Just before a wayward shoe whizzed past my ear!

Weekly Review

NB Please scroll to the bottom for a selection of the photos taken

Trains, jellyfish & doughnuts

Those are three things I never thought would summarise a weekend!

Let’s start with trains. Saturday saw a train strike. Quite a few swimmers are reliant on the train to get to training. Some managed to find a different way, but some were unable to join us. We missed you.

You’d think that a strike that only went ahead on Saturday would mean that we’d be back to normal on Sunday.

Alas, no. There was still disruption. Trains were still not running normally. I hope that those impacted managed to find another way to train.

One of the many things that I like about our group is how welcoming it is to new swimmers. The class of 2022 has developed the habit of clapping new members during the briefing, what a lovely touch. There’s often someone new to welcome.

Sometimes you come along with the specific aim of wanting help with a long swim. Sometimes, you’ve only just found out about us and it’s the start of a new journey. However you find us and however long you stay, you are very welcome.

We have boundaries, things that help us keep you safe, our non-negotiables. Things like attending the safety briefing, wearing the right colour hat, being on time for feeds and coming to the beach when you’re due to come out. We get a little grumpy when those boundaries are not respected, but generally people don’t deliberately breach them or understand the impact of not complying. We do our best to explain.

One of these non-negotiables is being on time for feeds. One swimmer was late for a feed on Saturday. It doesn’t matter who it is, someone new or someone who’s a regular. We never rely on ‘oh it’s just Fred Bloggs, he’s always late’, because what would happen if just one time there was an issue? We say that the beach bar shuts at 10 minutes passed the hour, that doesn’t mean that we stop looking for the missing swimmer. We double check the feed records, we search the harbour with binoculars and ultimately invoke all our emergency procedures if necessary.

So back to that feed, a few people reported being stung by a jellyfish as they approached the beach. So when that late swimmer came in, and got stung, one of the volunteers mentioned that it wouldn’t have happened if they had been on time! Whilst it would be fun to be able to have those sorts of penalties for tardiness and contrary to popular belief, we’re not yet able to control and deploy jellyfish! Still, the underlying message wasn’t lost on the swimmer and they were on time from then on. If that was you, thank you!!

OK, so that’s the train and the jellyfish, what’s with the doughut?

It’s relatively well known that we don’t provide solids at feeds. The reason being that we are training the process that you’ll use on the big day and solids lead to slow feeds. Slow feeds don’t just add minutes to your swim time, they can add hours or be the difference between success and failure. We do, however, provide the odd treat. That can be ok on the big day too and if you are to have ibuprofen or another NSAID, then it is a good idea to have that with something solid. There are definitely some swimmers who appreciate solids than others. Who doesn’t love a treat afterall. But some absolutely love them. Take a look at some of the photos at the bottom and you’ll spot Kevin diving for blueberries, but my absolute favourite is the down in one doughnut!

Back to basics

I mentioned earlier about boundaries. I thought it might be helpful if I talk about the boundaries that we have when it comes to booking your training on time and why we have these boundaries.

For most people the training involves a quick click to book and then stepping on the beach at the weekend. Thank you - you make our lives easy and supporting you a pleasure.

From an admin perspective we ask very little of you:

Once a year complete a disclaimer which also tells us what you’re training for and when your swim is
Book your session online more than 48 hours in advance

Simple.

Most people do this right every time and we are very grateful for this.

When I first starting training, there was no booking system, you just turned up and booked in on the beach. That sounds even easier, right? Well, that was before the days of GDPR. All that personally sensitive information needs to be handled appropriately.

Also, with as many swimmers as we have, trying to remember who’s done what and when and when their swim is can be challenging. Not knowing if we’re expecting 5 swimmers or 105 is also a challenge. Occasionally, we’ve had to move training, and by knowing who’s coming we know who to get in contact with. Our online booking system enables us to be well prepared.

Back in the old days, checking in took some time. The name had to be written on paper by hand, there was a conversation about how long until the swim and there were no options for pay on the day. Linking the swimmer to their emergency contact information was likely to be close to impossible - something you don’t want in an emergency. We then moved onto membership cards and membership numbers and that made it a lot easier, we could refer to a book of hand written information. The challenge was that swimmers rarely remembered their membership numbers or remembered them incorrectly. Again, this would be a challenge in an emergency. It also isn’t GDPR compliant.

Now we have a digital record that is secured on an iPad with access limited to those who need it. One day, we’ll progress the system so that you can maintain your information, but we’ve not had the time to invest to this level yet.

So far this year, we have had over 300 people sign a disclaimer. It’s a large group of people to juggle. Yet we have instant access to this information for all swimmers at all times.

There are no longer any issues with handwriting or interpreting whether a squiggle meant that someone got out or was fed. Filing is automatic. Old data can be erased in an instant, no shredding required.

However, to make this work we need you to do your bit. Your bit is simple.

A couple of weeks ago, I said that I would be strictly enforcing the 48 hour rule and if I accepted late bookings there would be an admin fee. I didn’t actually charge a booking fee to anyone that week. There were 6 late bookings.

This week there were more still, with the latest one beyond midnight on Saturday night.

Enough now. Enough. I will be updating the website for pricing for late bookings.

Why is this important?

It might help to talk through my workload during the week.

First though, I shared on my personal facebook page last week that I’m now over 12 weeks after covid and still not recovered. We’re into the world of long covid. I’m exhausted and I can’t yet train. So, I’m having to minimise everything that I do in order to just get by. What is everything?

Full time job which is a combination of based at home and based in London with the odd bit of international travel.
Swimming coaching for my local swimming club
Private coaching clients
Weekly community call
Process orders from the shop, process new disclaimers & memberships
Buy supplies
Review the weather forecast and tide times
Plan training on an individual basis
Load all this information into our beach app, ready for the weekend
Dover every weekend (which is a 180 mile round trip)

Mandi also works full time, supports a busy family and is a carer.

For the first time, last year I covered my costs for running Dover, it will be a very long time before I recoup the investment that I have made in it in the preceding years. Neither Mandi or I take any money from core training at this time.

This is tough to manage and when things come along to unsettle things (like covid), any spare capacity that we have is gone. This is not a sustainable model.

We are so very grateful to everyone who volunteers. If we think about our beach support, it falls into 3 levels:

Regular volunteers who are able to lead training independently (like Mandi)
Regular volunteers who understand all the processes that run on the day and can fill in on any role - feeding, greasing, maybe evening kayaking.
Occasional volunteers who help with feeding under the direction of other volunteers.

Over the winter we will be looking at our model to see what we can do about increasing the second group making it easy for Mandi and / or me to take time out.

As mentioned above, Mandi & I squeeze all this in around very busy and complicated lives. So, we really do need you to do your part so that we can support your training and everyone gets to enjoy the process.

With that in mind, for those of you who aren’t able to meet our booking deadlines, you will now be charged for the extra time that we have to manually put into the process on your behalf.

If you have a problem with booking, get in touch before the deadline and we’d be happy to help you unpick the challenge.

Shout outs

Training

Congratulations to:

Stuart for his 7 hour swim
Anita, Brett & Nicolie for their 6 hour swims

Big day celebrations

We’re into the tracking season - yay!! We have some swims coming up that I’m very much looking forward to tracking and to start us off in style we have swims that we can already celebrate.

Congratulations to:

Sagar Kamble for his successful English Channel solo on 21st June in a time of 14hrs 48mins
Wenglish Flyers including DCTers Sophie Smith, Shona Lee & Paul James for their successful Bristol Channel relay (Ilfracombe to Swansea) on 21st June, being the first skins team to achieve this and in a time of 16hrs 57mins
Sarah Philpott for her successful Bristol Channel solo (Glenthorn to Porthcawl) on 22nd June in a time of 12hrs 21mins
Amanda Bowden for successfully completing the Dolly event (8 hour swim from 9pm to 5am) alongside DCT alumni Liesl & Heather.

Things are about to get busy with the main season soon to kick off. Standby your trackers!

Swim stats

Note: Water temperature taken during the swim session in the harbour. Air temperature, wind direction & wind speed taken from the Port of Dover app.

Saturday:

Swimmers: 23
Water temperature: 18.0C
Air temperature: 15.9C
Conditions: F4. Choppy by the ferry wall, particularly at high water.

Sunday:

Swimmers: 28
Water temperature: 17.9C
Air temperature: 15.3C
Conditions: F5. Mostly sunny. Choppy at the ferry wall at the start.

Volunteers & beach crew

Thank you to everyone who helped out this weekend - either a little or a lot. This week we had so many people help out after their swims or whilst partners were training. Thank you so much. It makes everything so much easier (and fun!). A special thank you to Rich who was on the rota for the whole weekend.

If you want to join the fun, why not pick a date and join the fun on the beach!

The adventures of Dover Dave

Dave continues to live his best life! He had a busy week with Nicola and went back to school. This week he’s going to be out and about with Mandi. Wish him luck - I hope there are no Mandi minutes involved!

If you’d like to host Dave for a week, please let us know on the beach. We’d love to see a photo diary of Dave’s summer in our Facebook Group.

I think we all need to be a little more Dave!

Paddlefish Ponderings - Psychological Safety

“Never stop investing … never stop learning”

— Captain Sully

Over the last few weeks I’ve talked about the mindset of an athlete, about the importance of recovery and being comfortable being uncomfortable.

In order to do this you need to be in an environment where you feel safe and supported.

Safety has always been our number 1 priority.

When you think about safety, we often think about the inherent dangers of any extreme sport. We have deep water, a swim zone that sometimes sees boats go through it. Then there’s the impact of cold water, weather and any underlying medical issues as a starter.

We do a risk assessment for the static risks in our environment and put mitigating processes in place to minimise the impact of those risks. Examples of this include keeping a record of everyone who’s training and ensuring that we check people in and out and at feeds. There are lots of examples like this.

But I’m not talking about this type of safety.

I’m talking about psychological safety.

I work for a mining company. Safety is the single most important thing within the company. Mining is one of the riskiest things that you can do. There are huge investments in technology and machinery that minimise the risk to humans involved in the mining process.

However, their interest in safety isn’t just about physical safety. There is also a drive for psychological safety. This is a breath of fresh air.

In this context, psychological safety can be defined as follows:

Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.

Psychological safety also has an important place in sport. However, it is a relatively new concept, and is starting to get traction.

What is psychological safety in sport?

Training settings can be a damaging place for athletes, particularly when individuals feel as though they can’t talk about their insecurities and are scared to make mistakes. Psychological safety focuses on creating a healthy atmosphere that in turn allows athletes to thrive and become the best athlete they can be. Without this, there can be negative effects on the athlete and the wider group.

Psychological safety has been defined as a belief that an individual or group feels safe to share

interpersonal risk-taking, such as asking for help, admitting one’s errors, or seeking feedback from others.

Athletes in a psychologically safe environment are genuinely interested in others in the group, have positive intentions towards one another, as well as a mutual respect for others’ competence, especially when mistakes are made.

When athletes feel psychologically unsafe in their group, this means they are reluctant to demonstrate their vulnerabilities, even if it could benefit the group, as they believe it puts them at risk of appearing incompetent or weak and posing a threat to their self-image. This is not a healthy environment for athletes to be able to work in.

So, what is the difference between a psychologically safe environment and a psychological dangerous environment?

Psychological safety vs psychological danger

The diagram shows some of the differences between a psychologically safe and psychologically dangerous environment.

What has the research found about psychological safety?

Research has looked into the role of leadership in psychological safety.

The study revealed that with high-quality identity leadership, coaches, captains and athlete leaders all contributed to strengthening group members’ identification with the group. This means that athletes acknowledged and valued being part of the group. They found that this shared sense of being a team meant that athletes felt psychologically safe in their group to speak up, provide input and take risks.

This psychological safety within groups also created two pathways:

A group-orientated pathway, which lead to good teamwork, resilience and athletes feeling satisfied with the group performance.
An individual-orientated pathway where psychological safety created a buffer against athletes burning out and therefore enhancing their health.

This research suggests that a shared leadership in which group members are encouraged to engage in identity leadership leads to a shared sense of “we” and “us”, creating a psychologically safe environment, which in turn improves group. functioning and health.

So, why is a psychologically safe environment so important?

It is a key component in cultivating successful performance;
It allows for better teamwork, resilience and athlete satisfaction;
It is important for the health of athletes by protecting them from burnout;
It creates an environment where athletes feel safe to speak up and share ideas, ask for help and admit to mistakes;
Athletes embrace their mistakes and treat failure as learning;
It allows team members to feel accepted so they can flourish and fulfil their full potential without fear.

Gareth Southgate, manager of England’s 2018 football team for the FIFA World Cup, illustrates that a psychologically safe environment is important for developing good performances: “I want the team to be making mistakes because if they are making mistakes, then they are trying things. For me, all of our players, if they want to try and be as good as they can be, they have to try things and we have to accept that it might mean the odd failure; but what you then maybe get is the odd moment like they produced tonight, which is ‘wow!’”

On the flipside, the history of sport is different. You will have heard about media cases against coaches and governing bodies where mistakes were punished, where athletes were effectively bullied. You learned according to your coaches agenda and not through self discovery. Those challenges still exist and it takes a lot of sustained effort to change a culture.

We want to be the change the you want to see.

So how does this impact DCT?

As I mentioned at the beginning, I’ve talked about the importance of adopting the mindset of an athlete. I’ve talked about the importance of recovery and also listening to your body. Sometimes, our sport can lead us to push ourselves too far and to see not achieving everything we set out to achieve as a failure. Many people see failure as a negative.

As an organisation, we strive to continue to learn. We follow the science. That means being open to listening to ideas that may fly in the face of conventional wisdom. We’re not afraid to approach things differently to before, to continue to learn and develop.

We aim to help you be the best that you can be. Sometimes it can be frustrating to see people fall short when we believe that they can achieve more. Generally speaking, we’re not frustrated with you, we’re frustrated that we weren’t able to say the things that could make the difference and help you achieve your goal.

I have been incredibly impressed over the last few weeks by the conversations on the beach and those who have messaged me when they have learned from a session. They’ve learned that they could, with hindsight, have swum for longer, or perhaps there’s been some self-sabotage or some fears or anxiety to overcome. Please continue sharing any issues that you have. We are here to help and we want you to feel psychologically safe with us.

Let’s continue to work together to be the best that we can be.

Please call us out if we don’t do that.

Reminders

Remember to book your sessions online. By far the easiest way is through the app. This QR will take you to the app where you can book directly and see what you have already booked. You can cancel and reschedule.

Bookings can be made up to 48 hours ahead and be cancelled or rescheduled up to 48 hours ahead also. The system doesn’t arrange automatic refunds, so if you would like a refund, please check out our refund policy and get in touch if you would like a refund.

Those of you with training subscriptions, enter your email address and click in the discount code box and your automatic voucher should appear. Let me know if you have any trouble with this.

Those of you who are members, please remember to cancel your membership when you no longer want it. You can do that within a membership period and still have all the benefits of it, this will prevent it from auto renewing next year. You can do this within your account, by following the link in the confirmation email when you took out your membership, or by asking me to do it for you.

Looking ahead

On Tour

Future On Tour dates:

Saturday 16th July
Saturday 20th August
Saturday 17th September

Spotlight in the shop

Photos

A few photos from the weekend….

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Week 9 - Trains, jellyfish & doughnuts