Hi Everyone!

So that's it, it's all over.  For those who may not know, I left the beach at Samphire Hoe, Dover at 0319 Tuesday morning.  After 9 hours 30 mins and 56 seconds, I climbed (with little dignity) onto a boulder at the rocky beach at Cap Gris Nez, France a little before 1pm GMT in blazing sunshine.

The weather Gods smiled down on us after two weeks of what can only be put as pure mysery, and we had relatively calm water, with an 8 knot tail wind blowing us to France.

The swim was simply the most incredible thing I have been through and I will never forget it.  The best moment of the swim was realizing that I was going to make it within the next half an hour, and my brilliant crew started throwing Jelly Babies at me, telling me to hurry up and get there.  However, it was the final stroke when my hand grazed against a rock under the water, and the feeling that I had made it that I will never forget.

Thank you all for your support, it really has meant an aweful lot to me how supportive everyone has been over the past year.  So far we have raised over £2000 for Barts and The London charity - maybe we can make a little more?

Thanks again, and enjoy the rest of the summer sun :-)

Much Love

Trev

Ladies and Gents,

All be it two weeks later than expected, I've had the call and my crew and I will be setting off across the channel tomorrow morning!

At about 4am, I'll jump off the boat and swim to the start line on a small beach at Samphire Hoe, Dover and get out of the water. Then I have to get back in again to start the swim as I have to start from dry land.

From then on it will be constant swimming for something like 12-14 hours with feeds every hour for the first two, then every half an hour from then on.

The twitter site again is www.twitter.com/trevgaunt and the charity page it JustGiving.com/trevsbigswim. One of my crew will be updating the twitter page with a running commentary and some photos of the swim - hopefully you'll see how close the container ships actually come to the boat!

Any messages anyone might want to send will get to me via blackberry, but I'm afraid there'll be no reply as my guys will be very busy with feeds etc.

Some terminology:
Feed/Maxim - a very high calorie carbohydrate drink that channel swimmers use to keep glycogen up
NE shipping lane - the first shipping lane, closest to England
Separation zone - Essentially half way
SW shipping lane - the second lane closest to France
Ebb tide - water flowing east, reaching high tide at its peak
Flood tide - water flowing west reaching low tide at its lowest

Finally, a huge thank you, weather I'm successful or not, to everyone who has been part of my incredible past 13 months. Thanks for all your support and general enthusiasm for what I'm doing.

Lets hope it finishes well :-)

So please pray for clear skies and still winds, and I hope to catch as many of you as I can when I'm back in London.

Much Love

Trev

 

 

Hi Everyone,

And so training is over.  13 months of swimming, weight gaining and complete lifestyle over-haul is finished.  My last taper swim in Dover harbour was a nice slow 4 hour swim in still wind with sunny intervals.  Perfect channel swimming weather.  The window opens this coming Sunday (15th August) so any time after then, I'll be getting a call from my pilot Andy King who will say something along the lines of "The weather looks good, we're going tomorrow". 

I honestly can't wait to step on the beach and start swimming to France.  I'll not write much more before the swim, but please take the time to look at my twitter page to follow my progress on the day:

www.twitter.com/trevgaunt

Thanks as ever for your support and I'll be sure to tell all when its over.  For now, please pray for sunshine ;-)
The sun has shone brightly, the wind has blown hard and the Channel gods have been both angry and happy with us.  There have been some bad sessions, but most have been great. 

From early may where you can read about my first session in the harbour below, to the run-up to the big day.  The big day came when I managed my first 6hour harbour swim in 13C water.  All channel swimmers have to do this to qualify to do the swim.  Luckily the sun shone for the majority, but 6 hours of being a bit chilly, and really tired by the end was pretty miserable.  But alas, we all got through it and we're stronger for it.  I need to do a couple more big swims in the harbour.  These will take the shape of one more 7/6hour Saturday/Sunday and a couple of smaller taper swims leading up to the opening of my window in mid-August. .If you want to read a little about the type of training I've been doing, scroll to the pink text...  If you want to read about why I've decided to try and swim the channel, check out the blue text below!  Thanks for visiting anyhow...

"Welcome to the crucible of misery"

5.30 am bank holiday Sunday my alarm goes off.  It’s bucketing down with rain, the air temperature is 10C and I’ve had about four hours sleep.  This is how my first Dover harbour training day started.  To be honest I was kind of ready for it, as the BBCs weather report I had read the night before might have well had said “Cold and rain, chin up” but I was still hoping they were wrong.  By about 9am the rain had gotten better, and then worse again and as a cold looking Dover harbour came in to view as we reached the coast, one of the other swimmers turned to me and said “welcome to the crucible of misery”.  I thought this was a bit over the top as he knew I was a newbie to all this, but it still seemed as though there was an element of truth to what he had just said. 

On the beach, I realised there was nowhere to get changed.  So after a brief period of losing all my dignity changing into my beloved Speedo’s in the middle of a rain sodden harbour car-park, I made my way down to the tent where the beach team were waiting.  Little time passed before a whistle was blown and I was pushed in the direction of a nice chap named Barry.  Barry was a 60 something year old man, sporting a bright yellow jumpsuit one rubber glove and holding a huge tub of Vaseline.  Before I knew it my arm pits were covered in grease and I was running down to meet the chilly waters of the Channel being yelled at to swim to the harbour wall and back.  And the rain fell harder.

We did two swims that day with a period of redressing (again, with little dignity) and warming up in between, but the most important thing was that although it was about the most miserable May bank holiday on record, it was really good fun.  Initially I was very apprehensive about it thinking “have I put on enough weight and have I done enough cold water swimming?”  The answer is, not just yet – I need to put on more weight to really be able to cope with long swims in single or low double figure temperatures.  So now one of my five meals a day consists of simply a tray of Tesco value butter flapjack and 100g of marzipan.  2000 calories in one sitting... yum. 

In the coming weeks the swims in the harbour get longer, and the water not too much warmer.  But at least it might be sunny, and I won’t be a grinning idiot in the rain.  I’ll just be a grinning idiot.

Thanks as ever for your support.

Crazy Training...

So my facebook status might  have seemed a bit odd - but it was kind of planned...

"6250m, 90mins, 4 hours sleep, empty stomach - felt awesome!"

If you're interested, read on...

Something that the wise old channel swimmers have practiced during their training is something known as total body confusion or TBC. The idea is that instead of training in a decent routine where you adapt quickly and easily to different sets of swims and alike, you swim way out of your comfort zone. Normally for a pool swimmer, that's swimming with a regular routine with plenty of sleep the night before and a decent meal inside you a couple of hours before-hand. Not so for channel swimmers.

The channel is, as I've said before, nothing like a pool in the slightest - other than it too, is wet. TBC prepares you for any eventuality it can throw at you:

It's bloody cold - so you swim in COLDER water
It's bloody rough - so you swim in ROUGHER water
You might get called out to start in the middle of the night - so you train AT night
You therefore might not have had much sleep - so you swim sleep DEPRIVED
You'll get hungry in the middle of the swim - so you train on an EMPTY stomach

So OK you don't do this EVERY session, and it does seem a bit extreme but it seems to work for other people so I've taken it on board, and strangely, it was a lot of fun.

Thanks again for reading

Why am I doing this?

So you've taken the time to look at my page, maybe you'll be willing to read a little more so I can tell you a bit about me and what I'm trying to do...

I grew up by the sea, so naturally, I swam.  I've been alive 25 years to date and so far as I know, and as far as my parents can recall, not one of those 25 years has passed without me splashing about in a body of water in one form or another.  I learned to swim in a pool.  A pool with warm, clear water and lines on the bottom so you could see where you were going.  All the way through my childhood, adolescence and now into my adulthood I raced and competed in different events from club to national level.  I embraced the Chlorine, and so did everyone around me.  They had no choice...  I wouldn't say I have ever been bored of pool swimming; I've had some great experiences with it.  But last summer, something changed. 

The English Channel is clearly visible from the landing window of my parent’s house in Hastings, and there has always been something about it that has attracted my attention.  It's cold, salty, unpredictable, full of ships and rubbish and just over 20 land miles long.  Cool.

Last summer I decided I wanted to swim the Channel.  So I set about learning how to train and best prepare for it.  The wise and experienced Channel swimmers have plenty of advice that seems well founded.  Put on weight, eat as much as you can, swim in cold water in the winter, train in Dover harbour in the summer, take cold showers every day.  But most of all try not to go mad with the fact that you'll have to spend maybe 24 hours in the cold salty channel, part of it in the dark, being stung by jelly fish, whilst trying to navigate your way to France following a small boat with a bloke who is trying to steer you across the nautical equivalent of the M25 whilst avoiding the biggest mistake of all - looking towards France.  I've been told it doesn't get any closer...  Apparently it is 20% physical, 80% mental.  I guess that remains to be seen for me.  Channel swimmers banter about the "lure of the Channel".  I'm not going to try and explain what it means, mainly because I don't think I know myself.  All I know is that it's there, and i want to swim it.

I'm raising money for the charity associated with my medical school hospitals, Barts and The London Charity.  They fund many projects from scientific research to redecoration of the children's ward.  They do a great job.  I don't have a particular target in mind, but I'd like to think that I can raise a decent amount of money for them. 

So please, take a look at my page and follow my training.  Those who are well experienced in Channel swimming, I hope to join you this summer.  Until then, laugh at my naivety, but some advice would be much appreciated along the way.  Those who are not experienced in this crazy world, laugh at my stupidity and the fact that yes... I do wear Speedo's. 

Thanks for reading, and please join my Facebook group "Trev's Big Swim"

Cheers

Trev