Good news - exams are over, which means swimming the Channel is now the only item on my life agenda (for the next few weeks). That’s right, for the past 7 weeks I have been studying, exam-ing and training for Dover all at the same time. It has been exhausting, but totally worth it! After a few hick-ups in planning and coordination, we’re on track for a July 4th-7th swim depending on tides, weather and so on!
That said, these past few weekends have been incredibly tough. I got, as they say, “stuck.” What I mean is that, for whatever reason - mental block, psychological fear, exhaustion or just that I have next to no body fat - I wasn’t able to get past three hours. Then, the weekend before last, out of nowhere I skyrocket to four hours and twenty minutes! It was uncanny. As Irene said so well, “you cracked it. It’s all over now. Nothing stops you once you’ve cracked it.” How right she was. I returned Sunday for a whopping FIVE-HOUR swim, bringing my weekend total to over 20 miles. Not too shabby for a guy with bad shoulders and no body fat. “It’s a head game,” Freda told me, “and you just won.”
“You were beaming when you finished five hours Sunday,” Michelle, a former Channel conquerer and now beachside expert said to me. “That smile was just priceless. You are so determined!” Indeed, determined I was, and continued to be the following weekend. More on that in the next entry. In the meantime, here are a few shots of us “feeding.” We come in every hour on the hour starting with hour two for a small cup of energy drink and, when we’re good, a Cadbury’s chocolate roll or Milky Way. I love those breaks!
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Kyle Taylor
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