A group of Irish Life investment managers are swimming the English Channel in September to raise money for charity. TOM HUMPHRIESpays them his monthly visit to get a progress update
Catherine McLaughlin (28), fixed income fund manager
THE TOPIC this week is shoulders. The regime has cracked the whip and we are all swimming 10km a week minimum as opposed to seven and a half kilometres a week which we were doing. And there is a leaderboard with all our names on it to motivate us.
Mainly, though, we just meet each other around the office and complain that our shoulders are sore!
I did very little sport before this came along. My best friends wouldn’t pick me on a team with them. My mother is a concert pianist and a big part of my life has been piano exams and academic exams.
Part of the attraction for this challenge was it was something you could prepare for without having to be sitting down for hours on end!
Perhaps knowing so little about sport I was a bit innocent at first.
I’ve come to realise that there is swimming and then there is swimming in the sea. We went out on Friday morning for instance (in case you are thinking of doing the same there are no Darts between Sandymount and Seapoint before 6:40 in the morning so we ended up out there at 7am). The sea was very choppy.
The thing with the sea being choppy is that in races and stuff you can’t see the little orange buoys which they optimistically place around the water to guide you. You don’t see anything much, except what your imagination decides you are seeing.
Most of the time you don’t realise what you are seeing or doing. You swim over a big rock and half your brain processes it as a big rock, the other half says “holy God, what was that?”
You are just getting glimpses of things and your imagination fills in the rest.
Everyone talks about the jellyfish. I had never seen jellyfish before. I had heard about them. That was enough. No need for closer acquaintance.
Next thing one of the guys who has come to speak to us about the whole Channel swimming thing tells us that when he was swimming the Channel he actually swallowed a jellyfish.
You can swallow one? Does that mean the other jellyfish will be looking for retaliation?
My mother, who is now an expert on the whole subject of jellyfish, feels that the jellyfish won’t actually attack.
I keep saying that it is me in their water swimming right through them! Maybe they’ll consider that an attack!
I see things differently now. I love Top Gear and a few weeks ago they reshowed the edition where they were going across the Channel in their home-made amphibious cars. I had seen it before and last time it was very funny how Jeremy Clarkson’s Jeepboat was the only craft that made it across the Channel.
Of course, I only watched the vehicles the last time I watched it. Now I was watching the waves. Six foot waves sloshing up and down throwing an amphibious car about the place. Surely not a natural environment for a piano player from Galway.
The closest I have come to that sort of experience was when four of us went west recently for the Corrib Swim through 2.2km of sea. They start you off in a lovely spot.
The best of the west, calm water and sun shining and then we went around a corner and I could only catch glimpses of the orange buoys as we swam along in the waves trying not to swallow half the sea as we went.
My mother had said jokingly (I think!) that she was coming along to watch me drown. Suddenly, though, I was thinking to myself that she actually was going to see me drown. She’s feeling guilty about the joke now.
Funny thing is that you keep going. I have watched two of my best friends lose parents to cancer. I saw them suffer as their loved ones suffered. One went fairly quickly, the other lingered long. It is a horrible thing to watch. We are raising money for the hospice treatment of cancer patients. That is so important for people. It keeps you going. The dread is of letting the team down and of letting down all the people who help us raise money.
People have been so generous. Bucket collecting at the Bruce Springsteen concert. Bag packing in Cornelscourt. A gala ball. You name it, people have given generously.
You get the feeling sometimes that you are just a small amphibious piano player at the centre of a great sea of people doing something.
The jellyfish have no chance!
Fergus Dowd (50), property fund manager
I’M THE mid-life crisis entry. It was swim the Channel or buy a sports car. The economy went. I’m swimming the Channel.
I’m 50 but haven’t really struggled in terms of keeping up. My tactic is to be steady and dogged. I don’t try to race the guys who can do plenty of laps in the pool.
I have a fair tolerance of the cold water, must be the extra blubber that some of the skinny people lack. I tend to keep going rather than race. So far it works.
The experience definitely changes you, no matter how old you are. Last week I stepped out of a shop, Superquinn, in Ranelagh, and a car came up and nearly hit me. My life didn’t flash in front of my eyes but the year’s training certainly did. I couldn’t train for a year and then get knocked down? Could I?
Things have been ratcheted up a little in terms of preparation now.
Last weekend some of us went on a training course to Tramore under the guidance of Jim Swift, a Channel swimmer himself. It was a sort of swimming boot camp.
On the Friday night we went out into the dark water for a night swim. We had these little glow sticks that you wave at pop concerts. We stuck them down the back of the elastic on our goggles. You can see people when they are turned away from you. When they turn around to look at you they disappear. A little strange.
When we got into the water first there was just enough light to see the little bubbles coming up through the water as you lifted your arm out. Then it was too dark.
We stayed in the middle of the cove mainly bobbing around getting used to the darkness. We swam out towards the surf a little. I had wondered if in the dark we would know how far to come up when we went to turn our heads for air. Is it a visual thing? Turns out that it comes naturally which is a relief. You just sense it.
One of the big challenges of doing a relay swim is the business of not being in the water but knowing that you have to get in again. If somebody gets cold and hungry and dispirited and sick between, say, their second and third swims that is when the exercise can break down.
So we had three sessions in the water the next day. Twice we went in off the cliffs. Between swims we would go back to the BB and eat and drink (water) in our beds. Finally we went down to the seafront for the last swim.
It was lashing rain and there was a howling wind. We huddled together wondering were we really going to get back in. Jim Swift wasn’t there.
We rang him. That was a test. He wasn’t going to come and get us. He was seeing if we would look for him to lead us in for the third time. So we got in for an hour in the breakers off the coast.
When we came out there was a lifeguard waiting. It reminded me of a funny little incident in Brittas a few weeks back. I was swimming off the coast in Brittas. It was foggy and I could just about see this person walking parallel to me on the beach.
“That’s great.” I thought to myself. “I am swimming as fast as somebody walking.”
I came in 10 minutes later. The walker was standing waiting. Turns out he is the lifeguard.
“Do you not think it is a bit foggy to be swimming in the sea. See the red flag?”
“Oh no!” I said apologetically “I couldn’t see it because of the fog!”
We had a good chat about the whole Channel swim thing though and he couldn’t have been nicer.
That has been a great part of the experience.
My own sporting background includes playing for Benildus in Croke Park once, a little athletics and a good deal of outdoor non-competitive sports. Canoeing, hillwalking, climbing, windsurfing. This project has brought me back to a level of fitness that I last had about 10 years ago.
And when it is over? There was an article recently in the Go travel supplement of The Irish Times. A swimming holiday in Croatia. I chanced my arm at home.
“You’ve always said you wanted to see Croatia.”
“Yeah but not from 50 yards out at sea thanks.”
Well, there’s always the sports car.