You can view RSS feeds from my friends and colleagues.
At about nine o’clock on a chilly Friday evening in early May, I found myself on the deck of a boat, stripping down to my swimsuit, clipping lights to my goggles, and preparing to plunge into the frigid black water. I also found myself seriously questioning some of my life choices.
The choice that had landed me in this particular situation was my decision back in October to say “yes” when asked if I wanted to join an English Channel relay team, followed by my decision in January to sign up for a Channel swim training camp in Ramsgate. Our swim coach, Christine, had encouraged us to attend the camp because it’s a great opportunity to swim with a boat, practice relay changeovers, swim in the dark, spend more time in cold water, ask questions about the Channel swimming experience, and get to know other Channel swimmers.
I booked a spot straightaway, as did two of my other teammates. I arranged with my teammate Silvina to share an AirBnb in Ramsgate, and Silvina kindly agreed to drive the two of us there and back. She picked me up on Friday morning and we headed off on the two-hour journey, chatting nervously all the way. It was a gorgeous day and the trip was fine, but we were both massively apprehensive about what we were getting ourselves into. We’re both good swimmers and we’d been training hard, but neither of us had ever done anything like this before, and we really didn’t know how we would cope.
Things didn’t get off to a great start. Based on the rough schedule we had been sent, we thought the camp would begin with some talks, which would give us a chance to catch our breath and have a bite to eat before setting out for our first swim. But open-water swimming is entirely weather-dependent, meaning that schedules can change at any time—and no sooner had we parked the car in Ramsgate than we were told: “Right, we’re heading out on the boat now!” The weather on Sunday was shaping up to be bad, so the decision was made to swim as much as possible on Friday and Saturday and do all the talking on Sunday instead.
Silvina had just driven for two hours, both of us were tired and hungry, and neither of us were mentally prepared for this change of plan, but we tried to roll with it. I scarfed down a cheese sandwich I had (thankfully!) stuck in my bag before leaving home, and we got our swimming gear together as fast as possible.
There were eight swimmers attending the camp: three soloists, two women from another relay team, and the three of us from my team. We were divided up for the first swim, with the three members of my team going out in a smaller rigid inflatable boat (RIB) and everyone else going on the larger Sea Satin. As we motored out of the marina and up the coast on that first trip, all I could think was: “What the HELL am I doing here??” Thank goodness for Silvina, who was in the same state as me. We just kept trying to reassure one another that we were going to be okay. Meanwhile, my heart was in my throat and my stomach was somewhere around my feet.
The boat finally came to a stop and it was time for us to swim. To get into the water from the RIB, you sit on the side of the boat and slide in (as opposed to the bigger boat, where you climb down a ladder to a small platform to enter the water). I went first: I dangled my legs in the water for a second, and then in I went. It was the first time I’d ever plunged into water that cold (13C/55F) rather than wading in slowly to get acclimatized, and it was also the first time I’d gotten off a boat into open water. It took my breath away for a minute, but once we were all in and had done a bit of breaststroke to get used to the situation, we started some relaxed front crawl and…it was really nice? I had thought I might freak out about being in such deep water, but once I got going, I was at ease. The conditions were gorgeous, the small boat was right next to us, and the swimming felt quite comfortable thanks to the current carrying us along. The only thing that stopped us after 40 minutes was the cold; none of us were in neoprene, and by the end of the swim my hands and forearms were so cold I couldn’t even tell when they were entering the water with each stroke (my right hand was also starting to go into a frozen little claw, which is apparently a thing that happens?). Getting back into the RIB was maybe the hardest part of the whole swim: since there’s no ladder, you cling to the side and get hauled aboard like a giant fish. Once on board, we wrapped ourselves in our changing robes and the boat zoomed back to the marina. We were shivering and chattering, but we were also pretty elated that our first swim had gone so well.
I wish I could say the weekend continued in that vein for me, but it really didn’t. All the relay swimmers went out on the bigger boat that afternoon to practice the relay changeover process and get more time in the water. The rules for officially certified Channel swims are very strict (have a look at the Channel Swimming and Piloting Federation or the Channel Swimming Association if you’re curious), and relay teams are immediately disqualified if they mess up the changeovers between swimmers. It adds another layer of stress to an already very stressful situation, and even in the practice situation this weekend, I didn’t deal with it very well (having a klaxon go off just before you get in the water is unsettling to say the least). Also, the Sea Satin is not a huge boat, but a boat of any significant size seems intimidatingly large when you’re bobbing in the water next to it. For my first swim off the Sea Satin, I climbed down the ladder trembling with nerves, plunged off the back, immediately took in a huge mouthful of seawater and then a huge lungful of fuel exhaust, and proceeded to flap around the boat hyperventilating in panic for ten minutes before clambering out and collapsing in a sobbing heap on the deck. It was not my finest moment.
Once I’d calmed down and warmed up, I had to go back in again. The second time around was much better, and I was able to swim steadily around the boat without freaking out for about 15 minutes before getting out. The women from the other relay team who had witnessed my initial meltdown were perplexed—they said I was a beautiful swimmer, and they couldn’t figure out how I’d gone from not even being able to do breastroke around the boat to whizzing around in smooth front crawl like it was no problem. My only explanation is that once I start to panic, like I had during the previous swim, I feel the need to get out of the panic-inducing situation IMMEDIATELY. I haven’t yet figured out how to work through that feeling and calm myself down while remaining in the scary situation. I managed to avoid panicking during the second swim off the big boat, but the first swim was doomed from the start.
That was pretty much the story of the weekend. We were out on the big boat all day Saturday, in really glorious conditions: sunshine, sparkling water, hardly any breeze. The plan was to get in and just swim around the boat for as long as possible. The soloists were going to try longer swims where they could practice their feeding plan (i.e. eating/drinking while in the water), and some of the relay swimmers were going to try to do their assessment swims (to be cleared to swim a relay, you have to swim for 1.5 hours, be out of the water for 1.5 hours, then swim for another hour in sub-16C water wearing just a normal swimsuit, goggles, and swim cap). I already knew I wouldn’t manage my assessment swim this weekend, but I didn’t know that even regular swims would defeat me. The boat wasn’t deliberately moving anywhere on Saturday, it was just drifting with the current like we all were. But sometimes the current would pull me away from the boat or pull the boat away from me, and every time that happened, I lost it. There was a point where I thought the boat was accelerating away from me, and I actually whimpered in the water “Don’t leave me!” and swam like a demon to catch hold of the back of it before I was ostensibly left behind.
I should note here that nobody was ever going to be “left behind.” Every swimmer in the water had somebody’s eyes on them at all times, and if someone started drifting too far from the boat, they were quickly corralled back. Equally, if someone was in real trouble, they would immediately be pulled out (this happened to one swimmer who got very, very cold). But my brain refused to trust the safety protocols, and every time the boat got just slightly beyond reach, the panic set in and I had to swim and grab hold of it again. This is exactly what you can’t do during a Channel relay; once you’re in the water for your relay leg, you can’t so much as touch the boat again until your hour is up and you’re getting out. And as this went on and on, with me constantly and compulsively grabbing for the boat, I thought: “There is no way I’m going to manage the relay.”
I did have one okay swim on Saturday, where I just swam up and down alongside the boat instead of going around it. And even the night swim on Friday was not the disaster it could have been. Everyone was paired up for that, and we were told to swim from the boat to a nearby beach and back again with our swim buddy (because swimming to the beach is how you start any Channel swim). The beach wasn’t that far away, but Silvina and I (swim buddies) agreed beforehand that there was no way we were swimming to that beach. We decided to get in the water and stick by the boat just to get a feel for nighttime swimming. We were doing okay until the motorized dinghy at the back of the boat started descending into the water unexpectedly while we were bobbing nearby because two swimmers had gone to the wrong beach and needed to be herded back to the right one. We were also having goggle issues which, combined with the blinding spotlight on the boat, made the whole experience totally disorienting. We got through it, though.
But even before the night swim, after just two swims off the big boat, I was having serious doubts about whether I was cut out for any of this. It’s not just that it was hard—and it was SO hard, maybe the hardest situation I’ve ever voluntarily put myself in, pushing me so far out of my comfort zone that I might as well have been on another planet—it was that I kind of hated all of it. It wasn’t a case of “I really want to do this but I’m struggling,” it was a case of “I REALLY don’t want to do this.” The good swims were enjoyable enough, but they were vastly overshadowed by the stress of the bad swims. Silvina and I kept telling each other we should be proud of what we were achieving, but I didn’t feel proud at all, I felt desolate—because by Friday night I had already started thinking that maybe I shouldn’t do the relay, and by Saturday night I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do it even if I tried. And I had no idea how to get out of it.
We went for dinner with our coach and some other swimmers on Saturday, and while my body was sitting in the pub, my mind was spinning off in a million directions, wondering what I should do, when I should tell Christine I was having doubts, what might happen if I went ahead with the swim and what might happen if I didn’t, and how many people I would be letting down if I backed out now—if I even could back out now. I’ve taken this relay challenge very, very seriously. I knew when I signed up that it was a major commitment, and it would be only under the most extreme circumstances that I would break my promise to my team. But this felt like extreme circumstances. Back in November, I wrote: “I know I have to believe I can do it or else I really won’t be able to do it.” And by Saturday night, I absolutely did not believe I could do it.
After dinner, Christine came over to sit by me. She said I should think about attending another swim camp at the end of May to work on getting my breathing under control. And I said outright, “Christine, I don’t think I can do this.” I told her that I honestly didn’t think I would be able to get the panic response under control by August, and that there was a very good chance I would freak out during the relay and disqualify all of us, and that I didn’t want to abandon the team, but I also wasn’t doing anyone any favors by carrying on as if I were okay when I’m really not.
And Christine simply said: “Okay, you’ll keep training for next year instead.”
Now, the relevant factor isn’t whether I actually try again next year or not. The relevant factor is that I immediately felt a monumental sense of relief. Every minute of the weekend had been adding another ounce of pressure to the already crushing weight on my shoulders, and as soon as Christine said “it’s fine, you’re just not ready yet this year,” the weight vanished and I could properly breathe for the first time since leaving Brighton on Friday morning.
The weather was passable enough on Sunday morning, so we went out on the boat one last time for a chance to swim in rougher (and, frankly, more realistic) conditions. I had already decided I wasn’t going to do another swim, so instead I stood on the deck and helped keep an eye on everyone in the water. It got blustery and there was a good swell, and as I watched the swimmers fight through the chilly waves and push themselves to keep going around and around the boat, even as the wind picked up and they were all tossed to and fro, I felt nothing but admiration for their determination and a calm certainty for myself—the certainty that I do not currently have that same mental drive or stamina, and I totally accept that.
So, here it is: I’m not swimming a Channel relay this year after all. Or perhaps I should put it this way: I’m not swimming a Channel relay this year—but I will still be part of a Channel relay. I told Christine I wanted to stay involved however I could, and I also told her that I’d enjoyed helping out other swimmers on the boat over the weekend (the swimmer who got very cold and needed help getting dressed and warmed up again, a swimmer who needed an asthma inhaler passed down to them in the water, etc.). So now I’m going along on the relay as part of the support crew on the boat, or maaaaybe even as an observer. That would be more admin, but it turns out I’m fairly good at both swimming and admin, and at least admin doesn’t (usually) give me a panic attack.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that I’ve made the right choice, and there is not the smallest part of me that feels any regret. I wrote in November that “I would regret it forever if I didn’t at least try,” and I feel after this weekend that I’ve given it a really good try. The training camp gave me the tiniest taste of what it’s like to swim the Channel, and I know in my heart that I’m not ready for it yet. But as someone said to me over the weekend, the Channel isn’t going anywhere. When and if I am ever ready, it will be there waiting for me.
I seem to have left pieces of myself scattered around the internet. This is my attempt to pull some of those pieces together.