Day 2, early days but so far so good.

2nd 10km marathon swim done of 30marathonswims30days. Thanks to Kate Nimmo, David James and Vickie who joined me for several kms. Tomorrow's marathon swim is dedicated to Kim Boon and David Granger. Kim and Dave have both beaten cancer, showing the same bravery and determination in their individual battles as they do in their sport. They are both English Channel swimmers who do a tremendous amount locally for swimming and triathlon. Dave has crewed for me in Windermere and they have both supported many other channels swimmers, they are a great example of selfless contributors to our sport.

Kim Boon - mid-channel! 

Dave at Lake Zurich Marathon Swim 

1 done 29 to go!

1st 10km swim marathon done, only 29 to go! Back niggle not as painful as I feared but ribs still quite sore so I guess that evens itself out. I'll be back in the pool tomorrow at 8.30am if anyone wants to join me for a few laps. Tomorrow's marathon swim is dedicated to my father-in-law Michael Freeman. Mike passed away a few months ago from pancreatic cancer. He was a huge support in many of my swims including across the English Channel and Manhattan Island. He was an inspiring man and a wonderful husband and father. He is hugely missed but if I can channel even just a little of his bravery and stoicism tomorrow will be a cruise.

Each swim I'm dedicating to a different person who has helped or inspired me in the sport of swimming. Today was for Steven Munatones, doyen of open water swimming and who recently had a major health scare. Wishing Steve all the best and thanks for all you do for our wonderful sport.

Mike Freeman 

30marathonswims30days - starts on Saturday

So the countdown has begun, my 30 marathon swim challenge will start this Saturday the 11th of June and run until the 10th of July. I've just got back from Georgina the physio who has taped up my niggling back injury and given me a green light of sorts (well she didn't say not to!) to start my swims. The injury, rather frustratingly, has nothing to do with swimming. I played in an overly competitive game of football two weeks ago and coped a very pointy elbow to the ribs. I've cracked ribs before so the sensation and discomfort were worryingly familiar, and although the rib pain is settling it has triggered various back and neck spasms that have proven to be more painful than the rib injury. Still I've committed to the next month of swims and hopefully with a good bit of physical therapy from Simon and careful management, I'll hopefully find things will continue to settle down as the month progresses. I'll be starting at 9am on Saturday and I'll keep posting updates as the swims progress. See you all in the pool.

30marathonswims30days

So this is my challenge - 30 consecutive marathon swims in 30 days. That is, 10km swum every day for 30 days. 

Every swim will be in the Sandford Parks Lido here in Cheltenham. The aim is to promote and support the Sandford Lido and encourage and hopefully inspire people to get down to their local swimming pools. 

I've been a big fan of the Lido ever since I first came to Cheltenham back in 2000. Over the years it has been a huge part of my training swims for various open water challenges from swimming the English Channel to the Channel of Bones in Hawaii to my Manhattan swim. 

The Sandford Lido has had a stuttering start to the year with a major boiler breakdown costing £15,000 in repairs and 3 weeks of heating at the start of the season (I've selfishly enjoyed having the pool to myself at times as the water temp dropped to only 10degrees!).  They have an ongoing struggle with the Cheltenham Borough Council to secure a new lease on the site and neighbouring car park. The public interest and publicity I can generate for the Lido will hopefully help raise some funds for them but more importantly reinforce the importance of this wonderful facility to Cheltenham and the wider area.  

Logistically this will be an interesting challenge. One 10km swim is a long training swim but quite manageable with my level of swimming fitness. Doing it day after day for 30 days becomes a much more difficult proposition. How will my shoulders and back hold up (not to mention my heart!). I can't afford to have a month of work so I will need to fit these swims in before and after work. Without a rest day how will the build up of muscle and mental fatigue affect me? 

I plan to keep a log of my progress here. 30 days of marathon swimming, 300km, 6000 lengths of the 50m pool, approximately 200,000 strokes. Anyone fancy joining me for a couple of lengths?  
 

Swimming the English Channel in a wetsuit

To some swimming the English Channel in a wetsuit is on a par with taking performance enhancing drugs to win the Tour De France, it's just not right. Swimming the English Channel properly means complying with certain long standing traditions - you start on dry land, you finish on dry land, you don't touch your support boat, any food or drink is handed to you whilst you tread water. You wear only a traditional swimming costume, one cap, a pair of goggles and you do it all under your own steam, no assistance whatsoever. In the words of Captain Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, "Nothing great is easy". Let's face it, if you allow wetsuits, why not fins and a snorkel, why not get in the boat and row across, or better yet take the ferry. I know all these things, I swam it properly in 2009 and to put it bluntly, I hated it. I was bitterly cold, my teeth were chattering two hours in, my muscles were shivering and it took every ounce of my will power to not get out. I swore after that swim that I would never do it again, I made a Steve Redgrave-esque declaration that if I ever even talked about doing it again I should be hit over the head with a shovel and I was happy to stick with this plan. I did do other long swims, some longer but considerably warmer, some colder but much shorter. It wasn't my intention to ever dip my toe in the English Channel again………and then along came the Arch to Arc. The Arch to Arc is an ultra triathlon from London to Paris. Run 87 miles, swim the Channel, bike 180 miles to Paris. Normally done in teams of 6, my wife suggested we do it as a two person team, she does the run, I do the swim and we share the bike. The caveat being as it's a triathlon the swim is wetsuit permitted. Nearly every Arch to Arc has been done with a wetsuit swim leg, technically it's not about swimming the Channel in accordance with Channel swim rules, it's about completing a triathlon event in accordance with traditional triathlon rules and so against my better judgement I said "hmmm, maybe, OK, I guess".

Somewhere mid-channel

That's how I found myself standing on a small pebble beach in the very dark hours of Friday morning the 7th of August. Zipped into my wetsuit and with a generous amount of Channel grease around my neck to ward of the wetsuit rub effect. Staring out into the darkness I could see the lights of my support boat bobbing up and down and beyond that, deep dark, nothingness. From the boat a hooter sounded to signify the start of my swim and I waded into the breaking waves and started swimming. I caught up with the boat and started swimming next to it, every breath I took I looked at the side of the boat, and slowly but steadily it led me straight out to sea and away from the white cliffs of Dover. Through the small cabin windows I could just make out someone steering the boat, occasionally a shadowy outline of a person wandering on the deck let me know I wasn't completely alone. In some ways the hardest thing about any long swim is dealing with what goes on in your head. When you are alone in the deep black sea with no one to keep you company, no one to chat to, nothing but a small bobbing boat between you and miles and miles of open ocean it's easy to slip into a negative mind set. Every time the boat crept ahead of me I would look at the steps on the back and think about swimming over to climb out. When a cold splash of water slipped down the back of the wetsuit or a rising tide of nausea started to creep into my stomach it was very hard to stay positive and think about anything other than how much further it was to swim. The one positive however was that no matter how tired I got, no matter how sick I was, I wasn't really cold, certainly not like I had been before. The wetsuit did its job to keep me insulated from the chill of the sea. It didn't make it easy, but it did make it slightly less awful! Even with a wetsuit you still have to swim for many, many hours. You still need to deal with all those mental dark moments, it won't stop you from getting sick, it won't propel you forward when the tides work against you but it will greatly reduce the effect of the cold. The sky started to lighten after about an hour of swimming and by 2 hours in the sun was creeping above the horizon. This coincided with the start of the vomiting; considering it took me 4 hours to start vomiting last time I swam the Channel this wasn't exactly progress. For the rest of the swim I would keep one feed down then vomit after the next one. I had done enough long swims and struggled with nausea often enough that the vomiting itself didn't bother me greatly but I knew the importance of keeping some nutrition going in. If you stop feeding because you feel sick then very quickly you run out of energy and everything becomes seriously hard work. The hours came and went, the tankers and ferries drifted by and I made what felt like slow progress towards France. I avoided looking up as much as possible, trying not to think about how much I still had to swim until at the 7 & 1/2 hr mark I was through to the French inshore waters. It took me two hours to get in from here last time and I was hopeful I could make it in quite a bit less this time. At the 8hour mark the pilot came on deck, it was the first time I had seen him all swim. He said to me that at my current pace I had an hour and a half to go but if I picked it up I would be in in an hour. Exhausted as I was I threw myself into it and started counting strokes and ticking off laps in my head - 100 strokes is about 3 laps of a pool, 300 strokes somewhere close to 400m, do that 6 times and I've swum for 30minutes. One last feed and then off again, the shore was close now but still tantalisingly far enough away. I did another 30minutes of hard swimming, counting strokes and they waved me in again for another feed, "How much further?" I asked and the reply was "about 10 minutes", I decided to skip the feed and just put my head down and when I saw that the support boat had stopped moving forwards I allowed myself another look up and there were the rocks of Cap Griz Nez. That was the moment that I allowed myself to believe I had made it, the last two hundred metres were almost enjoyable, I scrambled out on to the rocks and enjoyed that feeling of accomplishment and considerable relief in finishing a very long swim.    

Relief and completion

Most swimmers will find a wetsuit makes them quicker in a pool. For me it is a consistent 6sec per hundred which equates to 1minute per km or roughly 30minutes over the course of a Channel swim. I was nearly 2hours quicker this year than last time (9hrs 8min vs  11hrs 6min). Certainly the wetsuit sped me up slightly but critically without the slowing effects of hypothermia I was able to maintain my speed and even put in an extra spurt of effort in the last hour to ensure I hit the Cap. 

The swim was still extremely tough, if you haven't trained hard enough or prepared yourself mentally then a wetsuit is not going to guarantee you success. For most purists swimming the Channel in a wetsuit will never be acknowledged as a successful crossing. If anything it dilutes the achievements of those who did it the hard way. In the records of channel swimming there is no wetsuit category, in fact if you swim it in a wetsuit it's like it didn't happen! For me I've swum the Channel twice, once with and once without a wetsuit. Without was certainly harder solely because of my struggle with the cold. It is an immensely difficult challenge and one I am happy to have conquered twice, if I hadn't have swum it non-wetsuit I think I may well feel like I had taken a short cut. On the other hand, perhaps it is only because I have swum it the hard way that I can acknowledge that my second swim was just a little bit easier than it might have been.    

Many sincere thanks to my support crew - Rob, Simon and Finn who fed and watered me and without whose help I couldn't have made it at all. 

For the write up of the Arch to Arc and what happened next see our Arch to Arc blog.  

The New Challenge for 2015 - London to Paris Arch to Arc!

It's been a while since the last blog. This is mostly due to some frustrating ill-health. It turns out it is possible to do too much exercise! Not long after my last marathon swim of 2013, another length of Windermere, I went into atrial fibrillation (AF). For the non-medical people AF is a common but rather inconvenient heart rhythm disorder. The heart beat can become very fast, irregular and somewhat inefficient. Not very conducive to serious sporting activity, especially endurance sport. In my case it was a result of too many years of hard training and competing.

My Heart Beat at Rest! 

Fortunately it came under control after a few months of rest and medication and I was given the advice to ease back into the swimming and try not to over do it! So 2014 was a steady year for me, I also struggled with a nagging rotator cuff tear and then a 'swimmer's elbow' that persisted despite the low-key training schedule. I managed a few 'shorter' competitive races including the inaugural Evesham mile, the Devil's 2km Lido race and the Brownsea Island Swim which I won for the 3rd year. All the while I had this niggling concern in the back of mind that two years earlier I had signed up to an extreme challenge to rival anything I have done to date and that challenge was due to be done in 2015. In a moment of madness Vickie and I had entered the Arch to Arc - a mega triathlon from London to Paris. Vickie would run an 87mile ultra-marathon from London (Marble Arch) to Dover. I would swim across the English Channel again (despite my previous declarations) and then we would relay ride the 181 miles from Calais to the Arc de Triumphe in Paris. It seemed like a good idea back in 2012, not so great when I was in the critical cardiac unit in Cheltenham General! But all stories need a happy ending so follow our progress at our arch to arc blog, to see if we make it.

Lake Zurich Marathon Swim

The Lake Zurich marathon swim was my 3rd marathon swim and 4th race of this year. They have all been quite different in their locations, distances and settings. The year started with the 10km Eton race - a wet-suited affair in a fresh water rowing lake, I went one better than last year and won the race in just over 2hrs. The wetsuit however rubbed my neck raw and I swore that that would be my only wetsuit race for the year. The 2nd race was the round Brownsea Island 4 mile swim. A non-wetsuit sea swim on a glorious early July day. Last year I won outright beating all the rubber swimmers. This year I was again the first non-wetsuit but this time behind 3 'wetsuit assisted' swimmers which always smarts a little even though you know you have the moral high ground. Next up I swam the 14km, downstream, River Thames, Bridge to Bridge. Just me against the clock. I beat the previous course record by a minute and to make up for Brownsea it was not only the fastest time in a pair of speedos but beat the fastest wetsuit time also. I have swum in The Thames twice in the last few years and both times had some form of gastro afterwards. After this years' swim I was seriously sick for 48hrs, vomiting and miserable. I had timed the Bridge to Bridge to give me a good race 2 and 1/2 weeks before Zurich but as I lay doubled up in bed with nausea instead of enjoying a friends wedding I found myself questioning the wisdom of the swim.

Lake Zurich however is a beautiful, warm, clean stretch of immaculate fresh water. So clean it's used as drinking water (the same can't be said for the River Thames). In summer the lake can reach a balmy 25 deg C, wetsuits are allowed but at that temperature you would surely roast. The swim is a testing 26.4km long but with the warm water and spectacular scenery I had been looking forward to the swim all year.

I arrived in Zurich two days before the swim with Vickie and Dave Granger a great friend and keen open water swimmer who was also doing the swim. The air temperature was a baking 32deg and the first afternoon we eagerly jumped into the lake to cool off. Even Vickie who rarely gets in the open water without the neoprene enjoyed the bath like conditions. We endured two very hot and slightly uncomfortable nights prior to the swim. Nearly everyone I had mentioned this swim to would comment on how cold they assumed a swim in Zurich must be. As I lay in a pool of sweat the night before the race the reality of the Zurich Summer was in stark contrast to this common misconception. In the very early hours of Sunday morning and while it was still dark we headed to the far end of the lake for the start of the swim. Even as much as I was looking forward to swimming the build up to any long swim is a little nervy. The unknowns of a new swim, a bad nights sleep and quite how the competition would face up all weighed on the mind. The mass start and finding of support boat were the first difficulties to navigate. I was reasonably confident that with only 50 competitors it wouldn't be too tricky to find Vickie and the boat and although the organisers had stressed it was the responsibility of the swimmer to find their boat my plan was to get out fast and for Vickie and the boat to find me to save wasting time. The starting siren went bang on 7am and I pushed off quickly and before too long found myself out in front. I was swimming between kayakers and the smaller boats that were nearest to shore. Another swimmers' kayaker seemed to mistake me for someone else and started to paddle next to me, I had to wave him away to go find his own swimmer in case my crew saw him accompanying me and made the same assumption. A few hundred metres further out I had passed most of the boats and I could see Vickie and my support boat in the distance, I managed a quick wave and by the time I had swum the first km they were along side and we were making good progress down the lake.

The lake followed a gently curve to the right. So you could usually only see 5 or 6km at most ahead of you before you rounded the next corner. It was a good 6km from the start to the first bend and I was swimming quickly, strongly and had opened up a very comfortable lead. I was also reassuringly ahead of the record pace at that stage. In the information provided by the swim organisation they had highlighted various landmarks along the lake - churches, distinctive houses and marinas which were useful reference points with known distances. By 10km I had settled into a nice rhythm and felt reasonably strong. The only issue was a rising nausea that unfortunately accompanies many of my long swims and I decided to stick to the energy drinks and skip the gels. My pace was still fast but by then a minute or two off record pace and at nearly 2 and a half hours in my mind was starting to wander a little. Knowing you still have the majority of a long swim still ahead of you and feeling the fatigue of already covering a marathon distance it is easy to start feeling a little negative about what you are trying to achieve. Without anyone pushing me along I also had only myself to motivate me and I started looking up a little too often. The half way point was the church at Meilen and I could see the tall bell tower from 4km away. As always when swimming, distant points seem to take forever to get close and by the time I finally passed the ferry and church I was relieved but knew I was now 5 minutes off the pace and unlikely to get that time back. It wasn't long after this point that the sky that had been clear for the last few days started to look decidedly overcast and a large black cloud could be seen ominously moving down the lake towards us. 

The forecast had threatened thunderstorms in the afternoon and I had hoped to be finished by then but the weather looked like it had other ideas. Almost bang on the 4hour mark the calm flat lake turned into a choppy, churning mess. White caps crested on waves coming straight down the lake and rather worryingly I could see warning beacons flashing orange on the edge of the lake. The beacons warned of adverse weather, 40 flashes a minute meant beware and be cautious, 120 flashes a minute meant serious danger (lightning etc) and get off the lake immediately. The organisers had warned us if that happened the race would be stopped and although we could get back in after a storm had passed there would be no official times or recognition of the swim. While swimming I could only glimpse the flashing lights and had no way of counting them so I just had to keep hoping they were staying at the slower rate. It was tough going, straight into a driving head wind and unpleasant chop. I knew in these conditions it would be a long hard to slog to the finish and the finish time would be a lot slower than predicted. I stopped worrying about my pace and just tried to maintain a steady rhythm. I could see I was still making slow but steady headway so I just 

tried to focus on the next little landmark and not worry about how long it took to get there. We had nearly 2hours of this choppy, windy mess before the storm finally subsided and almost as quickly as it had arrived it was gone. The sky cleared, the water flattened and away in the distance Zurich and the finish line were finally in view. I finally succumbed to the nausea at this point and vomited all of the energy drink I had consumed in the last 6 hours, at least by then the end was in sight. The finish point always seems to take the longest time to reach, mostly I guess because once you can see it you just want to be there! As I often do at this stage of a swim I try not to look up too often and instead count strokes and tick off distances in my head; 100 strokes is about 150m or 3 lengths of the swimming pool, I tell myself not to look up for 500m just keep the head down and tick off the pool laps. Finally I could see the balloons over the official finish line, there were people waving and cheering at the end and my speed which had slowed down to a steady plod picked up along with the power in the kick. I confess to swimming the last 20metres butterfly, terrible showboating but I was amused to see Dave Granger repeating exactly the same trick 2 and a half hours later when he finished! 

After feeling nauseous, fatigued and exhausted for the last few hours while swimming, almost the minute I finished I felt great! The satisfaction of another iconic swim ticked off and the pleasure in winning a race seemed to make the physical pain melt away. It probably helped that the sun was now out in force and I was fully able to appreciate the beautiful setting. 

Some swims you finish and find yourself swearing that you won't do another long painful one ever again, other swims you start planning immediately for the next one. This was definitely the latter and having completed my main swim for the season I found myself starting to think about the next challenge. Two more marathon swims this year to go - Windermere and the River Dart and even bigger hopes for next year. Who knows I might even have to come back and do Zurich again one day.