TLDR: After swimming for 8 hours and 10 minutes in 14-15 degree water, I have qualified to swim the English Channel! Wooohooo!
There are a couple of moments along the way to the channel that I consider to be exciting key milestones. Moving from the salty and stunningly beautiful ABC pool back to fresh water and palm trees at Victoria Park is one – (and that happened this morning!). Vlad’s Cold Camp is obviously a highlight. Training swims in cold dark rainy conditions are another, as is moving to Brighton le Sands (or the dreaded Balmoral) for Saturday swims.
Another is the Melbourne whiteboard!
For two years now I’ve watched as my swimming friends, English Channel hopefuls, have flown down to Melbourne to complete an English Channel Qualifying swim. Each year, the image of a whiteboard was shared on social media. The whiteboard listed everyone’s names as well as the time they came in for each feed and how long they stayed in the water for. (Qualifying for the channel is 6 hours if the water is under 16 degrees and progressively longer if the water is warmer than 16 degrees.)
The white board is partly for safety – if someone doesn’t check in near to their expected time there are kayakers and a boat that can head out to check on their safety, but it is also for accountability – to prove that the individual swam for the required amount of time in the required temperature to qualify to swim the channel.
For two years I’ve watched and studied the whiteboard to see how long people swim for in-between feeds, how many people swam to and past the qualifying time and who’d need to try again another time. It’s been one of the images that I knew would mean a lot to me, and how excited I would be if my name had that 8 hour time next to it at the end!
I also knew that qualifying in Melbourne would be the biggest challenge I’d face in my channel journey. In past years the weather has been dull and rainy and sometimes with a horrid wind that meant the swimming was tough going. Even harder for us Sydney siders is the change from swimming in 21 degree water down to 14-15 degrees in the blink of an eye. Add to that a much colder air temperature and I wasn’t entirely sure how much use all of my cold baths and cold showers were going to prove to be! Not everyone gets through this qualifier and I’ve seen brilliant accomplished swimmers not make it at this event – but still have a spectacular channel swim. It’s not the be all and end all – but it felt important to me. I was excited to test myself under these conditions.
I was also coming back from an injured lat/tricep strain and I hadn’t swam more than 3.5 hours since Port to Pub. In the weeks leading up to the qualifier I was holding space for the confidence that I would be able to swim the required 8 hours while simultaneously convincing myself that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I didn’t. (I would have another chance at Vlad’s Cold Camp in June after all.) But I also knew that the image of that white board would haunt me if I flew back home to Sydney having not met the goal.
Vlad and Jai had assured me that all I had to do was swim hard enough not to get hypothermia. I didn’t need to break any records; it isn’t a race and there wasn’t even a specific distance I needed to swim. They both believed I could do it – Vlad was even uncharacteristically annoyed at me for doubting it. (I’m still learning some great lessons.)
Thursday morning I joined the Odins, a cold water swimming group at Mt Martha who I swam with the last time I was in Melbourne for work. The temp was 15.5 and after having a little ice cream headache at the start I warmed up pretty quickly. It was only a 30 minute swim though, so although it gave me a little confidence I still wasn’t sure how my body would respond to much longer in the cold water.
Friday night was the twilight pre-qualifying swim with the crew and the atmosphere was nervously electric! We had three Vlad swimmers down for the qualifying swim (Nick, Al and myself) and Marc had come down to shower us with moral support and to help with our feeds.
My fabulous colleague Ian was also there to support Allan and I, and Adam (Marc’s friend and also an ocean swimmer) came along to support the supporters. It was also great to see some other familiar faces (and voices) from other swims including Sharon from Port to Pub, Julie (from everywhere!), Mon from Palm to Shelly and last years’ cold camp, and the gorgeous Queensland crew, the GCOWS, who I swim with from time to time and who are supporting Gerard.
Everyone was in great spirits, so much so that Marc and I had a little splashing fight (Marc started it!) as we entered the water. (I turned to make sure that Allen wasn’t feeling excluded and he sternly warned me NOT to splash him. Hahahaha! I am so happy that Ian captured both moments on camera.)
We swam the course for the first time at a leisurely pace, cheering and whooping to stay warm and happy as we meandered around the course, letting our bodies adjust to the temperature. It was an enormous luxury to be able to get out of the water and straight into a warm change room afterwards. Most people opted to take advantage of the steam room (!) but I hated it! Less than a minute in I was feeling breathless and claustrophobic and had to get myself out of there. I did enjoy the luxury of a warm shower though! The highlight of the night (other than carb loading with everyone at dinner of course hahaha) was spying the whiteboard from last year still written up!
The atmosphere on Saturday morning was a little quieter! Swimmers were being covered in channel grease as the briefing took place.
Numbers were written on arms. The water temp was tested (and swimmers very cagily weren’t told the exact temp which helped me understand that this was going to be the coldest water I’d swum in this year for sure!)
Despite this, the air temp was manageable. There was very little wind and we had hopes for the sun to appear later in the day. (It did!) The temp hovered between 14-15 for the first couple of hours and then stayed colder in the shallows, but increased to between 15-15.5 elsewhere for the rest of the swim. We had good, mostly flat and windless conditions with just a little swimming against the incoming tide.
I kept up a cruisey pace for the full 8 hours and finished feeling really good. I took some Panadol and Nurofen 4 hours in because I was starting to have a little pain in my left arm again and my right shoulder was also a little niggly, but the pain relief and some extra rotation made it all settle within an hour. No problems at all when I finished.
My nutrition was really great too. Ian and Marc kept Al and I well fed and in high spirits, throwing the bottles from a pier that housed weedy sea dragons underneath!
I tried a few new things that mostly worked (like reducing the amount of liquid by 50mls in every 2nd feed, adding in some warm feeds, reducing the number of caffeine feeds, taking out Voltaren completely, and adding in some actual food.) It all worked really well except I needed to bring in the caffeine a little earlier – it was due at the 6 hour point but I was looking for it by 4 hours in. The highlights were warm lemon tailwind with a teaspoon of honey and warm water, and hot milo with coffee. For the first long swim, I wasn’t sick at all!
6 hours seemed to come around really quickly! The water temp was cold enough that 6 hours was all we needed to qualify but I don’t have many long swims left in my program between now and the channel so I didn’t even consider getting out early – not even when Julie offered me a sip from her bottle of vodka!
Marc joined me for the last 90 minutes of the swim and it was great to have company in the water. (Other than at feeds I didn’t really see anyone else during the swims – I didn’t bump into Nick or Al at all even though I was keeping an eye out for them both!) We swam a lap around the sunken shipwreck and took some time to explore it! I knew by then that I’d easily make the 8 hours and that I didn’t have to worry about swimming quickly to stay warm. It was nice to have a little chat and a play and not to have to take it all quite so seriously.
I found myself a little speechless at the end. Walking up the boat ramp knowing that I’d officially qualified for the English Channel swim was both a huge relief and a joy! The joy also came from the wonderful swimmers and organising team who’d stuck around til the end, cheering me along as I exited the water as well as the giant hug from Marc. (There usually isn’t anyone to hug at the end of swim because no-one wants to get wet and greasy hahaha!) And we all know how much I love a hug on any occasion, yet alone an *actual* ‘I-just-qualified-to-swim-the-English-Channel occasion.
Then seeing my own name on the whiteboard and receiving the certificate to upload for the Channel Swimming Association… delicious!
The final celebration happened at a pub nearby. They didn’t sell mulled wine and the steak that I’d been dreaming of all 8 hours of the swim was unaffordable ($65!!) but the company was exceptional!
As always a swim like this is absolutely a team effort. The advice and tips from swimmers who have been there before us is invaluable. The coaching of Vlad and Jai, and Vlad’s program is 2nd to none, and is 100% the reason why I was able to qualify at this event. The hours of physio (thanks to the team at Switch Maroubra) repaired the broken parts of my body to see me not just through the swim but to be able to keep training this week! The organisation of an event like this must be huge and everything ran seamlessly thanks to Sally, Denise and their organising and safety teams. Ian and Sharon cared for me at my home away from home – I’ll never look at a zucchini the same way again! Hello zucchini cake! Ian very generously donated his time to look after all of my transport and feeds. Marc was there when he didn’t have to be, swimming in the cold with his customary positivity and his own very special brand of brotherly support – hard love in equal measure of hard and love! Having someone with me who had been there and done it all before was more of a comfort that I could have imagined.
Sunday included a Barefoot Bowls fundraising event for Blue Dragon that raised around $1,200 – enough to rescue a victim of human trafficking – more about that later! And coming home to my beautiful flatmates and a celebratory dinner of steak and mash with some gorgeous Coobras last night? What more could a girl ask for?
Last night I set my alarm for squad this morning feeling like a very happy and satisfied swimmer – excited about what the next 12 weeks will bring.
The count down is well and truly on.
Qualifying milestone achieved!
Bucket list whiteboard moment achieved.
I’m officially registered and I’m going to swim the English Channel!!!!!
Next stop… Cold Camp!!!!
Kim's Big Blue English Channel Swim 