Soooo…. I went and got myself a swim coach. This was not because I suddenly had a burning desire to give Keri – anne Payne a run for her, olympic medal, money and nor was it because I have had a mid-life crisis (like a certain nameless someone, that will now be light on the Christmas present front this year, suggested), but instead it’s because I made a friend a promise that I had no intention of breaking.
Let me explain. In September this year I lost my best friend to cancer. During her last couple of months the most amazing team at St Michael’s Hospice in Harrogate cared her for. It was during these last few weeks that she asked me if I would be able to raise some money for this wonderful place, on her behalf, by way of a thank you… and then pointed out that there was no way I would be able to say no on the grounds that it was her wish and I would look really, really bad if I refused. We put our heads together, and after mulling over my suggestion of a sponsored silence (something I pointed out that I would find very, very difficult indeed), she concluded that people would not part with their hard earned money for anything less than blood, sweat and tears, none of which could be procured by not talking for several hours. Instead she gave me two choices, either I should swim Windermere two way (despite me telling her of the many, many hours of training involved, which she countered with the many, many opportunities to eat guilt free cake afterwards- and that in itself is an excellent and valid argument for), which she also thought would be the most likely thing to raise several millions of pounds for the charity or, her other rather outlandish and frankly maverick choice, which was of me abseiling down somewhere exceptionally high. She knew of my lack of fondness for anything higher than zero altitude (high heels make me dizzy for crying out loud), I declared myself acrophobic and therefore probably medically unfit for this particular challenge. And so, on the back of this, the exceptionally long (twenty one mile), swim it was to be then…
But here’s the thing; choosing the swim bit was easy, what would be less easy was the actual swimming part and the many, many hours of training involved, oh and the quite important part that I have never swum anywhere remotely near this distance before and had no idea how to go about doing it. It’s such a long way, twenty one miles as the accurate swimmer will tell you, however I am yet to swim in a straight line anywhere, and so am not very confident that on this occasion I will swim ONLY twenty one miles, but more importantly than a few extra metres was the fact that if I got the training part wrong, there would be a risk that I wouldn’t finish it at all.
Last year, when I was talked into swimming Windermere one way (Shark was very persuasive. She knows I have a weakness for Jaffa Cakes, all cakes in fact, except nasty coffee cake. That is a waste of good coffee. She played on the ‘you’ll be able to eat mountains of them after training’ and that’s what sold it to me). I signed up to do it expecting there to be loads and loads of training plans online to help me, however when I began searching for a suitable one (there are definitely plans out there I’m sure), I couldn’t find one that suited me, and ten and a half miles was too long to think about winging it. After my fruitless search online, I decided to ask some seasoned Windermere swimmers, Channel swimmers and the guys at Swim Your Swim (my swim family) for some advice/suggestions/the breadth of their expertise (don’t know why I didn’t just start there in the first place really?!?), and on the back of this, put my own plan together. Now it was by no means perfect, and I won’t lie, my cobbled together training plan was not based on any experience, but mostly from adding together the suggestions I was given and hoped that I would be successful. The plan may well have had me doing too many, longer than was probably necessary, swims as the ‘have I done enough?’ panic set in, and there were also times when I really wasn’t in the mood for a swim, of any length, which I think is normal of most of us, but I didn’t have the luxury of not swimming, after all, I was following a plan. There were occasions when Shark and I (mostly Shark obviously, because I am not one bit scared of things found in a lake like: a twig, some pond weed, my own arm, my wetsuit cord or aquatic livestock for example) were mid swim and we thought we had seen something moving in the water and needed to make an unexpected early exit, for fear of being chased or worse, eaten by whatever it was (I know…), cutting short our swim. On the plus side though, I read somewhere that sugar is really good for shock, and so on these occasions huge, and sometimes multiple slices of cake was used as the remedy. Purely for medicinal reasons.
It wasn’t all bad though, these times were mixed with some real highs though, like completing a training swim in a faster time than I was expecting, and with less aches and pains than I deserved, and discovering that Fat Rascals (Betty’s café’s finest) were successful at the pool food trials (unlike my beloved Jaffa Cakes, but lets not talk about that. It still upsets me). In fact, I enjoyed the nutritional side of training (it was probably all the cake, I’ll be honest) the most. I don’t include one particularly nasty gel that my insides decided very quickly that it would not be accepting this form of nutrition and rejected it almost as soon as it arrived at my stomach, in this.
Despite the highs and lows of the training. I (and Shark) did it! My training plan worked. I may have over done the cake trialing (all encouraged by Shark), and I did over-train at times, but nothing beat the feeling at the end of the swim when we got out of the water, despite it not being one bit like the Ursula Andress exit I had spent the last mile of the swim visualizing, and instead being every bit as clumsy as I have come to expect from myself, and despite the acquired battle scars: A nasty neck rash, bedraggled, knotted hair that required a surgical intervention to remove the bobble, and a very stiff neck, shoulders and arms, I had such an amazing sense of accomplishment! I had also absolutely no desire whatsoever of ever swimming that distance again… and yet here I was, with absolutely no intention of saying no to my friend, because at that moment I would have given her the Earth to see her smile.
And so I had agreed to do a very long swim, without it seems much thought into what it would entail. I was already, once again, in unknown territory with regards to training, and as it’s just too important not to fail, I decided that the only thing to sensibly do was to find someone that had some experience, and was happy to not only share it, but to tailor it too. After all, I’m no athlete, so I was worried that finding someone would be tricky, but it turned out to be actually easier that I thought. I have known Stu for a few years, but only as a fellow swimmer at one of the lakes I visit, and one of their coaches. It was at the beginning of this year’s open water summer season, when despite my best efforts I was struggling to pull out any decent swimming at all. My stroke was off, I didn’t feel smooth in the water and I was tense all the time. I suspect the tense bit was because I was unable to disconnect emotionally, whilst I was swimming, from everyday life, and I felt guilty for even thinking of doing something I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I had known for several months that my friend was desperately poorly, and despite my best efforts to put it out of my mind, this was definitely proving easier said than done.
And then in stepped Stu. He saw I was disappointed, frustrated and at a loss as to how to change it. He offered me some great advice, encouraging words and some (frankly uncomfortable to watch), video footage of me swimming (badly). We watched it together and discussed what I needed to change and how to go about it, but most importantly, and I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this, he taught me how to use the swimming to support my own emotional wellbeing, rather than spending my time worrying and thinking about the inevitable things to come that I would have absolutely no control over. The things that were very much impacting on my swimming, both physically and enjoyment wise, but instead use swimming as a bit of respite as it were. And so on the back of this, I told him of the stupid promise I’d made to my friend (abseiling seems so much more appealing now), and asked if he would be able to coach me. Thankfully he agreed, with not even the need for gentle persuasion (I was prepared to part with beer, cash, concert tickets in exchange for a “yes”).
And so it began in earnest. I don’t mind sharing that I would have liked to have begun training after the New Year. This would have given me a couple of months of more relaxed swimming, after a full summer season of open water events. AND I might add, August, the planned month for the swim was months and months away, but Stu had very different ideas. There was no rolling start, no gentle beginnings, nothing remotely like that. No, the following morning he had e-mailed me a copy of the following week’s plan, by the end of which there wasn’t a part that didn’t ache when I moved. Even blinking seemed to hurt! I was beginning to wonder what had I let myself in for (and not for the first time)? This was pretty much the same distance as the Channel (but with no jelly fish, sharks, haddock, whelks, ships to contend with/wrestle), and that’s a really long way, and whilst I’ve been told there are none of the aforementioned in Windermere (apparently some evolutionary thing would have to happen first – not the ship bit though…), however here’s the thing, without properly training for it, there would be a risk that I’d risk not succeed. Suddenly I felt very grateful to have found myself a supportive and equally invested coach, even if I initially suspected he was trying to kill me with all the training, but my success in raising money for the charity actually depended on it.
Going forwards, there was no doubt that there will be some difficult, and not to mention long, training sessions ahead, my body will hate me, tears will be shed and there are times when I will need to dig very deep. These are the times when I need to remind myself of the reason that I’m doing this in the first place, and whilst this is most definitely incentive enough, another thing that I need to remember (probably at all times) is that double the swim distance means double the food (basically, double the cake allowance, and I thought that the cake portions were huge before… cannot wait!). Stu has already informed me of the several thousand calories I shall burn off, which shall need to be replaced (hooray!!!). This is most definitely going to be, without question, my most favourite part (possibly the only part) of the training… as it was last time!
As I said earlier, for next year's challenge, I will be raising money for the hospice that took such good care of my friend, and along with regular updates via blog, Twitter and the usual social media platforms (links below), I will also be documenting my progress and training each week on YouTube, which is actually terrifying! Here's the link below, and of course, one to my Just Giving page. 😊
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcGjwT2ZHjUVgSkvkjgy2Dg
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/jacqui-hargrave1
Once again, thanks for reading my blog. As I mentioned, last year I swam Windermere one way with my swim buddy, Shark, and this was actually where my blog began; diarising my journey. This journey is available to read in my book 'Open water Woman Swims Windermere' and is available in paperback, or electronically on Amazon.
Here's the link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Open-Water-Woman-Swims-Windermere/dp/1980614660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546178539&sr=8-1&keywords=open+water+woman+swims+windermere
