Channel RECAP

Hey team! Happy 2016!

Cheers over the Channel

I'm back in the US and the holidays have wound down, so I wanted to update you all on my channel adventure as we begin this New Year!

First of all, thank you so much for all of your support throughout my training and beyond. It could not have been done without all messages, phone calls, training buddies etc.  Also, THANK YOU so much for your donations for the National Alliance on Mental Illness-San Francisco! We were able to donate $2,000, which is incredible! So thank you, thank you, thank you.

I thought I would recap my swim a bit, for those of you who are interested and haven’t heard about it yet. But if you want the TL:DR version: it took me 10 hours 33mins and was the best swim of my life and thanks for supporting me!

The Crew

My swim took place on 9/7/2015. The few days leading up to the swim were pretty nerve wracking, especially while observing the fickle channel weather. I tried to keep myself in the dark regarding the weather because I knew that it would only make me nervous and was completely out of my control. But, my pilot Reg, pulled through and managed to secure me a great day. I slept pretty fitfully the night before my swim, but I had been resting a lot in the previous days so I wasn’t too worried. Upon waking up, I put my pre-swim playlist on and got down to business aka trying to trick my nervous tummy into eating breakfast and putting on my first layer of my sunscreen concoction. I also checked Facebook at 4:00am and had a friend request from Lynne Cox aka my idol and decided that was a SIGN of my future success. I arrived at the dock  in Dover around 4:45am. It was full with about 12 other swimmers and their crews, and even though it was too early to tell, it was obviously going to be a great day.

Dock Dance Party

Pre-swim vibez

Another swimmer and I chatted a bit, which helped to calm my nerves. Once we found Reg, my mom bid us farewell, we pushed away from the dock and headed towards Shakespeare Beach. I slathered on the rest of my sunscreen concoction, attached my lights to my suit/cap and got ready to shed my parka. Reg stopped offshore and I leapt off the boat to swim into shore.

Being that it was still dark, I pretty much face planted climbing out of the water. Plus the beach is pebbled, which is hard to walk up, plus I am not graceful on land. Once I cleared the water, Reg blew the horn and I fell back into the water to begin my swim.

Traditionally, the first hour or so is always the worst part of my swim; I never feel warmed up, my pace is erratic and quitting seems viable. But knowing that about myself, I can gather enough inertia to get myself past that initial rough patch. My channel swim was no exception, the first hour I ended up throwing up my breakfast, my breathing was off and I was trying really hard not to sneak peeks behind me at the coastline. (You see the cliffs of Dover forever, which is really psychologically brutal). But luckily, the sun began rising and I had an eye on a boat piloting another swimmer so I did my best to focus on catching up to the other boat (not that I was racing it…).

Somewhere in the middle of the Channel

After I stopped for my first feeding, I felt myself fall into place mentally. I decided that all I needed to focus on was keeping this food down for the next 30 mins. I had been worried that I threw up early on in my swim, because getting sick is one of the things that can derail a long swim. Once my second feeding rolled around, the sun was fully up and I hadn’t been sick again, so I was feeling good.

I kept focusing on the other boat that was slightly in front of me and figured that I could just keep chasing it all the way to France! I was super worried that if I didn’t swim fast enough that France might escape me (which was not happening again!!). Once I was in the middle of the channel, with neither shore in sight, it finally dawned on me that I was really swimming in the channel. And I actually started to have fun. That moment of joy really gave me a lot of energy, but then I had a near miss with a jellyfish, which renewed my focus. I naively had not brought any sort of remedy on the boat for stings, a fact which I realized mid-swim, so I decided that being stung wasn’t an option.

In fact, I can pretty much distill my swim into moments of joy, avoiding jellyfish and asking about my pace during feedings. A lot of people asked me what I thought about while I swam, and to be honest, I can’t remember. This was the first time that I have truly just been present during an athletic endeavor. I knew stuff like that happened to other people, but it had never happened to me before. The time just melted away and I just kept moving my arms towards France. I know that probably sounds really zen and annoying (or at least that’s what I thought about “being present”) but that’s what it was.

Approaching France, tryna beat the Lousie Jane

About a mile offshore, things got interesting. At this point, I was swimming near another swimmer, which was exciting and motivated me to finish first (I sometimes get really competitive and it always surprises me). The wind had picked up a bit, so the water was choppier and they told me I needed to pick it up.  I figured that sprinting this last mile would be easy since that’s what I did like every week in college, but I failed to account for the 9plus hours of swimming that I had just done.  So it didn’t feel that great, but France was like really in my face, which meant it was go time. At one point, I thought that they said that I was going to miss my landing, and freaked out a bit, because the end is always the most difficult.  But I willed myself to focus once again, because I certainly was not going to let it all unravel now! By the time they put the dinghy in the water, things were real choppy and I also could tell that I was going to be landing on boulders. Ray, the first mate, instructed me to follow him into shore, touch a rock and get into the dinghy.

Channel Crossed! 

I approached the rocks and even though Ray cautioned me that they were sharp, I decided that I was invincible and that I wanted to climb up on the rocks as far as possible. Well as you can guess, that turned out to be a terribly conceived idea. As I am being slammed against a barnacled boulder, I thought to myself “this is how people who know how to swim drown”.  So I got smart, touched the rock and got my ass outta there. I climbed into the dingy, bleeding from my rock adventure and watched myself zoom away from the finish line. Getting from the dinghy to the big boat was another feat of focus, and required a bit of coordination due to the chop. But after 10 hours and 33 mins of swimming, I found myself back on the boat as a newly minted channel swimmer.

Reg made me some tea and let me sleep in the cabin on the 3-hour trip back to England. He said I was fast like Chloe McCardel and should do a 3-way, to which I said thank you but no thanks. My mom greeted us at the dock and took us home for my requested meal of fish and chips. I took the first warm bath in over a month, and although it felt like my skin was going to burn off, it was pretty glorious.

Signing the Ceiling of the White Horse

My shoulder held up pretty well thanks to my bomb physical therapist, ibuprofen and the last minute decision to have the boat on my left side, but I was pretty cut up by my suit slash the rock adventure. Two-days post swim I met up my Channel swimmer friend Kerry in Dover. We did a cool down swim in the Harbor aka I doggie-paddled and I tried to make a swimming-like motion with my arms. Afterwards, we went to the White Horse pub to sign our names on the wall, next to generations of other swimmers. There was barely space left, but I managed to find a good spot and I ate more French fries (obviously).

I still have a hard time believing that I actually accomplished this goal, because I had been working towards this for about 8.5 years (counting the time before my first attempt in 2008). It’s strange to move on after such a long love affair, but I am excited to begin working towards other things.

The line

Thanks again to everyone who has been on my team. I’ve learned that no matter what you are doing, you’ve gotta have a team.  There are so many people that helped me along the way, so please do not take offense if you are not explicitly mentioned below*. First off, a special shout-out to my dad, Noah: thank you for the years of kayaking, crewing during my swims and for being my#1 fan. Thank you to my brothers Ezra and Jasper for their roles as my flawless crew/photographers. And to my mom, Martha: thank you for feeding me, listening to me cry/rant every time I lost hope and for keeping me on track. Thanks to all my friends for still being friends with me and thanks for being proud of me and bragging about me (Brusi & Madie). Thanks to people who brave the Bay with me (Katie, Maddy, Heather, Serena, Aly n Rachel).  Thanks to the ladies Dolores Huerta House for feeding me and supporting me during training. Also special shout-out to Grace, who kayaked next to me and helped me print all the t-shirts even though she was on vacation. Shout-out to lane 10 and the other Maddogs n ducks that I swam with. Thanks to Rick, who introduced me to open water swimming and tricked me into swimming the Tiburon mile for the food. And last but not least, so many thanks to my dear friend Leore, who was my pacer and training partner for my first attempt, without you I probably wouldn’t have made my first attempt.

Xo, Deelz

*If you do want to know why I specifically appreciate you, feel free to contact me and I will list the ways. 

Case closed