. Any of you regular wetsuit users will know how difficult they are to remove, let alone trying to do it in a 14 degree lake! As this was not the first panic attack that Karen has suffered, she has now reassured me that there’s a little song she’s gonna sing that will calm her nerves in future when the fear takes over. So here’s looking forward to the next panic attack to see if it works!
Penny Lee Dean, once world record holder of no fewer than 13 open water long distance records has written an excellent book simply called ‘Open Water Swimming’ and we have both been glued to it during September for inspiration. It was extremely re-assuring to read that our own training plan was not too dissimilar to her advice. So, with a slightly tweaked training schedule fully in place for the next nine months, it’s now full steam ahead.
A combination of 6 x gym/run/bike or weight training sessions, and 4 x swims each week is tough going and each month, the continuous non-stop swims step up a mile or two. This will be the form for the rest of 2010 where it will increase to 6 swims a week. It’s little wonder that tears crop up every now and then. Usually instigated by frustration, but sheer exhaustion also plays a part. And it’s the exhaustion that sometimes means you physically cannot find the strength to handle the frustrations encountered with heavy training.
Our local pool has offered to sit down and discuss how they can assist with undisrupted lane swimming so that we can attempt some of the longer swims during the winter in the pool. This is much appreciated and we are both looking forward to their proposals.
Having already achieved a continuous 5.2mile (8.4k) swim in 3 hours at Dover harbour in September, things are looking good. The 5 mile stage was not scheduled to be attempted until October so Karen is doing real good. Freda Streeter (mother of Alison Streeter who has swam the English Channel 43 times!) has welcomed Karen to her channel group of swimmers that regularly meet at Dover on Saturday mornings and we have been enjoying their company for the last few weekends.
The stroke count range is now stable, the monthly schedules are set, and Karen is getting fitter and faster. Sponsor letters are going out, posters are starting to appear in shops/gyms etc, Essex radio have been in touch and we’ve even had a small amount of local press already. Best of all, the charity donations are already starting to come in. This is the really exciting bit. Knowing that we have so much support, it really does help to spur us on when we are so tired. October will see us working a percentage of each training session at a different heart rate level. Getting to know what the ranges are and what they feel like will assist Karen to change to a different pace quickly, which is obviously going to be called for during the challenge.
Several people have asked me, “don’t you both get bored just continually swimming”? There is so much to take into consideration when training for a channel swim that it’s not really about continuous swimming. I have a mountain of knowledge on pool swimming but when you look into long distance open water swimming, it makes you realise that there is so much more to learn. There is the nutrition to work out, the best weight ratio, best times to feed, studying how your body works in 14 degrees as opposed to 17 degrees, the tides, the weather, the cramps. Too much to mention, but everything has to be studied now as we need to be prepared for every single possible eventuality. So it’s not about getting bored, it’s about keeping your mind occupied all the time and thinking ahead. So why do I call this report, Tears, Tantrums and Triumphs. Because, at the moment, I don’t mind the Tears and Tantrums because it helps us to learn how to deal with them. I would rather face every horrible obstacle now than encounter it first hand on the day. And as long as we know how to deal with all these obstacles, I am confident that the Triumphs will be just a formality. After all, it is only 1 length isn’t it.
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