How far is Cap Gris Nez?

For those of you who are not channel swimming anoraks, Cap Griz Nez (In English, old grey turkey mushroom nose or something) is the little sticky out bit of France which lies closest to England, a mere 22 ish miles from Dover. 135 miles from where I sit (if you go on the road as far as Dover and then swim).

This is not Cap Griz Nez

But for these last few months it has been very much further away indeed. I read a blog not long ago by a guy who gave up only a few hours into his channel swim. I am sure he could have done it, but he had capitulated before he ever got in the water.

He blamed his lack of fitness and training. His whole demeanour was forlorn, lacklustre. As I read, I wondered how that could happen to someone. I knew it wasn't his fitness that had done for him. I knew it was his mind.  

You can always find an excuse, I thought.

A bit of psychology worth remembering. What you judge, you become (or you already are it, which is why you find it so annoying and then judge it in the first place).

One of my teachers used to say, if you are halfhearted your results will be half arsed. And it's true that I have have frittered away five months dangling in a limbo made out of apathy and exhaustion. I have sought and contrived excuses, and, worse still, I haven't cared.

This, too, is not Cap Griz Nez

I spent 10 weeks organising the excellent cold water swimming competition PHISH. This was pretty intense for me and certainly a steep learning curve.

It kept me off the streets and more importantly kept me out of the water. During this period I couldn't force myself to swim more than once a week outside and even that was a struggle. 

And the water in London may have, on a few occasions, hit the magic sub 5C, but it has manifestly refused to hold this temperature for longer than about 3 minutes, which of course is insufficient time to allow me to manage this years secret winter goal, " the never before completed Tw Ice Mile."  

So for that reason, among others, to be perfectly honest, this year's ice swimming training has left me cold.

Six or seven weeks ago or so I did start swimming, albeit indoors- notwithstanding the fact that a couple of years ago I swore I would never swim indoors again.

This isn't Cap Griz Nez, it's the Orchard round the corner

But indoors I have swum. I joined a swimming club where, four times a week, I swim up and down, or down and up, as the situation requires.

I have acquired training plans from several excellent swimmers, some of whom have swum the channel, some not. Some say swim 25 to 30k a week in the pool over winter, lots of others say lots of other things.

I haven't seen many people saying you should do what I've done so far.

I have a friend who is training now for a 2015 swim and worrying now about getting the right mileage and training plan and another one who is swimming this year in September and doing some kind of scientific training program.

Even in my new swimming club there is a kind (for kind, read interfering busybody) lady, who to my knowledge has almost never swum outdoors, who sees fit to advise me on a channel swimming strategy (bless her).

The straws that I am grasping at are the ideas that the best training plan is not the one that worked for Kevin Murphy or Alison Streeter, but the one which works for me.

And that giving myself a hard time about how useless I am has never helped me too much in the past.

I also suspect that if my channel swim was only a week away, rather than a massive 17 weeks, I still wouldn't stop until I hit France.

And although a steely self discipline and clearly defined routine is great and very useful, being kind to myself is probably a more fundamental basis for a happy and successful life.