Below, the route I took from England to France. Across the top, from Dover to the separation zone, the tide was gentle and I was on a true course to Calais. A hard Southeast tide, on the second half of the swim, carried the Viking Princess II past Cap Gris Nez and added maybe file miles to the 22 mile crossing.
Dear all
I am slowly posting the Channel notes, all 43 of them, into one place on my blog. And here it is.
Have a mighty summer.
Jeff
Other than feeling like a fire truck hit me, I am mostly thinking, wow - did that just happen ? and then: I am glad that I am not swimming the Channel today. Or tomorrow. And likely again.
But the swim : 3:15am wake-up alarm, 4am meet-and-greet the pilot, ECA observer and Nils (Red Top coach) at the boat, 4:15am chug out of the harbour to a pebbly beach below a chalky cliff, slide into the sea (cold ! salty!), 5am start swimming.
The pre-sunrise water ghoulish and my goggles fill instantly and keep filling. Fuck. The heaviness of the swim made worse by the Dover Cliffs which never disappear no mater how far I go. This btw mirrored the second-half when the French coast stuck in place as I fly, parallel to the shoreline, on a strong tide eventually past Cap Gris-Nez missing the sandy Calais beaches before eventually landing on a rocky edge (NB I had to swim hard to reach France unaware of the potential drama of being swept back into the Channel and missing a beachhead altogether).
On the up, the sunshine on my back was divine, I had an amazing crew, and the Channel mostly flat eg perfect conditions. Interestingly, to me, when I switched to a higher-tempo stroke to counter the tide I could no long hold a thought, nor sing a tune, and the swimming rhythm became meditative causing a trippy perception of time speeding up, noted from the programmed 30-minute hydration/nutrition feeds, which started to feel like five minutes apart.
Making the landing a lifetime highlight, yes, triggering a euphoric feeling that has yet to leave me. A feeling that all the effort has been many times rewarded.
I am hopeful that the story will be retold, by me, my family and friends, well into the future, sitting on a sandy beach, looking into a never ending blue horizon.
Thank you, everyone, for your love and support on the Channel "project."
I have felt your presence during morning practices (which seemed like Midnight in January), the Croatia camp (87km in one week), cold water preparation in the SF Bay (down to 10C) and the Thames (to 5C, with a wetsuit) which has powered me through the hardest days (six hour swim ! 5:45 wake up !) and the best days (six hour swim ! 5:45 wake up !).
Your emails, texts and wishes will be on my mind this Sunday.
As it stands now, I will swim the English Channel on Sunday, July 28, early morning UK with the exact start-time TBD. I will update as the swim gets closer.
Soon to meet Goliath.
I am still on the Berkeley High leader board with records for the 500 yard and 200 yard freestyle set in 1985. There have been a few close misses over the years and I am cheering for the times to come down.
BHS swim coach Michael, a Berkeley High graduate around my time, keeps me up to date on the men's program while childhood friend Amanda (my year, '85) does the same for the BHS women as head coach of water polo and, until recently, swim teams.
The time and work, the swimmers and swim-teams and friends, the communities and the coaches and the time race times jumble together. What is clear : it is the journey where the adventure lays rest.
Photo from a 'yellow jackets' swim meet earlier this year in Berkeley.
Below, senior year. The flat-top from local barber Tony who got rich from customer stock tips and retired at 50.
I was going to shave it all for the Northcoast Championships only the finals were the same day as Senior Prom and my girlfriend Malaika was having none of that. Going into Northcoast I was seeded first in the 500 yard and 200 yard freestyle and came in 4th and 6th, respectively.
Well, and here we go, the English Channel season is open with water temperatures at 16C (60.8F). A few awesome swimmers from the Croatia camp have now made it across and also reaching Calais this week is Berkeley High senior Maya Merhige who finished in 11 hours and 39 minutes (no pressure here) making her one of the youngest swimmers to complete the Triple Crown of open water swimming, which includes the Channel, the 20-mile Catalina Channel and the 28.5 miles "20 Bridges" around Manhattan. Maya has one hell of a college essay.
I am indebted to my coaches Tim and Nils at Red Top Swim for focusing my imagination on the English Channel and convincing me that I can do it. Both have swum the Channel and Red Top has successfully taken c 200 swimmers from Dover to Calais. In short, good hands.
I do not train with the club given the Red Top pool is located on other side of London yet I feel Tim and Nils' influence on most things I do in the pool. Specifically, beyond the coaching, they have devised a distance program, including the Croatia camp, and held me accountable; secured the VP2; provided a hydration and nutrition schedule for the crossing and carbo-loading beforehand; and offered encouragement throughout.
Nils, at the bottom of the photo, will be on the boat and is intense. I fear that he is going to make me do 100 push-ups once I reach Calais.
I wore the yellow cap and embedded goggles to age-group and early HS meets concerned that my 'compi' goggles (no longer made) would fill with water from the block-dive. I was aware it was intimidating to the others swimmers.
The picture appeared in b&w in the 1983 Berkeley HS year-book with the singular caption "spider man" and the original photograph lost forever until I visited the newly rebuilt, and modern, Berkeley High School pool several years ago when, there it was, taped to a metal cabinet in the coach's office.
For the Channel crossing to be valid, the English Channel Association dictates a latex cap, pair of goggles and a swim suit not falling below the groyne. Animal fat smeared on the body is optional - some use it, I won't. There will be an official ECA observer on the Viking Princess II to ensure the regulations are met.
Simon, pictured below in the River Thames, I call the 'Pied Piper' as he has 'led', for 20-years, a group of 30 masters who gather weekly to swim in an open bend of the river west of the Teddington Lock so non-tidal.
The group is seasonally agnostic and happy to toil in the pitch dark pre-dawn wintertime, wearing luminescent lights, when the water temperature can drop to below 5C. Wet suits are optional. The comaradarie is obvious from the complaining.
I join Simon and maybe one or two others to head further up the river and back, sometimes as far as five miles.
A comment on water quality : UK rivers struggle from under-investment in infrastructure and lack of care for >20 years. Thames Water faces bankruptcy and will likely be nationalised again soon. Yet, on the up, there are 24/7 monitoring sites for all UK rivers and available apps show most days are clean and green-lit for swimmers (in short: don't river swim after a storm).
A better sign of the river's health : we are joined by a friendly seal checking us out two weeks ago.
Simon is the founder of Outdoor Swimmer magazine, at your local news rack anywhere.
I was (am) a distance swimmer for the simple reason that I was less good at the shorter lengths and other strokes. My freestyle technique, a two-beat crossover, was not pretty and, further, I was a small kid, 5'8", 98 pounds, until Switzerland when I grew three inches in one year.
To compensate for the lack of, well, everything necessary to be fast, I worked and worked and worked. School mornings were two pool hours before class, by myself or with Katie, thanks to Berkeley coach Bill G. who made special workouts for the two of us from age 11, and afternoons with the team. I added weights, chords and stretching to the routine, showing up to workouts early and finishing late. By 9th grade I snuck into the Cal Memorial football stadium to run bleachers (80 rows) before practice and to this day the hardest and most painful thing I have ever done to myself.
There was zero distraction and little teenager angst given the family and community around me. Today I train with a similar group of committed diehards who are often chasing personal objectives beyond PBs or winning.
From today I start tapering, reducing from 37km last week to 20km this week and 10km the next.
Photo from 8th grade:
An athlete changing a sport is a rare thing while there are many swimmers/ races that have reset the high-bar - to name only a few, Mary T Meagher's 200m butterfly WR in 1981 took 20 years to break; Mark Spitz and Michael Phelps of course. Tracy Caulkins was the greatest multiple-stroke competitor of a generation and the marvellous Katie Ledecky still reigns supreme in the distance events.
But here I focus on Dave Berkoff, Harvard '89 (my graduation year and friends with sister Katie, also on the Harvard swim team). Physically unremarkable at 5'10" and 155lbs, his revolutionary backstroke start and turn dove underwater for 35-40m in a 50m pool using a wavelike dolphin kick and streamlined locked arms. It was a novel thing and, Berkoff realised, faster than surface swimming.
Using this technique Dave won NCAAs, US nationals and four Olympic medals and set backstroke WRs across his career. Berkoff's races elicited loud uninterrupted cheers until he popped up to take a breath and stroke or two before the wall then back underwater.
Today most every elite swimmer has strong "underwaters" regardless of the stroke. Fittingly, Dave's daughter Katherine qualified for the Paris Olympics in the 100m backstroke.
Photo of Dave Berkoff from the collection of Carl-Johansson/ Olympedia (1987)
Soviet distance swimmer Vladimir Salnikov was the first person to swim the 1500m under 15 minutes which he did at the 1980 Moscow Olympics with a time of 15:58.27. It was then the equivalent of the mythical four-minute mile or today's two-hour marathon.
I had the below poster of Salnikov pinned to the wall of my bedroom next to back-stroker John Nabor and Cheryl Tiegs. According to Swimming World magazine, Salnikov trained like blood and nails which, in an era of more-distance-is-better, was something I could relate to.
Salnikov dominated the late '70s/ early '80s winning every race he swam (400, 800 and 1500m) accepting once against California Jeff Kostoff in 1981 in the USA-USSR "friendship" dual meet. During this time Salnikov bettered 12 world records yet never received broad recognition due to the US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the Soviet Union staying away from LA in '84.
Today the 1500m world record is held by China's Sun Yang in 14:31.02 (highly likely doped) while there are six 16 year-olds who have gone under 15 minutes with Turkey's Kuzey Tuncelli finishing the distance in 14:41.90 at the Euro Junior Nationals last week Thursday (July 4).
My best 1500m time was 16:35 at 16 swum in Switzerland.
Vladimir Salnikov under 15 minutes, first time, July 22, 1980.
My junior year of HS (1983-84) was spent in Geneva training with Geneve Natation 1985. To do so, following manoeuvres by the Berkeley Barracudas, my parents and the Swiss national swimming coach (Tony Ulrich), I found myself living with a Swiss family (strictly French speaking) on rue de l'ecole de medecine while Claude, on the counter-exchange, stayed with my family (which btw did not work out as Claude expected Baywatch and got Northern California).
During this time I attended College de Candolle with all my coursework in French, a language that became helpful later in my professional life at Astorg, a French investment firm in the Paris 8e.
The real motivation for the year was, of course, the swimming where I trained with Dano Hallsal who set a world record in the 50m freestyle in 1985; Etienne Dagon who won Switzerland's first Olympics swimming medal, a bronze in the 200m breaststroke; and Theophile and Francois David and Thierry Jacot who competed in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.
From the right, Theo, Dano and Etienne (I do not know the fourth) at the 1983 Euro Championships.
My training so far (NB I committed to the Channel on December 31, 2023) :
Ours was a swimming family which meant up well before dawn and training in well-lit pools after dark, rain or shine.
My dad enjoyed the morning company since he was on his way to work anyway. Katie, on the other hand, a night owl to this day who persevered on limited sleep through high school and four-years swimming at Harvard (I swam two seasons for Brown). On the car ride to morning practice we counted every stop-light preying for red.
Surprisingly I do not have many age-group photos from the pool or at swimming meets, where we spent most of our weekends, commuting with other swimmers, Moe volunteering as a timer.
Here is Katie, my support team in most things.
The summer following college freshman year I swam with the local club, Little Rhody (eg Rhode Island) at the Brown aquatics center, a 50m by 25yd pool too shallow at the competition-end with an odd timber-roof that one could climb onto when one was drunk. Not that one would do so.
Sidebar: unsurprisingly the roof became structurally unsound and torn down in 2010 to make way for one of the best pools I know - the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center, which opened at Brown in 2012 and is big, deep and fast (racers feel it).
So the summer of 1986 I trained from 6-8am then painted houses until dusk then washed dishes at the upscale restaurant Cafe At Brooks (in the dicey Providence neighbourhood of Fox Point) which was fun since the head chef, Joe, was a RISD graduate with no culinary training. He would look at me and say, straight faced, "this one is coming back."
The waitresses were pretty and we were allowed an after-shift drink at the long brass bar after closing hours. Sometimes Providence mayor Buddy Cianci would drop by to tell stories about Federal Hill or the mob.
For some reason known only to a 19 year old I wanted bleached hair so, after morning practice, I added a lemon juice and salt mixture to my scalp. Below.
Here I am at summer's end painting the stairs of my parent's Berkeley house (Moe informed that my fees to be offset by the rent, a never ending joke between us (of course I paid no rent).
Everyone, or at least most, has their moment of doubt and I feel nothing less for the Channel. 14 hours is a lot of time to spend in a physical activity reliving whatever comes to mind and struggling undoubtedly with fatigue or periods of uncertainty. Once I start, there is no turning back accepting for the tides or hypothermia. The rest is mental.
A fair question, then, is why ? A considered answer, why not ? The English Channel is outside my comfort zone at a time (age 57) when the stuff that worries me most is mostly under my control or, at least, I have experienced it before. We will all be 73 one day or already, Ottis Thaning's age when he set the mark for oldest crosser. My body is not the limiting factor (says he).
I have made new friends whose similar journey has been inspiring. The goal itself has given meaning an appreciation beyond the Channel.
But, but, but the Channel - I fear the wide-open space and not seeing the shoreline. The fading-out of sea-light to black beneath my gaze. My imagination. Starting in darkness. The true time of a day.
The English Channel is the busiest sea route in the world and the Dover Straight, where I will cross, is the busiest shipping lane on the planet. More than 500 ships pass through the Channel daily including the biggest super tankers longer than the Empire State Building is tall.
To accomplish this, the coast guard uses radar surveillance and operates an IMO adapted Traffic Separation Scheme (eg two traffic lanes for inward and outward bound traffic; rules internationally agreed). Channel VTS is jointly operated jointly by the Dover Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre and CROSS Gris Nez in France. In short, the VP II will be visible.
Ultimately my pilot is responsible for ensuring a safety zone of several 100m minimum at all times. There will likely be moments when the large ships change course to avoid our path (tankers travel at 17-24 knots).
As I am now a month from the Channel I will swim one more long week of 40km then Taper down to 20km the week before D Day.
The oil tanker Hamilton Spirit, here in the Channel, is 274m by 48m with GT of 81,384 tons and DTW of 158,769 (image by TeeKay).
The Channel swimmers are now going with the water temperature an accommodating 14-15C at the Dover Strait and a nice heat wave to keep things calm for the while.
Swim-camp pal Paul, age 58, was to attempt the 26-mile Moloka'i Channel (meaning "the state of bones") connecting O'ahu and Moloka'i in Hawaii this week as part of the Oceans 7 only the winds uncooperative so instead he is dong the Bristol Channel as a training run - 16 miles point-to-point and work the next day.
Notably the Bristol Channel has one of the largest tidal ranges in the world, up to 18 meters (43 feet) and today's tide is on the extreme end.
Pictured, Paul at the half-way point of the Bristol Channel (photo from his brother).
The summer of my sophomore year of HS I made the jump from the Barracudas to the Walnut Creek Aquabears in the suburban valley. The squad had c 300 kids covering the age-groups to the older elites who were broken into groups, mine distance, which was gnarly but also respected. I spent the day between practice watching MTV with my new best friends whose silver hair was as bleach-blonde as my own. I fit in perfectly.
The Aquabears' success was driven, in large part, by head coach Mike Troy who was on the cover of Sports Illustrated for winning two gold medals in the '60 Rome Olympics and then a Navy Seal - in short, hard corps.
Mike sat in a fold-out deck chair under a sun umbrella with his clipboard in the baking heat, legs crossed and flip flops dangling from his toes, asserting himself across the 50m pool. He was aware of every swimmer's repeats or at least (more importantly) we thought so.
Mike had his favourites and, on occasion, he would bark out to one of us that we could have "the geek" (his beautifully preserved 1960s Karmann Ghia automobile) for the weekend if a specific time was held during a set. We went nuts.
It was a fast squad with bronzed HS girls and high standards. A combo so compelling that I qualified for my first Junior Nationals in the 1500m at 15.
Mike Troy at Heather Farms Aquatic Complex in Walnut Creek in 1983.
Every day I mark, with a thick black marker, my work. An "X" indicates a rest-day, so March had only two, a month I swam 125.6 kilometres.
Since January I have gained six-kilograms and, when I mentioned it to Coach he asked if my trousers still fit - they do - so it is mostly upper-body muscle. To put it another way, 1kg equals 900ml of muscle mass (1,100ml of fat) so I have added 5.4 litres of muscle volume in six months. The question, then, really, are my shirts, which still fit.
The Viking Princess II, piloted by Reg and Ray Brickell, will take me across the Channel. Reg and Ray are a father-son team who I have yet to meet while their reputation precedes them - they piloted both the men and women Channel record holders, an accomplishment of knowing the tides as much, or more so, than the swimmer's ability.
The Brickells are otherwise all-year fishermen excepting the two-months of the year when guys like me are willing to pay more than the daily catch.
In total, there are seven English Channel Association sanctioned boats chaperoning maybe 60 swimmers (including relays) in a season (NB the only crossing direction allowed is from England to France).
The VP II is a category 2 (NB "2"=60-miles from port or safe harbour) commercial catamaran that can hold a crew of 12. Initially I thought it would be nice to have supporters on the VP II but coach said "no way" as the likely outcome is PTSD from 20 hours of seasickness.
Here is the VP II which may be dragging a swimmer across the Channel.
Since committing to the Channel on December 31, and following a two month ramp-up, I now swim 30-35km a week, six or even seven-days a week, often twice a day, and finding a pool when travelling has become a thing. The laps are now my quiet place.
A staple of the training is a Monday morning set of 8x400m freestyle intervals on a 6:15 clock with a serious crew at the Richmond pool (NB three completed an Ironman on Saturday each finishing top-10 in their age group after the 2.4 mile swim with over 2,000 competitors).
In January, I was unable to make the 400 repeats. By February I finished but under extreme duress. By March I was averaging maybe 10-seconds recovery between intervals and now I can hold 5:45s.
Ron here usually leads the morning sets while I sit at the caboose of the five to seven of us doing the 400s set.
As a wise man once told me, "you always want to feel like you are on an upward slope" which swimming at 56 has certainly been.
Several have commented on what a sweetheart Matt Biondi was at Cal. I recall, on one ocassion, an over-sized dude on a two-wheel mini-bicycle cruising down busy Bancroft Way, knees wide-out, back hunched over and feet barely on the pedals and spinning furiously. Of course Matt on his way to swim practice. Legend.
Today's anticipated nine-mile race in Dover Harbour cancelled, last minute, by the Harbour Master: with winds reaching gale force by 10:00am leading to high swell with the harbour there runs the risk of the safety kayaks not being satisfactory craft for assisting persons in the water.
I am for better weather from July 26 to August 5 (NB the pilot has the final call on suitable conditions. If No, then it is next year).
Instead of Dover I swim at Shepperton Lake for about three-hours or 10km - 12 loops around and round and round.
Photo of Eitan and me at the lake last summer.
Continuing on the positive influencers, Sam, Ray and Maggi, on the Berkeley Barracudas, played an outsized role in my early theatrical life.
Sam was five-years older so we did not cross on the HS team when he set the BHS record in the 50 yard freestyle (21.04) which remained for over 20 years. Sam was tall, handsome and Larger Than Life, dating the older sister of a friend, and treated me like an insider even while I was a non-classmen, which felt pretty cool as a 95lb eighth-grader without much to say to girls (or anyone).
Ray, a ferocious breast stroker, saved the BHS swim team when the program was to be cut for budgetary reasons. Ray testified at a city commission that swimming kept him from the streets and had profoundly impacted his life. Without Ray, no BHS aquatics. He is now an artist and I have one of his paintings in our house.
Then there was Maggi, a backstroker, and we all - and I mean all of us - had a crush on her. Coach asked her to marry him but that is for another story (and era). Maggi, like Biondi, was a world class water polo player and a member of the US National team for ten-years. She competed in four World Championships, was named USA Water Polo Female Athlete of the Year in 1992, and inducted in the US Water Polo Hall of Fame in 2004. Maggi would have gone to the Olympics were women's water polo a sport in the 1980s and 90s (it became one in Sydney in 2000). Maggi contends for the greatest athlete I have known in my lifetime. She is now a professor at UC Berkeley.
Sam, Ray and Maggi live in Berkeley. Phot of Maggi from the Berkeley High Year Book.
From an early life-time in the pool I have had the fortune of swimming with/ against/ observing some of the very best in the sport including a GOAT (at the time), American and NCAA record holders, World record holders, Olympic medalists, NCAA champions, a runner-up NCAA championship team (Cal) and the Swiss national team during an Olympics year. All of it before I went to university.
Starting with the easiest : Matt Biondi, a tall muscular kid from Moraga (over the hill from Berkeley) dropped, full-prime, into my sophomore year of high school when, in 1983, he stepped onto a racing block at Cal's new Spieker pool for the 50-yard freestyle final at the Northcoast Swimming Championships. With the sun blazing and the stands screaming "Bee-On-Dee", Matt went 20.40 - a national high school record.
From HS Matt went to the summer Olympics in '84, '88 and '92 winning eleven medals including eight gold. He set world records in the 50m and 100m freestyle. At Cal for college, he swam and played water polo with NCAA titles and American sprint records from the get-go.
I trained with Cal my senior year HS so Matt and I were in the changing room though, really, he paid me no mind. It was hard, for me, not to be star-struck especially when seeing him hit NCAA automatic qualifying times (top 16 from the prior year) in mid-week practice.
Also on the Cal team was John Mykkanen, a Cal freshman and with me in the distance lane. Mykkanen won a silver medal in the 400m freestyle in the LA '84 Olympics; he also set a US high school record in 1983 in the 500yd freestyle at Socals with a 4:19 only it was second-place to Jeff Kostoff who went 4:16. John had an awkward technique with one arm crossing his head on the catch-up forcing an extraordinary body contortion mid-stroke. He was also overweight which is difficult when swimming so much. But, hey, it worked for him. His daughter Courtney went to Cal and swam at the 2012 Olympic trials.
Matt Biondi at the '88 Seoul Olympics. Photo from the Cal Top 100 Athletes website (Biondi number 10).
Visiting childhood friend David in Basel I swim what's there, or at least nearby, which is the Rhine.
There has been considerable rain in the Alps and the water level of the river is about 15 feet higher than normal and the current is easily 8 knots. So David and I check it out and thumb it 'safe,' as long as I swim close to the river's edge.
Next morning I skinny down the steep granite steps, flippers in hand, and think to myself, "this is rather stupid," and edge into a hard current and start wailing away as hard as I can, heading down stream - wrong way - thinking: this could actually be dangerous.
Eventually I find purchase and work my way back, against the current, averaging maybe 20 meters every 2 or 3 minutes until I find an inlet that allows me to hold my place. Long and narrow commercial boats go by. Pedestrians look down and watch me like I'm crazy. I swim for 80 minutes.
As my coach Tim says, "you swim what's in front of you" which is true for many things beyond the Rhine.
Random selfie at David's house nicely suggesting the "why" of what I am doing.
The English Channel ("La Manche" in France) is an 'arm' of the Atlantic Ocean that links the southern part of the North Sea by the Dover Strait at its northeastern end. It was formed by a complex structural down-folding from c 40 million years ago though geologists debate that its downward tendencies began as early as 270m years ago from off-and-on movements of the glaciers, rock and ice.
Its deepest point, Hurd's Deep, is 180 meters below sea level (the average depth is 63meters). The Chunnel, for context, is sunk to 75meters. By contrast, the Channel is 560km long and 240km wide at its extremes; the narrowist, where I will swim, is 35km from Dover to Calais.
The surface area measures 29,000 square-miles with water volumes of approximately 2,200 cubic miles so, basically, the Channel is a giant funnel that boosts the tidal range (the difference from high to low water) from less than a mater at sea level to over six meters.
Rusty checks out the Dover Cliffs, below. It is the kind of day I am hoping for.
Station 62304, also known as the Sandettie Lightship, provides a general sense on how at least one micro-climate is developing in the middle of the Channel.
Were I to swim today, the wind-speed would be c 16-knots in a northerly direction (10 degrees true) with wave heights of around four-feet and an average period in-tween of six-seconds. Note that a wave is measure from the backside from the crest to sea level; the face can be up to 2X bigger when facing front, as any surfer knows.
Today, at the buoy, the measured water temperature is 12C. Visibility five-miles. The readings, while normal for now, are not ideal for swimming and can readily cause hypothermia or sea sickness.
The official season for a crossing really begins in July, when water temperatures are around 14C (and climbing) and the weather calmer. June may be a few degrees colder but there is less competition for a pilot.
And so why now ?
I lost my hard-earned swimmer's identity sophomore year of college when I quit the varsity team, a group I found to be a real bummer, to join the cross country and track teams - the best Brown has produced for the distances.
My swimming interest rekindled c ten years ago when a group of childhood friends introduced me to the SF Bay, whose cold water in wintertime a novel and eccentric experience. Yet there I was, re-united with some awesome dudes, yelping with the best of them when the water temperatures below 12C. Often enough, ADHD'd from jet lag, I was in the pitch-black bay watching the sunrise across the SF skyline. Or, equally good, in the bay within one hour of landing at SFO.
From there, I began pool training in London but never more than a couple thousand meters since .. boring. Also lap swimmers hated on me (tumble turns !) and the public pools are, well, public, so there was not motivation to routinise a training program, no matter the health mind benefits.
The spur was Diana Nyad's attempts - and success - swimming from Havana to Key was (105 miles, 52 hours) at 64 (Yes, I watched the film). Nyad is from California. She had a purpose. If Nyad, why not the Channel ?
I signed up with the English Channel Associations and then Red Top Swim whose Head Coach, Tim Denyer, a serious guy. the Viking Princess II had a slot in July (the wait time can be two-years) and I was good to go.
At the Dolphin Club, SF Bay, with Ken, a fellow deep swim enthusiast :
Kirk Ciapella, my first coach, oversaw the Berkeley Barracudas and was part of my daily life until about 8th grade, a period covering 1977 to 1982. The Barracudas was a rag tag group of committed swimmers and personalities - Kirk himself a holdover from the hippie era or at least carried that vibe - in a sport many would consider intense, everything with Kirk was chill and fun, a perfect attitude for my early career.
Next came Bill Gaebler who guided me from 7th grade through High School where he coached the men and women's water polo and swimming teams. When I started doing double workouts from 7th grade (age 11) Bill opened the King pool, 6:30AM sharp, for the Berkeley lap swimmers and provided me a lane and individual workouts every day of the school week. I believe Bill took particular pride in my high school class given those were his early years of coaching and the squad set a number of school records, a few which stick today. Bill recently retired as head of BHS Aquatics after 40-years and generations of athletes.
Then came Kim Musch who headed the Golden Bear Aquatics program for the all-year age-group swimmers and local Cal swimmers who needed a summertime club. Under Kim I qualified for "short course" Junior Nationals in the 500 yard freestyle (consolation finals) and 1650 yard freestyle (top 10) in 1984 and Senior Nationals in the 4x200 freestyle relay in 1985. Because of Kim I trained senior-year with the California Gold Bears and the late, great, Nort Thornton who was Head Swimming Coach from 1977 to 2007 winning NCAA Championships in 1979 and 1980. Nort had a collapsed left lung and could only whisper making him even more formidable than he already was.
Photo of Bill Gaebler on the sideline from the BHS 1985 year-book; Ivor, touching chin, a Berkeley and cycling friend to this day.
Nutrition is one of those things that athletes generally freak on, maintaining an over-confidence that the right product mix will unlock unimaginable success or prevent collapse. In any case, it offers a never-ending debate on what brands/amounts/timing are best for competition/training/recovery.
Indeed I, too, have a plan, calculated on the amount of sweat-loss, by weight, during a measured one-hour hard swim (about 0.9kg) indicating the electrolytes and water I should consume for the 14-hour swim to Calais. No approximation here.
On the Day and after the first hour I will feed every half-hour on the clock, baring in mind that when I am not swimming the tide is pulling against me so 20x2 minute pit-stops adds a lot of time - I will aim to keep it under 30 seconds. To do so, my coach will chuck a tethered bottle at my head containing various tested solutions. Yes, it is not unusual to barf it right up.
I admit that a nutrition strategy is something new for me, which I did not apply during the five marathons I bonked whilst chasing the magical three-hour barrier up to age 43.
My swimming career began, age 8, on a summer program for novices in Berkeley hosted at King Junior High School (I was later a "King Cobra," 7th and 8th grade at King) where, for two months, we had daily afternoon "practices" and I was told to "burn off some steam."
Not much to recall, really, other than the end-of-summer swimming meet where I competed against the mighty David Abalar, a chubby kid from Albany known amongst us punters to be fast. It came down to a 50-yard crawl and we went finger-tip-to-finger-tip for a judges decision as the watch keepers scored us a tie to the tenth of a second. I was declared winner - celebrity ! - and the following year signed up for the local swim team, the Berkeley Barracudas, who also trained at King. I would have joined the Barracudas sooner but I had an afternoon paper route to contend with.
Below is the King Jr High School swimming pool with the fast lane on the far right and where I spent hours of my day as an age-grouper.
The Channel's water temperature limits the crossing-season to late June (c 14C) to September (19C or 20C). The coldest months, January and February, 5-7C. An Olympics competition pool, by comparison, must be 25C to 28C.
Hypothermia, generally a concern below 10C, may occur at 20C in prolonged exposure as the core body temperature can crop to 35C (95F). The tell signs include claw-like hands unable to touch thumb-to-pinkie or, counter intuitively perhaps, feelings of Euphoria. Mental cognition also goes but harder to judge when swimming. If observing, the lips or upper-back may turn blue or purple.
Hypothermia can occur anytime and rapidly, the swimmer losing muscle control, all the while aware s/he could be drowning. If to hospital, warm blood transfusions are given as the body cannot warm itself to normal. For this reason, a cold water partner is critical - advise, of course, I rarely follow.
This past winter, with a friend, I swam in the Thames west of the Teddington Lock where the river is non-tidal, flowing generally south-eastward from its source near Oxford. It is also less developed and, for long stretches, makes me think of Tom Sawyer's Mississippi River with its old river boats and unkempt shores. The Thames drops to 1C in winter so a wetsuit, thermal gloves, booties and cap are mandatory.
I do no anticipate 17C on the Channel swim being a problem; equally comforting, the water during the six-hour qualifier was 15C.
Photo of the Thames River at the Barnes Bridge :
When I was an age group swimmer, my stroke was a two-beat cross-over - in other words, my legs crossed hitting at the calf on every stroke. As noted, it was not an uncommon technique in the 1980s for long-distance events like the 500, 1000 and 1650 yards freestyle (NB US college-swimming is in yards and so the US competes "short course" 25-yards in the winter-spring season and "long course" 50-meters in the summer).
My stroke, combined with breathing every three-rotations, served its purpose while also limiting - coaches in the 1980s emphasised distance vs efficiency.
As for training, as a kid I swam c 14,000 yards (c 12,900 meters) a day, five days a week plus Saturday or competitions on the weekend. That is a lot of muscle memory. To break the mode in my adult years I started using fins about ten years ago and, presto, slowed the arms, abandoning the cross-over and placing more effort onto the glutes, allowing me to concentrate .. on the hip-driven rotation.
Photo from 9th grade, inclusive of chlorine blond hair ont its way to green.
NB my first 'button down' shirt in the photo purchased at The Limited, a new women's chain with a store at the Hilltop Mall in Richmond, CA (now for zombies) before Les Wexner was a business celebrity eventually associated with Jeffrey Epstein.
I will use two stroke techniques during the EC - both tall, flat and with side rotation.
Modern freestyle swimming has evolved to a hip-driven stroke, which is identifiable by a catch-up and glide at the top of the rotation providing maximum core engagement and power. For long distances, it is accompanied by a two-beat kick to stabilise the body; for middle-distance to long distances, a strong accompanying six-beat kick can drive propulsion but at a cost : the glutes are the body's largest muscles and use an enormous amount of oxygen when engaged. Ian Thorpe, the GOAT before Phelps, nearly touched his fingers on the glide. I watched Matt Biondi crossing 25-yards with seven rotations.
Alternatively, a shoulder-led stroke has a faster turn-over and less core power with an early, hard 'hook' a the top without a gliding pause. The legs can be awkward and often do not play a role or a two-beat cross-over to keep the body centred. I think of Janet Evans, whose 'windmill' broke world records in the 400, 800 and 1500m in the late 1980s.
Depending on the event, hip-led and shoulder-led can be used together on opposite arms, creating a powerful "loping" effect - Katie Ledecky is the only woman I have seen do this.
Some data : when I use a hip-driven technique I complete 100m with 72 strokes. When shoulder-driven, it is over 90. Shoulder driven, for me, is more taxing but also c 5% faster (my guess).
So, that out of the way, adapting to the Channel conditions will play its part - if the water is calm, the hip-led stroke offers greater efficiency; choppy waters and it is the shoulder-led stroke allowing more adaptability to the waves.
Finally, I am able to breath on both sides which will allow me to swim either side of the boat, useful depending on the direction of the winds and therefore the chop.
Here I am using the hip-led freestyle at the catch-up or top of the stroke :
A major bogy to hit in the Channel is the ZC2 buoy, below, which is 5.5km off Cap Gris-Nez (the closest point in France from Dover). The buoy marks the division between the Northeast shipping lane and the French inshore waters.
Ideally I pass inside the buoy (to the East) by the time the second flood tide begins (more on tides later). When this happens, the ebb may be working for me and the chances of making the shore improve considerably. Missing the tide here means swimming in place for six-hours until the tide turns again. Or bailing.
As for strategy, I will aim to hold a strong or even fast pace for the first stages of the crossing to a) avoid being swept out after the separation zone (mid-way thru) or stuck at ZC2 and b) establish a time buffer so when the tides inevitably change I have more options to reach France.. I will not actually know where I am during all of this and it is the pilot's job to navigate the best route.
A reasonable question : do the pilots actually care if I make it ? I am assured they do as, along with the fee, they seek bragging rights, so happily we are alined.
My boat, the Viking Princess II, otherwise a fishing boat the rest of the year, is skippered by a father-son team that has taken the men and women's record holders across the Channel (7h 17m for men in 1994 and 7hr 40min for women in 1978).
The below image from Red Top Swim and the CSPF tracker showing the different zones marked by grey lines :
Jaime is from Scotland and the charisma of the group, swearing like nobody I have ever met, from a village "north of Inverness" which is like way North. His father a butcher and Jaime's first job, unsurprisingly I suppose, on a clean-up crew at an abattoir.
Following his schooling, Jaime spent 11 years on an oil rig in the North Sea with 300 workers mostly "from prison or just plane crazy." The sleeping rooms had six bunks ("just disgusting mate") in constant use between 12-hour shifts. "I saw waves 100-feet as high as the rig" he recalls. Not holding the stair-rail a sackable offence - "they'd ship you right the fuck home" given how dangerous it was.
Jaime's rig, TOTAL's Elgin platform, 150-miles from shore, experienced the largest gas blow-out on record - the UK 22/4b blowing in 2012 - which sent a gas jet shooting 200-meters out to see. The blast knocked down Jaime's friend, who is lucky to be alive, and had the sense to pull an emergency lever cutting the power on the rig ensuring no sparks could blow the thing up.
Every helicopter in the North Sea was on the evacuation. TOTAL, for its part, had no clue how to stop the blowout and called in the Red Adair Service and Marine Company famous for extinguising fires in Kuwait following the 1991 Iraq war.
Four Texans showed up via a Chinook, removed their cowboy boots, examined the leak for a few minutes, then departed. The next day they returned with a jerry-rigged vice grip which they attached to the active pipe and turned, capping the valve and stopping the gas flow - "insane how dangerous it was", says Jaime, who estimates Red Adair made $40 million for 24-hours work.
Jaime now lives in Doha and is responsible for a rigs-simulator program. He is doing a solo crossing.
My campmates each has a story to tell.
Mitch, on the left below, is ex Royal Marines and is training for a never-been-done 'triathlon' in five continuous stages: 1. swim the Channel; 2. cycle 12,000km from Calais to India crossing 12 countries, including Iran, and two continents; 3. run 900km from the Indian coastal town of Digha to Katmandu; 4. trek 350km to the Himalayas and the Mt Everest base camp; and 5. climb Everest (8,849m). All this in six-months beginning in September. Mitch is a wonderfully affectionate and humble dude and causes none of us solo Channel swimmers any shame.
Alex, middle of the photo, gets short-changed by me when I learn he is from one of those forgettable middle England cities like Grimsby or Hull. Only later I learn that he was on the elite army bomb-disposal squad with tours in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, taking down the really nasty explosives that blow up tanks. Afterwards he did the same in London for MI5 including "neutralising" a multiple bomb threat on the London underground during daytime peak hours.
From there, Alex sought adrenaline as a "saturation diver" when, in six-hour shifts 150-200m below sea-level, he jack-hammered undersea infrastructure or assisted deep water rigging. To avoid the bends (and need for timely decompression), he remained in "the bell" for two-weeks at a time ("nothing to do but read").
Alex has founded five ongoing businesses. And is getting married in a couple of months. He is doing the Channel solo.
Rosey works for the UK Foreign Services and is a project manager in Nigeria. She is swimming the length of Loch Lomond (36km) almost entirely in the darkness of night.
I join the Red Top swim camp in Croatia prepared for a week's worth of.. swimming.. including the six-hour qualifier required for the Channel which has been on my mind for some time. What on earth does one think about ?
But before this, I catch an early 6:30am flight to Zagreb, eying a few middle-aged dudes with Speedo bags, none of us ready to engage so early in the wigwam. We are met at the Croatian airport for the two-hour drive to Optija with its lovely coastal line and a modern aquatics complex with two 50-meter swimming basins, clean and fast at 3-meters deep. The USA swim team will be here for two weeks prior to the Olympics.
There are 15 campers of whom two are swimming the Oceans 7 (only 27 have done it), one Loch Lomond (the longest lake in Scotland0, one an EC-return and the rest of us the Channel one-way.
Over the course of six-days we will reach c 87 kilometres of swimming. Happily a lot of the pool time is focused on technique and recovery rather than grinding out hard repeats. Each day has at least two practices including one open-water swim of c two-hours. We eat a lot of carbs. I go to bed early.
As for the six-hour swim, I finish without difficulty and cannot recall a single thought.
I'm the one checking his watch but who's competitive ?
Since deciding to swim the EC and informing my coach on December 31 I have logged 30-35km a week following a one-month or so ramp-up. It is not quite fair to say I started from scratch as last year I was cycling and lost six-kilo after leaving Astorg.
The hardest part of the training, for me, was building in the routine including normalising 5:45AM wake-up alarms (dark! wet !) and adding weekly distance. Once at 30km it became easier to maintain this level - and addictive. I mark my distances into a red notebook which often seems the most productive part of the day.
Most of the training is solo excluding a morning group on Monday (always 8x400 on 6:15) and Wednesday who are training for an Ironman in June. Otherwise I work with Red Top Swim who focus exclusively on ultra-distance swimmers planning for the Channel, Oceans 7, Manhattan 20 Bridges, Loch Lomond and so on. Most of the coaching is via zoom and whatsapp since Red Top's pools are located in North London, leaving the Richmond Pool (weird 33 1/3 meters) and the Royal Automobile Club which has an old-style 25m marble pool that I visit whenever in town.
I do structured sets (1000, 400, 200 repeats) and a lot of mindless 'dog meat' swims where I go for 3km or 5km without stopping. It works for me.
February in the Channel, about 8 or 9C; 20 minutes max
I awoke to a bit of ultra-swimming history as Amy Gubser, a local from Pacifica, California, swam from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Farallon Islands (also called "the Devil's teeth"), a distance of 29.7 miles, completed in 17 hours.
To understand the magnitude, the swim has never been done in a westward direction before and only five-times in total with the first completion in 1968. The difficulty rests in the strong tides, dark water, jelly fish and water temperatures which drop to 6C. Oh, and there are the mysterious great white sharks who drop into the "red triangle" following thousands of miles in the Pacific to feed on the island's seals and possibly mate. The image one may have of a great white racing upwards from the ocean's oblivion, jaws wide open showing razor teeth, attacking a flotation-held camera, were likely filmed here.
I once visited the Farrallons in the 1990s with a strong first-impression from the acidic and overwhelming smell of bird guano as the islands support the largest seabird colony in the continental US. A lonely observation hut, usually deserted, exists for PhD students to study the islands unique ecosystem. It reminds me of Skull Island.
And from Gubser: "I wanted to show that, if you put your mind to something, you can do anything."
The English Channel is 21 miles (c 32 kilometres) at the shortest crossing however the tides play an important role on the final distance. Slower pace, more impact from the tides. The pilot (I will have a boat with me at all times) will aim for a consistent compass heading so that my track will be a "straight" line, even while the tides sweep from side-to-side as the water ebbs and floods. In other words, I will likely make an "S" path easily adding five-miles or more to the swim.
By comparison, Berkeley to Stanford is about 38 miles.
As for time, I anticipate something around 12-hours but it is difficult to predict since the weather, tides and pace all impact the crossing. One can also miss a tide and get stuck until the tide reverses, as it does every six-hours, a main reason swimmers fail. This can happen, most cruelly, a few kilometres from the French shoreline.
The July/August water temperatures should not be a difficulty at 17-18C and I have been training in temperatures as low as 10C during the winter (any colder and it's a wetsuit) plus cold baths and showers.
The below is a classic crossing:
I will swim the English Channel separating England and France with a window for good weather from July 26 to August 4.
Note the opening gambit - no "aim to" or "I will try and finish" etcetc. I may tell my kids that the journey is the thing but with the Channel there really can be no doubt about getting across. And so I tell myself.
As this is a first email, I appreciate that you may not wish to fill your inbox with missives on swimming long-distances and please do let me know if you wish to be removed from the emails (or want a personal/ different email). Unlike, say, Central Asia with daily notes that mostly wrote themselves, I am not really sure what i will write about - it is only swimming and swimming and swimming.
Somewhere in here, though, is a Big Challenge and a journey that I would love to share with you, should there be an interest, and so I will try to make it entertaining with one or two updates a week.
11 weeks out.
