Thursday 3^rd February 2022.  150 days to go.  Training has been a huge rollercoaster since I made these pages 7 months ago.  I had a great time swimming the length of Ullswater last July on a beautiful, sunny day but then my family and I caught Covid in August.  We were isolating and unable to travel to the Lakes for the Windermere end to end swim so I’ve re-entered that for September this year, a few weeks after the Channel.  Sadly, we lost my Dad 5 months ago so getting my head around that and training was, and still is, really tough.

Despite that, I had a good swim across the River Humber with the support of Humber Rescue and Hannah was amazing and is now an IronKid.  She proved the Geneticist who told us Hannah might never walk and talk absolutely wrong when she ran 1,000m in Bolton at the IronMan weekend last September.

With the support of some amazing friends, I was able to complete my 6 hour Channel qualifying swim and I’ve also passed my medical so that’s all the paperwork submitted and accepted by the Channel Swimming Association.  Hooray!

I’ve had a good few weeks of training lately despite everything.  I’m swimming around 8-9 hours per week at the moment which adds up to about 15 miles of swimming.  The plan is to slowly increase it to around 12 hours per week which I hope to maintain until I can start doing longer swims outdoors in May when the water is warmer.   

I’m still swimming outdoors at least once a week but the temperatures are very cold and outdoor swims are barely 10 minutes long right now.  A couple of weeks ago we swam outdoors and it was -1 degree air temperature and 3.6 degrees water temperature.  That was so cold it hurt.  I keep saying if it doesn’t make the Channel feel like a bath I won’t be happy.  I’m really hoping for a heatwave this Spring so the Channel is nice and warm by July.

With lakes and pools being closed for so long and then our personally tough summer, this has not been the journey I planned but hopefully now I can concentrate on training and get to Dover in one piece.  Keep your fingers crossed.

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June 2021.  

Thank you for visiting my page and thank you so much for supporting me.  I know it’s been a tough time for everyone lately so I’m very grateful.

The English Channel.  Phew.  I get a bit nervous just saying it.  21 miles in the sea, the dark and, most significantly for me, in the cold water.  I signed up in January 2020, three months before COVID hit, and promptly lost the best part of a year of training.

I don’t really know where my desire to swim the channel came from except I remember it was the top entry on my first ever bucket list when I was 18.  Where does the time go?!

Why do I want to do it now?  When I was training for Ironman UK I loved that every morning my daughter Hannah would ask me what I had planned that day, swimming, cycling or running.   As a family we try to model a healthy, active lifestyle for her, especially important given some of her challenges.  Now we’re trying to teach her that there is absolutely nothing she can’t do if she works hard and always tries her best.  I’m hoping that she sees my channel training as something positive, a dream fulfilled through hard work and regular practice.

In the next few months I’m also planning on swimming the length of Ullswater (7 miles), the length of Windermere (11 miles) and across the River Humber.  Hannah is hoping to run the IronKids fun run which should have marked exactly 1 year before my big swim but has been postponed until September.

I’m already training hard but there’s a very long way to go yet.  Last week I swam 7 miles in the pool (my longest ever swim so far) and this week I swam 10km/6.2 miles in the lake at Welton Waters (my longest ever open water swim so far).  

To give you some idea of the challenge, there have been around 2428 solo crossings of the English channel compared to over 4000 people who have climbed to the summit of Mount Everest.  Yikes, that’s a bit terrifying.

So, onto the charities I’ve chosen to support.  I hope you’ll forgive how personal they all are and also that I’ve chosen 3 but they’re very special to me and I think this might be the biggest thing I ever do.

* Dove House Hospice.  October 2021 will mark 20 years since my Mum died after a short battle with cancer and a few weeks before I swim she would have celebrated her 80^th birthday.  Dove House Hospice gave both my Mum and my family amazing care.

* Special Stars Foundation.  Special Stars is a local charity that provides activities, support, training and advice for people with significant learning and physical disabilities and their families.  Hannah has 4 genetic disorders, they are so rare that she is thought to be the only person in the whole world with these exact disorders.  Having a child with special needs can be lonely and very scary.  We have been lucky enough to attend many different sessions with Special Stars and it’s wonderful to know that no matter what happens, we are welcome and will never be judged. 

* St. Anne’s School.  This is Hannah’s wonderful special school where she started at 2 years old after an ‘outstanding’ pre-school decided they wouldn’t allow our amazing daughter to attend.  She’s thriving, doing a huge long list of things we were told she probably wouldn’t ever do and, most importantly, she’s happy at school and absolutely loves going.  She will hopefully attend until she’s 19 and we’re excited to see what amazing things she learns in that time.

Thanks for reading this far, that was quite an essay wasn’t it?!

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