These are the channel swimmers, the Champions of Champions, the masters swimmers, the 100 x 100ms off 1.40s once a month for fun types, the Big Ricks, the eternally cheerful or the utterly delusional.
Friday night I sleep fitfully, a night broken by numerous nightmares and accompanied by a fever. I wake up ready for a big swim. Well, drenched to the skin, anyway.
I've got a chipped elbow from an encounter with a stone balustrade two weeks ago, a sore right shoulder, probably because a neck vertebra is seized up.
I was out injured for much of the year, started training for this event with 6 weeks to go and have swum a full mile twice since last year.
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| An eighth/ 3 miles of the swim done and I'm sucking lemons |
With this in mind, I have a brief chat with my good buddy/ arch nemesis Jeremy a Place For Everything and Everything in its Place Irvine, as we unload our towels, food and clothes before the off. We exchange excuses and injuries and consider which would be the least controversial and most widely understood reason for quitting.
Jez suggests, and I agree, that toothache is something that everyone, even non swimmers, can commiserate with. I'm not sure, notwithstanding the sheer volume of sweets and jelly babies in my food bag, that I can manage to bring on even a half decent toothache within the next 24 hours though.
Crestfallen, I fall silent and continue unpacking.
I bump into Jane Melita Langrick Bell, who makes me feel happy because she is wheezing and she looks like shit. It feels like the spirit of the blitz all over again. United against a common enemy.
I'm sure there'll be plenty of huddling together and maybe some rousing songs later.
I sign in, disappointed not to get my swim number 69 written on my hand (it's not often you get 69 assigned to you, after all. Not in my house anyway.).. So there is nothing to do but put up the tent and get my trunks on.
Presently we wander off to hear event organiser Lesley's briefing waft gently across the pool. "Get in on the hour, swim 32 times up and down the pool, get out... someone will shout '5 minutes', this means you have 5 minutes....to get back in.... swim some more blah blah.... etc
I'm feeling pretty nervous as I approach the pool for the first mile. The nerves dissolve as i start to swim, the water feels lovely, a good temperature, not quite the 23C billed, but it's good and clear and seems pretty clean.
I haven't swum for nearly a week, so I thoroughly enjoy myself. As I savour the hot shower water trickling down my face and neck, I wonder how long this might continue.
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| Front quadrant... er...arms |
This time around, especially after my failed channel swim last year, my confidence is not high and I don't expect to finish.
As a matter of fact, you may be surprised to hear, politeness is the main reason I'm here at all. Not being able to face letting my support down at the last minute. They seem so much more excited about this whole thing than I am.
The interval after this first mile stretches out. I sit in my little saggy camping chair with an embarassment of snacks to choose from and a seemingly endless moment to savour them.
This time around I decide to go steady and remember a little gem from the AA just for today card: "I can do something for twelve hours that would appal me if I felt that I had to keep it up for a lifetime."
You can apply this to anything.
For example: swim a mile, get out, get back in etc, or eat endless flapjacks, ham sandwiches or jelly babies, guzzle maltodextrin solution, get into wet trunks, Find a million ways to count to 32. Whatever. All of these things are pretty appalling in their own right, but you put them together and 'appal' is a long way from doing them any kind of justice at all.
Mile 2 I love. I feel like a puppy that's been locked in the house for a whole day and let out in a lovely meadow. I go crazy and just start to chase my tail and bite other swimmers.
In my lane there are only two soloists. Helen B and me. Relay people come and go. Unable to curb their ebullience, they join the pool, do their sprint, then get out for a well deserved three hour rest, hot tub, shmooze, cooked dinner or whatever it is those people get up to.
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| 6 miles, a quarter done. "Don't tell me to smile." |
That last comment really belongs to a much later portion of the swim. I have no idea how it turned up here. Please disregard it.
I'm not going to write about every mile and describe it and how it feels or how long it takes, which snack I select or the regularity with which I drink espresso.
In any case it isn't really espresso, it's aeropress, which, the coffee cognoscenti among you will know as the most palatable, portable and potent alternative. Perfect for this event. Except you have to forgo the blended hot milk under these circumstances.
Back in 2013, I remember Bryn Dymott bringing me a warm drink of Maxim mixed with orange squash. I was lost, lonely, empty and on the skids energy wise. I had never heard of Maxim.
At that stage I was in between swim buddies. Jez had stayed with me for 6 or 7 miles, then arranged temporary 'foster' buddies to look out for me and count my laps until Alexia came after work for the second 12 hour shift (or in that case, since I'd been out of the water for 2 hours, just in time to take me home).
Lala, the witch of Redricks, pops up to our camp and works some of her sorcery on my bad neck and gets me out of some serious bother.
What a difference 2 years makes! This time round I am lost, lonely and empty, but I have heard of and indeed imbibed enough Maxi to constipate a blue whale. Alexia and John are here from the start to attend to my every whim and Jeremy is 'doing a solo'. I don't know everyone, but there are familiar faces everywhere.
Too numerous to mention them all here. But I love them all.
You could cut the friendliness, kindness and bonhomie with a knife.
After mile 3 or 4, I am sitting by the tent in my horrible c(r)amping chair. I've eaten, drunk and there seems to be an inordinately long time before I have to get back in the water again. I close my eyes for a minute and I feel such a deep peace and contentment, it's ridiculous.
My head is throbbing and I feel properly spaced out. I have entered an altered space. The thought crosses my mind that there was a time I'd have paid good money to feel like this.
Every time I consider finishing the event it feels impossibly distant and difficult. I bring it back to now and the next thing. Shower. Eat. Get dry. Wander around a bit. Talk to lovely people. Get taunted by Jez's boys. Wear woolly hat. Forget finishing.
After 6 miles I am happy to tick off a quarter of the swim. Yay. Next landmark of course is the 8 mile one third mark (still two thirds and 16 hours to go for fuck's sake). Steve, the big Bolton lad I swam with last time reminds me of the big jump to the 12 mile/ half way mark. I know there are other fractions besides these, but they don't really divide well, those ones.
My shoulder is twitching very well. the elbow that wasn't injured before (at least I ddin't think it was) is hurting more each swim. My left wrist and my neck is fucked. Sorry to have to use a clinical term. If you don't get it, you may have to look it up.
I wear a different swimming cap each mile and dedicate that mile to someone who has something to do with that hat. I particularly remember Carl Aquatic Ape, his Polar Bear cap. I also remember saying to Jez, "this one's for Colin," as I pull on my Chillswim hat. I remember Anna Marie Mulally when I wear the Sandy Cove hat she gave me.
After a while I tire of this stupid game and just take whatever hat I'm given. In the end I just wear the hat that squeezes my head the least.
I decide early on that I want to dedicate mile 21 to my dad who died 23 years ago because 21st February was his birthday. I figure if I can hang on that long, then the other 3 will be a cinch. All the other dedications I make are just passing the time and mean nothing.
Somewhere around 7 or eight miles I chat to Jez and he starts to tempt me into quitting after 12 miles. My first target is to beat the 10 miles of 2013. He knows that and I realise we are colluding to end this thing, looking for a dignified exit.
I decide to sit alone with my own doubts for company.
I've long since hit the anti inflammatories, now I'm augmenting them with paracetamol. I feel that homemade flapjack might be the missing piece, so I go looking for Louise Barber.
Smiles and good cheer from some canny northern lasses keeps me on track for another mile or two.
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| Saving a dry towel and trunks for each of the last 4 miles |
She does and so do I.
We take it in turns to draft each other. Relay people try to crawl over us, many of them clad in rubber suits or to get between us. To some people's consternation, we maintain our tight formation.
It gets dark now and then soon after that it starts raining. I can't face sitting out in the rain getting wet or squeezing into a dark little tent between swims. I tell the team that we're going to relocate to the communal heated marquee.
This is one of my better decisions. Alex and John get all my food and clothes. Sam Jones and Sue Croft get Helen's gear too. We make a big camp in the big tent. We all help each other. We were good teams separately, but together we are awesome.
We are like a supergroup from the eighties. Or something.
You would never do this event without really good support. You under estimate it at your peril.
It's not all plain sailing. Alex tries to make me drink instant coffee. I have to be tough with her and teach her to use the coffee maker. The others scoff at my prima donna ways.
Fools, what do they know?
After 14 miles, I feel beaten. Jeremy gets in his car and goes home. I jokingly told Alex before the swim that if Jez was in the pool then I would be. If he'd got out and I'd done more than i did in 2013, then I didn't need to carry on.
Many more people drop out over the next few hours.
Mental torture.
Alexia deliberately doesn't tell me he's bailed out, because she thinks I'll want to go home and sleep.
As if I'd do that. Ahem.
Every hundred metres when I turn I hear her shout, "go John!" Which is annoying or nice depending on your point of view. In any case, it keeps me going.
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| For the crew, it's a laugh a minute. |
We swim from the end near the big tent, cut down on the walking.
A mere 10 hours and this whole nightmare will be over.
Oops. I'm thinking ahead again and this almost convinces me to just curl up and die.
Each time we get back in the water, it feels freezing for the first 20 metres or so. After that it's mostly just plain 'not awfully warm', especially in the middle of the pool.
It makes a nice change to be swimming in the dark, clouds of steam billowing off the surface of the water as the air temperature drops. It feels surreal, almost magical, but still pretty grim.
At most of the breaks Helen or I (but usually Helen) say we are going to get out after the next one or not go back in. This is usually followed by a chorus of 'no you're bloody not's.
By now I'm too weak to argue.
By mile 15 or 16 or 17 or 18 I have given up trying to find a way of swimming without pain. My left arm doesn't work, I find it hard to swim straight (even harder than usual) and I keep whacking my already swollen wrist into the (really hard plastic) lane rope floats. This smarts.
Three quarters of the way through. Only 6 hours to go haha.
I shed a few quiet tears in my goggles when I finish mile 21 as I remember my old man. He was such a lovely and honourable bloke and we 6 kids drove him to distraction, especially in our years of young adulthood. Bless him, really.
Each mile now is an eternity, each interval flashes past quicker than the last. I turn inwards for a while, don't talk. Helen snoozes, only to be woken just before we have to go back in.
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| Helen looks worried as we start our last mile |
Some people (like the ever smiling Fiona Bettles) graciously give way to us soloists. Some don't. These things are now neither pleasing or particualrly distressing. I'm numbed out now.
Because of a miscount we end up doing 36 lengths on mile? 22. Sam tells us we can do 28 next time.
This is one of the longest blog posts ever. And the most excruciatingly dull. Like 2swim4life it goes on and on and on and on. If you have made it this far, then I commend you on your endurance and forebearance. I reckon you can go all the way now. You are one tough cookie.
Rickie Blackman drives down from London to cheer us home. I knew Rickie before he could even drive. We get in for our last mile. It's Helen's turn to lead. She suddenly finds a second wind and buggers off. I just can't keep up. I'm as weak as a kitten.
Lots of people stand around the pool, cheer and clap. I hear Ricky every 100m. This part of the swim is sweet. It isn't quite nice, though. I finish the last lap and loads of people are cheering. I'm actually smiling and it's finished. All 768 lengths of it.
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| Quietly pleased |
I get dressed and come out to watch the half past the hour people finish. Philip Hodges is one of the ones I know best and am most fond of.
He is a spent force.
If I was as weak as a kitten, Phil, Aussie tough guy, winner of last year's BLDSA 22 mile Loch Lomond event, Ice Miler, is actually swimming like one. At the end he tries to walk up the steps and falls back into the water.
This event is brutal. It's not for the faint hearted.
And it affects your short term memory. One minute I am saying, "shoot me if you catch me so much as considering doing this event again," the next I'm planning my strategy for 2swim4life 2017.
I need a lie down.
