We're going to update this page quite regularly to let you, the surfer, know what we've been up to...
AUGUST 2008:
The month of the swim is upon us - it seems strange to think that in just over a week we'll have done it (we hope!) and it won't be a thing in our future any more. We did our last big training swim last week - four hours in the pool, we reckon about 450 lengths! As you can imagine, this was highly tedious and made us realise that in many ways, if people want to sponsor us (and recently lots of people have been - thanks!), it should be for these sessions - not the actual swim which should be much more fun! With that behind us we're now into tapering, which consists of some easy going swims and lots of eating to ensure we are in tip top condition and full of energy come the big day. As you can imagine - we're rather enjoying this bit!
We had a visit from a photographer the other day and next week will hopefully be appearing in the Hampshire Chronicle, hopefully this exposure will lead to some more donations! We'll also call all the other papers and news programs again this week to try and get them interested!
JULY 2008:
Ooooh er, not long to go now! But thankfully we are full of new found confidence following our brilliant training swim in Windermere last weekend - let me tell you all about it (also see the pictures and training pages). Things have been going quite well in training over the past few weeks with some long swims (over 3 hours, but in the pool - very boring!) and lots of interval training, plus running, cycling and lots of races. However, Jen had a cold and chesty cough for a couple of weeks which was an unfortunate setback. Anyway, we had the weekend scheduled to go up to the Lakes for what would be our last chance to train in open water. After our experience the last time we visited the Lakes (see April's blog), we decided to swim in Windermere and get to know the lake better, rather than attempting the length of one of the other lakes, such as Coniston. The Saturday brought dry and reasonably warm weather so all was set fair - we were aiming for 4 hours and our plan was to begin at Waterhead, swim south for two hours and then swim back. Which is what we did! We made it all the way to just short of Thompson's Holme island in two hours, turning at a conveniently located buoy (for some reason it's nice to swim around something at the end rather than just turning around). That was really good progress and a good pace with the wind and current behind us. Things were tougher on the way back and it took us 40 minutes extra to return. We were swimming against the wind and current, plus getting a little more tired as time went on, especially when the wind picked up and the lake got really choppy for half an hour. But it was really good training and now we're feeling really confident for the day if all goes well. Our feeding strategy worked well (stop and take something on every half an hour whether you want to or not) and provided something close to aim for rather than feeling overwhelmed by the length of time we had too swim for. We even managed to stomach a banana, which we were surprised at as there's something about being immersed in water for hours on end that slightly puts you off eating (numb lips probably have something to do with that). Which reminds me - the cold! We'd suffered with this before (see the blog from September 2007) and were a bit worried about it. We wore our new wetsuit gloves to keep our hands warm and that seemed to do the trick! Jen had no real problems, although felt light headed at one point, but happily that passed quickly. Matt was cold for about the first hour, but gradually warmed up as time passed. So that was pleasing, and we guess the water should warm up by maybe a degree, or two if we're lucky, over the next month. So all in all, a really positive experience. Even though we always hoped we would be able to pull this swim off, with the number of people that are now coming to watch (all our families and lots of friends) there was always the worry that if we couldn't do it for whatever reason, the whole thing might turn into a big embarrassment. But barring any freak incidents we are pretty confident we've got it in us now, which is great. Over the past year we've often felt overwhelmed by the enormity if the challenge we have taken on, and just to be sitting here writing about how we now feel confident and fit enough is brilliant. We really hope we can put in a good show on the day and pay a fitting tribute to Boagy and everyone else we're swimming for (see our charity page). We also hope that people there on the day, and yes, you the reader, will be generous enough to donate to CRUK on our behalf and that we can get to our fundraising target, because lets not forget, that's what this swim is really all about.
Another quick note - this month we contacted all the local newspaers and TV news shows both here in Southampton where we live and up in the Lakes. Their responses fell towards opposite ends of the spectrum and proved quite amusing. The southerners were very interested and enthusiastic, one reporter even arranged to send a photographer round to our house (still to hear more on that mind) whereas the northeners seemed slightly less impressed - "oh yes, we get wuite a lot of people doing that" was a typical response!!
JUNE 2008:
We've just done our first swimming race! It was a great experience and has given us much confidence for the assault on Windermere. The race was open water in a lake over the Ironman swim distance - 3.8km. We both finished in just over an hour (1.06 and 1.14). Whilst the distance is not quite a quarter of what we will face in August, we both finshed feeling like we could have gone much further. We both found good rhythms after a while and had no problems with goggles, wetsuits or the cold, which are all slight concerns for the day of the the swim. Here is a link to a report on the race with the results and some photos - we get a mention at the bottom!
MAY 2008:
With some generous donations from individuals we have made it over £1000 raised! This is great news but we still have a long way to go to reach our target and our attempts to get some large companies to sponsor our attempts are sadly falling on deaf ears. So if any readers have any generous business contacts that would like to be associated with our swim then please get in touch!
We have just finished our training camp weekend of swimming (see the training page). We did loads - a big interval session, a long swim and a sea swim. We're both pretty tired but really pleased with how the swimming went. We've still got a way to go endurance wise but we definately feel we're getting there. Now we are getting nearer to the swim we are going to start pushing for more fundraising - we are fast approaching our first £1000 and really want to get there soon! More to come...
APRIL 2008:
First, an update on the sneezing thing. I got a nose clip and hey - I'm cured! The nose clip took a while to get used to breathing wise but the results were fairly miraculous so I'm very pleased!
This month we visited the Lakes for a training weekend. Given the success of our previous trip, we decided to base ourselves at Wast Water again. Unfortunately, things didn't go so well this time. To cut a long story short, the water was bloody freezing! I (Matt) went for a very short swim (a few minutes at most) but got out sharpish as I was hyperventilating! However, we did rescue some success from the weekend - we moved to a campsite on the shores of Windermere (pictured) and got to know the lake a bit better. It's much much friendlier than Wast Water with boats pootling around, houses on the shore and gently sloping banks. We checked out lots of good viewing spots for our supporters on the day and generally felt a bit better than we had the day before! We also met Matt Stanaway at the Waterhead Hotel who agreed to help us out however he could, which is great - see the sponsors link on the left for more info...
MARCH 2008:
An interesting and not so welcome development has occurred - I (Matt) think I might be allergic to chlorine! For a while now (maybe the last month or so - which coincides suspiciously with our increased volume of swimming) I've been having extended sneezing fits (we're talking in the 100s here), a constantly streaming nose and sore puffy eyes after swimming, usually lasting for several hours, but I'm usually okay the next day. Anyway, I'd been annoyed by it but hadn't really thought to much about it before, maybe just putting it down to the traditional cold plus wet hair combo. Yesterday I was talking with Rich (he's one of our boating support crew - see the about us page) and he gets the same thing, as does a friend of his who suggested it might be related to chlorine. Well, I've been investigating on the Internet this morning and it seems quite common unfortunately. However, there seems to be a few things that might help, namely wearing a nose clip, breathing in steam with olbas oil afterwards and taking antihistamine tablets used for hayfever to stop the allergic reaction. So I'll be trying them out in that order over the next few weeks and hopefully it will calm down a bit. One thing's for sure - I sure can't afford to stop swimming!
We also just received a Just Giving donation from "GNC". This is quite exciting as we don't know who it is, so it counts as our first anonymous donation! So thanks very much GNC, whoever you are!
FEBRUARY 2008:
Well hello again. Another month, another who knows how many lengths of the pool! It's been a fairly normal month swimming wise, with lots of interval sessions and a few long swims. We've upped our swimming to three times a week now aswell (see training page). Things are going well we hope. We've also done a couple of running races and have been improving our times which hopefully shows we are getting generally fitter - the races are good because they give you something to aim for.
Our website is proving successful in helping other Windermere swimmers to find us - this month we got an e-mail from two guys who found the website on Google, are also swimming the lake this summer and are also fearful of freezing to death and goose fat - good to know we're not the only ones! Andy, another fellow Windermere swimmer (see October below) has also pointed us towards a relay lake swim in Switzerland in early August which would be ideal preparation for our swim and which we are strongly considering entering - it's 26km all together but we can do it as a relay, taking one hour in turns so it should be about 13km each which would be perfect. We'll let you know if we enter!
JANUARY 2008:
Now writing at the end of January and things are still going well fitness wise. We have been doing a lot of interval sessions in the pool (see the training page), interspersed with a couple of longer steady swims. We have just received some good advice from fellow Windermere swimmer Emma France to concentrate on speed and intervals over the winter, as it's much easier to build up stamina in the summer - so we're pleased with the approach we've taken.
Now we're getting slowly but surely fitter, and the year of the swim is upon us, we have decided to crank up our fundraising efforts - so if you are interested enough to be reading this then please feel free to visit out Justgiving page!
Finally, we competed in a 5 mile road race today and both did really well, coming in well below our target times. We both felt much better than during the race on New Year's Day so hopefully that means our general fitness is improving. We've always enjoyed running and cycling and think that getting fit through a number of different sports helps to keep things interesting...
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It's been a good start to the year fitness wise. We both got under our target times in the 10k race on New Years Day, which was a great way to start the year. Then on Sunday 6th we went to the pool, jumped in and swam for ... 2 hours! This is the longest we've swum for and we fought through various aches and most of all extreme boredom, to get there! We reckoned we must have done getting on for 220 lengths of the pool! We'd previously done a few swims of about 1 hour 15 minutes and always stopped when we were in the groove and felt like we could go on forever, so the idea was to get to that point and keep going. By the end of the two hours, we certainly didn't feel like we could go on forever so hopefully it was a good session. Back to the grind of intervals in mid-week now! We have also found a swimming race in June over the Ironman distance (2.6 miles / 3.8 km) which we are looking forward to - that distance should be a mere drop in the ocean by then!
DECEMBER 2007:
We both had a run of colds early this month but as I write (only five days till Christmas!) we are back to full health and back in the pool. Check out the training page to see what we have been up to in the pool recently... We've also sorted out a schedule of 10k running races for next year to help keep our general fitness up and it starts on New Year's Day morning with the Hangover 10k in Weston-Super-Mare! We will let you know how we get on.
Last day of the year now and a big thanks to all those residents of Pitlochry Close in Bristol and friends of the Cox family who sponsored us last night at Jen's parents open house party! Another £65 nearer our target. We also made a slightly startling discovery today! Jen has just finished reading "Swimming to Antarctica" by long-distance open-water swimming legend Lynne Cox. The following passage is a little worrying bearing in mind what we experienced in September (see below). Those gloves have suddenly jumped up our shopping list...
"Looking down through the clear, icy, gray-blue water, I examined my hands. My fingers were together, my hands like paddles; that was good. It meant that I was maintaining fine motor control, and that my brain was warm. If my fingers started spreading apart, that would mean I was losing fine motor control and my brain was cooling down. This was dangerous. It was a sign that I was going into hypothermia, and also possibly losing my sense of judgment..."
Finally, we've also just found this report on a successful swim of the lake from September of 2007 - we'll try to get in touch and find out some top tips! Click here to see the article...
NOVEMBER 2007:
In a slightly downhearted update from July's exciting fundraising news, the car banners have faded in the sun and still no word from David Walliams (boo!)...
However, we managed to raise a bit more sponsor money this month... I (Matt) was in need of a haircut and Leanne who I share an office with was only too happy to point this out! We started nattering away and somehow (looking back I'm still unsure how this happened) within about five minutes I had agreed to have my head shaved the next day! Lee kindly made an extra donation to see this happen and we charged people for the privilege of cutting (hacking would probably be a more appropriate word) bits off - thanks to everyone who donated! We have an ambitious fundraising target of £5000 and every penny towards that total is invaluable. Check out the pictures page for some action shots...
OCTOBER 2007:
We got an unexpected e-mail this month from Andy McDonagh, who found us through Google (good to know that works!) and is also swimming Lake Windermere next year. He is raising money for St. Johns Hospice in the Wirral. Follow these links to go to his Just Giving page and his blog. It seems like he is putting us to shame with his training, but it's great to be in touch with a fellow lake swimmer and we hope to go to the Lakes next year together for some hardcore swim training!
SEPTEMBER 2007:
A busy month! We went swimming in the Lakes and also found some fame... Swimming first though. As it's about a year until the swim, we wanted to go for a test swim to see what the water temperature would be like. With an inflatable kayak kindly lent by a friend we visited Wast Water, a lake about 3 miles long and also the deepest in England. We took it in turns to swim while the other paddled alongside for safety and company. We didn't quite manage to swim the length of the lake, but both came pretty close and swam for about an hour and three quarters. In the end what stopped us both (oddly) was completely losing control of our left hands which we could not hold together in a paddle - an effect of the cold we think. It's made us think that we made need some gloves for the swim, although more acclimatisation next year may also help. We were both a bit freaked out by the blackness of the water which is an odd sensation, but again something we will have to get used to. We both feel that we've now got a bit more an idea what we've let ourselves into - especially when we went to the end of Lake Windermere to have a look about - whether that is a good thing or not I'm not sure! Check out the pictures page for some photos of the big day...
In other news, we have achieved some fame! We recently found out about Alastair Humphreys, who has cycled around the world - a truly impressive feat by anyone's standards - click here to visit his website. We got in touch and he was kind enough to write a few words about our swim on post them on his website -click here to see what he had to say. For a man who has cycled the globe to say what we are doing is beyond him was a surprise to say the least! But thanks Alastair for saying so, and we hope a few people may see what he wrote and sponsor us... Alastair has written two honest and vivid books about his trip - "Moods of Future Joys" and "Thunder and Sunshine" - they both come highly recommended.
AUGUST 2007:
We've been in Australia this month and there are a couple of swimmy things to tell you. First, Matt got to do a bit of training in Cairns Municipal Swimming Pool (pictured), which is quite possibly the best pool in the world - 50 metres long, which is much better as there are less turns and you can get into your stride (so to speak) a bit more - and open air! Plus there was hardly ever anyone there. And it was floodlit after dark. We both also went for a dip in the sea in Tasmania. We were travelling about and pulled up at this gorgeous beach on the east coast (pictured). The sun was shining (although it was actually pretty cold being the middle of winter and all) and the sea looked peachy with crystal clear water; we even spotted a pod of dolphins offshore and watched them jumping about for a bit. All this convinced us that a swim would be a good idea. We pulled on our wetsuits and dived in. Then promptly wished we hadn't - it was bloody freezing! A period of thrashing around in the water whilst trying to warm up ensued. Eventually we swam for about 15 minutes before becoming seriously concerned about a general lack of feeling in our hands and feet, at which point we thought it sensible to get out! It took a couple of hours to regain feeling in our toes but we were glad we did it.
JULY 2007:
There's still more than a year to the swim but we're getting all excited and starting to get fundraising bits in place. We've got posters and sponsor forms, car banners with our web address and business cards to hand out to likely sponsors! We're writing to famous Channel swimmer and comedian David Walliams in the hope that he will become patron of our swim. And we're going to write off to lots of companies in search of corporate sponsorship. Hopefully we won't peak too soon!
MAY 2007:
We have just done our first open water swim training. Here we are bravely wading into the unknown! We spent the weekend in Dorset and had a dip in the sea near Bridport. The wetsuits worked well, were warm and nicely buoyant. Our heads and hands and feet were cold, which is to be expected really, but we just didn't think about it! They soon warmed up though. This was just a test run out for the suits really, but it's got us all enthusiastic about the challenge and we're looking forward to some more dips soon.
APRIL 2007:
Have you ever walked through a shop dripping wet and in your swimmers? No, thought not! Well now we have! We went to Tri UK, a triathlon superstore in Yeovil to buy our wetsuits for the swim - yes, we're using wetsuits - we definitely don't like the idea of smothering ourselves in goose fat! In the shop they have an endless pool, which is really just a treadmill for swimming. T'was fun, and we ended up with lovely matching his and hers wetsuits! Now we can get on with some open water training, which should be more fun than endless laps of the pool.
MARCH 2007:
I (Matt) was on fieldwork in the Lake District with my esteemed colleagues Emily and Leanne. We were coring lakes for Emily's PhD project. Anyway, at the time I was reading 'Pedalling to Hawaii' by Stevie Smith. It's a good book, you should read it. It was inspiring me to do something a bit out of the ordinary. At the same time, we were staying in Ambleside, but doing fieldwork all over the place, which required driving up and down the length Lake Windermere. I remember being sat in the back of the car when I thought "hmmm, I wonder how long the lake is? Is it swimable? Is swimable even a word?" And so the seed was born. I phoned Jen up that evening all excited and she liked the idea too. And the rest, as they say, is history, except of course that we haven't done it yet!
