Total Distance: 73k
Days until swim: 89
The start of May meant three things:
Less than 100 days until the swim
Warmer water (so no more excuses to put off long swims)
A new training plan!
It was time to switch my focus from speed work (using fast, interval training) to swimming for time and distance. To build a training plan I began by reverse engineering from the swim itself. My ‘cruising speed’ in open water is a shade over 3km/hour. If the Channel is 33km across at its shortest point, the fastest I could possibly hope to cross is about 11 hours. Adding in stops for feeds and the effect of tides I reckoned I couldn’t hope to swim for much less than 13 hours. Training swims of that length aren’t really feasible, so most swimmers prepare with a ‘broken’ Channel swim: seven hours one day, followed by six hours the next. I wanted to complete at least two broken swims before the big swim, so I worked backwards from there.
I wouldn’t have had a hope of mapping this out without the help of Emma France and the Dover Channel Training club. I had planned to train with the club in person over the summer but (virtually!) using their experience training countless Channel swimmers was the next best thing. So, the weekly plan from now pretty much up until the swim is:
2 swims of increasing length on consecutive days (much of the rest of the week is built around recovering/preparing for these)
1-2 Shorter, faster interval swims
1 gentle recovery swim
2 circuits/weights sessions
As much recovery stretching/yoga as I can remember to fit in around the long swims
DCT were particularly helpful at the start of the month helping me (and many other swimmers) map out the progression from swims of 20-30mins in water that was still quite cold, to five hour swims.
As these distances started to clock up, I was starting to feel a bit like a hermit crab – outgrowing various lakes, rivers and harbours – until I made a swimming pool of the perhaps aptly named Poole harbour. At the start of the month I found a small lake, hidden away between thick forest to one side and a protecting hill to the other. It was perfect, until a pretty menacing gaggle of geese appeared on the scene. That evening, a friend studying at York told me their term dates sometimes have to shifted to avoid particularly aggressive geese during laying season. I’m not sure this is actually true, but on my next swim I saw a bundle of eggs tucked away on a small island I was swimming laps past in the middle of the lake. Suddenly it looked like the gaggle was getting closer every time I took a breath. It was time to move on.
Some picturesque swim spots and a picturesque swimmer
Next I tried a wild swimming spot on the bank of a river I’d found in Roger Deakin’s Waterlog. I’ve mentioned Deakin’s bible of naturalist swimming (for naturist equivalent, see the Cam’s Riverbank club from February) when I visited Byron’s pool. Following Deakin’s instructions I found a small, jungly island dissecting the flow of the river. I had to clamber over old and scarred tree trunks and duck between vines and branches to find it. It was hard-won, but this corner of river was a tranquil world unto itself. Perfect. Then I read the rest of the chapter from Waterlog, which goes on to ruminate: ‘This was the perfect pike pool; what if a big pike was hiding up in one of the holes in the bank beneath the roots?’ Thanks Roger. If that wasn’t enough, each time I got in the water, cows from a neighbouring field began to take umbrage: each breath a little less peaceful riverbank, more Pink Floyd album cover. It was time to move on.
Next I found a disused ball clay pit, controversially quarried to the detriment of an ancient oak copse and its wildlife inhabitants in the mid-1970s. A conservation project begun in 2010 furrowed a channel from edge of the pit to the nearby sea, allowing the pit to gradually fill with salt water and rewild itself into what was left of the surrounding oak trees. As spring arrived at the pit, it became hidden behind the dense foliage of some of the most impressive trees I’ve ever seen – trunks wider than three people could join hands and wrap around. Beautiful, serene and sheltered from rough weather, it was perfect. But the change of seasons also meant the pit was heating up and, sooner than I expected, it was warmer than the English Channel would be at the height of summer. I still use the pit for shorter interval swims, but for the two- and three-hour swims I was now doing every week, it was time to move on.
I began to swim off Shipstal Beach, at the end of Arne peninsula in East Dorset. Wearing flip flops to protect my feet from a midden of razor sharp shells (swept into the channel of water from the harbour's various shellfisheries), I would strike out from the beach, before putting my flip flops in a dry bag attached around my waste, which doubled as an inflatable neon buoy floating behind me to alert boats of where I was swimming. Any photos of me fully kitted out will show that the buoy-dry bag justified itself as a fashion statement alone (especially coupled with the hot pink swim hat), but it turned out to be more useful than I first thought. My first swims off Shipstal were some of the most stunningly peaceful I can remember: pushing out early one morning into a mist so thick I couldn’t see two meters in front of me to sight the next buoy; sharing my salty pool with a seal the very next day. As lockdown continued to lift, however, I was reminded that Shipstal is only a stone’s throw from the most densely populated town in Dorset and part of the immensely busy Poole harbour. Suddenly, speed boats were mooring up in the channel between Shipstal and Long Island every morning. I haven’t seen him or her since, so for both me and the seal it was once again time to move on.
I was now swimming for more than four hours at a time. This posed issues for keeping hydrated and fed, but also finding a stretch of water to safely swim for so long. For my first five hour swim, Dad decided to jump in a kayak and escort me around Poole harbour, between its beaches islands and boats. It was the longest I’d ever swum and it was going well, until after about three hours it looked like Dad was talking to himself in the kayak. A few minutes later he started gesturing (to himself?). Had hours trundling along at snail pace driven him out of his mind? I needn’t have worried, because before long a helicopter flew over the harbour and Dad was busy taking photos – apparently it was a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey which, I’m told, is very exciting – all while I swam headfirst into a buoy. I was well into the longest swim ever at this point, so I think I was pretty measured in telling Dad to pay a little more attention; the words ‘firm but fair’ spring to mind. Dad disagrees.
The water in Poole harbour is shallow, and before long it will be too warm to swim even here. But I couldn’t be more spoilt for choice for swimming spots on Dorset’s south coast. As training continues I count myself very lucky to have such a supportive team in and out of the kayak and so many pricelessly beautiful places to swim.