August was a truly challenging month for so many swimmers. Some went home without even getting wet. Many others are still patiently waiting to be slotted in on another tide.

August is now over.

September is now underway and as we close out the weekend, the crossings have restarted. Let’s hope for a nice long window of opportunity for swimmers and pilots alike.

We had the pleasure of the company of some of the potential SwimTayka 2022 swimmers join us for an assessment session too. It was a pleasure to meet you and we hope to see you again next year.

I have a very special offer for you in the shop until the end of the training season. Read to the end to find out more.

Your pod leaders’ observations

As more and more people are completing their planned swims, the questions that we are being asked are moving from questions about training this year or preparation for big swims to planning for next year and what to do between October and April.

Our recommendations are that winter is an excellent time to focus on technique. Even the best of the best work on their technique, I don’t think that you can ever be perfect. Speed is an outcome of great technique and good fitness. By all means complement this with other activities like swimming focused strength & conditioning work, mobility / stability work, pilates, yoga etc.

I don’t advocate training outdoors in below 10C in terms of its relevance to training for a marathon swim. It is a sport in its own right and can be enjoyed as such. I just don’t personally think that it’s useful as preparation for a channel swim. In the winter the pool is your friend.

Now all that said, there may be a psychological benefit from short dips from time to time. By which I mean, come May you’ll already know that you can handle cold water and can start the season with confidence. However, if travelling to your chosen location stops you doing more useful technique work in the pool then prioritise pool work.

We are considering offering monthly winter dips, actually more of a dunk really. We may also offer some virtual challenges where you can accumulate time doing drills, swimming or winter dips.

Get in touch if you’re interested in more details.

Shout outs (training)

This week I’d like to give a shout out to:

Andrew Elliman for your back to back 6 hour swims
Kevin Beale & Jennifer Laffan for you 6 hour swims
Halani Foulsham, Danny Hanlon & Jill Tipping for your 5 hour swims
Amanda Bowden & Sophie Franks for stepping off the relay track and onto the solo one and completing 3.5 hour swims.

Channel swimmer on the beach!

Swims to call out this week:

Katherine Chapman - North Channel Swimmer

Vikki Chester for her Coniston swim on 4th September
Everyone who completed the Scilly swim challenges (at the time of writing I can’t find a list of results)
Everyone who completed the Jubilee swim (at the time of writing I can’t find a list of results)

As the week ends on Sunday, I’m really looking forward to calling out Tony, Claire & Kirstie in next week’s blog 😊.

Well done to all swimmers each week, wherever you trained. We enjoy tracking you. 😊

Apologies if I missed anyone - there are a lot of swims going on all over the world!

Yes, we could see you creep out having not quite made the extra challenge of the green buoy! Channel swimmers, whatever should we do with them! 🤣🤣

Weekend Stats

Note: Water temperature taken during the swim session in the harbour. The lowest recorded reading is shown here. Air temperature, wind direction & wind speed taken from the Port of Dover app.

Saturday:

Swimmers: 18
Water temperature: 17.6C
Air temperature: 16.7C
Conditions: F4 gusting F5 NE. Choppy. Low cloud.

Sunday:

Swimmers: 20
Water temperature: 18.1C
Air temperature: 18.7C
Conditions: F3 gusting F4 ENE. Sunny!!! Choppy to start, calmer at the end.

Volunteers & beach crew

Thank you to the pod leaders and to our volunteers. Thanks to everyone who rolled up their trouser legs and helped.

Dates for your Diary

End of season get together

Instead of a BBQ, we are planning an end of season picnic. Bring your own packed lunch (that makes it more Covid friendly) and let’s still enjoy each other’s company one last time before the season ends. It’s a great opportunity to celebrate all the successes you’ve had.

To give it another little twist, how about each pod creates their own theme? Which pod will win? Not in a pod, then either join the fun of one of the existing pods or club together with other pay as you go swimmers and create your own theme.

And how about a bake-off? In recent weeks you’ve shared some pretty impressive baking and there will be plenty of people willing to run the taste test - no soggy bottoms please (unless you leave your swimmers on under your trousers).

Those of you who came to our intensity week will have experienced some fun games along the way - it could be fun to do something like that too after lunch has settled.

2022 Dover Intensity Week

Looking a bit further ahead, our 2022 intensity week will run from 6th-10th June. Will you be there? More details will be on the website in the next few weeks.

Paddlefish Ponderings: 7 mindset shifting questions

We talk about how swimming the channel is 80% mental and 20% everything else, and I think that’s right based on my own experiences.

Last week I came across a video that made me think. It talked about 7 mindset shifting questions that we can all use. I’ll aim to put some of this in the context of swimmig.

Is this an empowering thought?

At any given moment there are lots of different mindsets, ways of responding, ways of thinking available to us.

Our brains, by default, want to make us feel comfortable. Therefore we pick the way of thinking that is most familiar.

For example, how do you react when you are sad? Some people turn to food - chocolate, ice cream etc. Perhaps this is something you saw as you grew up, you’ve most likely seen it in movies. So if we’re sad, our brains pick our most familiar pattern - comforting ourselves with food. We could have chosen to go for a walk or go to the gym to change our physical state, which can also impact our emotional state. We could have chosen to talk to a friend. Or maybe we could choose to get close to nature for her natural healing properties.

There are many possible choices and we tend to choose the same one each time, because that appears to be the most comfortable one for us.

So if you find yourself in a non-empowering place, ask yourself, what would be a more empowering thought that would actually help me create progress.

What if we have a training session where we go through a period of feeling a bit glum, like you just don’t want to be there? One option is simply getting out and once we create that as a pattern it can become the easiest thing in the world to do. One training session really doesn’t matter, right? What if we take that pattern with us on the big day too? Well that’s not so good. What if that glum period was actually us switching energy systems and moving into burning fat having depleted our glycogen stores and had we stayed a little longer we would have bounced back? Wouldn’t it be better to create a pattern that recognises that? Now that would be useful as you’ll almost certainly get to the point where you switch to burning fat on a long swim. Create this as a pattern and you will automatically be able to deal with this on the big day because your brain wants to make you feel comfortable and comfort comes from doing what you have always done before. So better to have always swum through it rather than having always got out. It will be easier for you on the day, in fact you may simply not notice as you’ll just run the pattern that you’ve always run.

2. What if this were easy?

This question simply explores what if what you are doing isn’t as difficult, in fact it was easy? It encourages us to look at ways to make the process easier on ourselves.

Towards the beginning of the season, before the long swims become the norm, I often say ‘one day I’ll ask you to do three hours and you’ll reply “Is that all”’. I generally get laughs in return as people can’t believe that will ever happen. It does happen, every year. So how can you make the mindset shift to something being easy rather than being difficult? Partly this is through the process of adaptation that occurs through our cyclical training pattern. The first time we do something outside of our capabilities it is a stretch and we adapt. We plan in recovery and then stretch you further along the same or different dimension. Through this adaptation what was once difficult can be seen as easy.

When I think back to my first relay, I didn’t have the benefit of training the way that many of you have, in fact I had little to no experience before the big day. I was absolutely terrified! I’ve done four relays this year and whilst they still all have their challenges (fatigue whilst trying to fit everything in is one of them), I no longer have the level of fear and it’s no longer outside my comfort zone.

3. What if this is to prepare me for what comes next?

When we are in a challenging situation we can choose to see our current trauma or challenge as a way to prepare us for future success. This can help us keep a more positive and progressive mindset.

Your first qualifying swim, your first 6 hour swim, your first back to back swim - these can all be very challenging. Not so long after they become the norm. I used to find myself shaking my head in amusement as I mentioned in passing at work that I had done 10+ hours training over the weekend as if it were the most normal thing in the world. It’s not ‘normal’ to swim for as long as some people work. We surround ourselves with like minded people and so our ‘normal’ shifts. Those early swims pave the way for the longer ones. Those long back to back swims pave the way to the big day.

What if those training sessions where the ‘washing machine’ in the harbour was on spin cycle to prepare us for the conditions on the day? You may have noticed that my briefings evolve throughout the season. Early in the season we are adapting to the cold, then to longer swims, then to conditions. I don’t ask you to face all of those at once. So early on if the conditions are challenging I’ll encourage you to keep your circuits short. As you gain in capability I’ll encourage you to swim for longer and / or in more challenging conditions.

If we can look at the current challenge and see that it is a stepping stone it can help to prepare us for the journey as a whole.

4. What am I grateful for?

How often do we forget to notice the simple things in life that we are grateful for? We often forget about things that we take for granted (until they are at risk of disappearing!). Gratitude allows us to see the beauty of life. Think of at least three things that you can be grateful for each day. I had a habit of using a daily journal to manage my workload and it encouraged me to identify three things to be grateful for at the beginning and end of each day. Sometimes I had to dig deep, but there are always things to be grateful for when you sit and be still and allow yourself to be aware of everything around you. Finding things that we are grateful for creates a new version of ourselves.

I am grateful for the trust that the class of 2021 puts in me. I am grateful for the varied weather so that swimmers can be used to training in all sorts of conditions. I am grateful for the good weather days so that I can see dreams come true in the channel.

What or who are you grateful for?

5. Who can I ask for support around this idea or challenge?

Some cultures are better at this than others. Western countries especially don’t reach out for support when it is needed. We tend to isolate ourselves instead of reaching out when we need help. One of our greatest joys as humans is to help others but for some reason we tend to resist the idea of asking for help when we need it. Ask yourself, who can I reach out to for support today? If you ask for help you may also be helping the person to whom you reach out to as we like to feel valued.

There are so many ways in which you can ask for help:

DCT facebook group
Community call
Other swimmers in the water and on the beach
Beach crew & pod leaders

6. Where am I going and what is the outcome I seek?

As we get into our day to day grind we stop questioning the activity that we’re doing, we just do what we do. We rarely stop to ask ourselves why we are doing what we’re doing - why are we putting in this hard work, why are we sacrificing other options. Because of this chase and because of the lack of perspective, when we get to the goal we don’t even recognise that we have reached the goal. When we forget our goals we lack direction. So make sure you are really clear as to what your goal is and constantly question it because goals change and evolve.

What is your goal? That can sound like a daft question - ‘duh Emma, it’s to swim the channel (other swims are available)’. Is it? Is that it? Has it changed at all? For some it is a lifetime ambition to complete a particular event and when it’s done they move on. For others it becomes apparent (from the outside at least) that it’s almost a metaphor for something else in life. Along the way we can learn a lot about ourselves, our fears, our desires and the goal can subtly change and even become less important. France can still be the destination but it can be the journey that is the real goal.

Some of my greatest learnings have come from the swims where I didn’t finish. Sometimes these are good learnings, sometimes more painful. All have been valuable.

Have a real think about your goal and whether it has changed at all. Your goal is your rainy day insurance that keeps you going if things get tough.

7. How does this matter and does this matter in the scope of life?

When you look at your entire life laid out in front of you, most events, that at the time seemed life changing or just too difficult to handle really weren’t that big with the benefit of hindsight. From the perspective of your whole life, current events do not have to seem so impactful. We go through phases in our lives as we rediscover our purpose or set new ambitions and goals.

Should you find yourself in a position of overwhelm, take a step back and ask if it really is that important in the context of your whole life.

Whether or not the issue is resolved, the world will still be spinning tomorrow.

Get in touch now if you need help working through challenges in your training or life in general.

Photos

A few photos from the weekend….

Spotlight in the shop

Our brand new Class of 2021 badges are on their way to us and should arrive in time for our picnic!! Order yours to ensure you get one while stocks last.

I have a very special end of season blow out sale - a massive 15% off absolutely everything until 26th September. Use the code CLASSOF21 to get all your goodies now.

Reminders

Remember to book your sessions online. Bookings close 24 hours before the session, it would be a massive help if you booked by Thursday morning.

The system doesn’t arrange automatic refunds, so please message me if you cancel ahead of these deadlines and I’ll arrange a refund.

You don’t need to sign into the website to book a session - just pop your email address in to the booking system and it will remember you. Remember to click into the discount code box if you are a subscriber and it will auto complete your discount code. If you are a pay as you go swimmer and are also a member, remember to use your discount code to get your membership price.

Week 19: What was that big yellow circle in the sky? 🔆