Age 9 (ish) – learned that you could step off of one country and swim to another country unaided. Have been wanting to do it ever since.

Age 12 – started swimming year-round with an amazing coach. Two coaches have most defined me as a swimmer and coach – Susan and Kiki. Sometimes I would be the only one to show up for a Saturday morning workout. Susan would give me crazy long-distance workouts. And I would give me crazy distance workouts – I showed up one morning and asked her if I could just swim the whole 2 hours to see how far I could go.

Throughout childhood – grew up swimming in lakes and rivers for fun. Thanks to WV for preparing me to be comfortable above the murky depths.

Age 17 – chose to go to W&L for many reasons. Thank heavens I got to swim in college. I wasn’t planning on doing anything with it at the time – I just loved swimming.

Age 23(ish) – did my first open water swim at Lake Beryessa in CA. Have often mocked myself since for thinking it would be scenic, like a bike ride or a run. Considering how much I love open water, it was not as much love at first sight as you might think. They sent the 40&over men’s wave about 3 minutes after my wave and I got swum over towards the finish line by a pack of (very) hairy men. Maybe that explains it.

20s – continued to compete in OW and started competing in triathlon. Eventually started coaching swimming in the SF Bay, where I learned that 3 hours in 60 degree water (F) and no wetsuit was no problem for me. It would be bangin’ if that’s still true.

Favorite open water memory – coaching Sarah to swim from Alcatraz at age 9. A pure white seal pup came to investigate one day. Watching girl and seal navigate the bay waters together was just the best. I love to swim myself, but coaching others to help them achieve their dreams is my jam.

30s – had kids, moved to NC. Added a bunch more OW swims to my list. Not as many as I’d like – races are expensive, and I have kids to put through college!

Wednesday, October 15, 2014 (Age 37, barely) – reached out to an English Channel coach for the first time. We had a good phone conversation, but a mistaken understanding of how we would be preceding in the spring made me react poorly to her follow-up emails in February (probably due to the dark mental state coaching NC high school swimming had put me in). I’m better at not letting parents put me into mental tailspins now. Ahh, growth.

February 2015 – Decided not to hire a coach, at least not yet. Doing it on my own has been slower and harder, but way cheaper. And there really is a great community out there happy to help you. Although, my experience with a professional nutritionist was so good at the Swim Around Charleston, it tempts me to look into professional coaching again.

July 2017 – Johnny hooked me up with John Doolittle. It was great to talk in person to someone who had swum the Channel.

2018 – Started looking into the specifics of getting a boat and moving to England. Talked to Principal Sherry about how the school logistics would work, Vanessa about how moving to England would work, and tried to figure out how to decide on a boat, pilot and date more than 2 years ahead of time. Letting people know about my plans was both intimidating and thrilling (about to jump off a building thrilling).

It was Vanessa who suggested Canterbury as a nice place to live with proximity to Dover and London. Irrespective of whether that ends up being the place we make our brief home, Canterbury Tales this is.

I had hoped to swim in the summer of 2020, but knew I might have to push it back a year if I couldn’t bring things together in time. That turned out to be the case, but I’ve been really glad for extra time to prepare.

November 2018 – I learned that SwimTrek had a Channel training camp and really thought about going in spring of 2019, but couldn’t justify the $2000 price tag (plus travel).

March 2019 – Officially mentally moved my swim to 2021. Found a 10K swim to do at Fontana Lake in July 2019. Took steps toward reserving a boat for the Channel.

April 2019 – Started practicing with Wave. Was comically out-of-shape.

I’ve forgotten to mention anything about training after college. I swam with Fog City Masters in California (and then coached them); I swam with One Step Beyond Masters in Cary after moving to NC (and then coached for them), and then switched over to RAM because I loved Harry’s coaching (and then coached for them). When they changed practice times and I couldn’t coach anymore (and thus swim for free), I started swimming at my summer pool during lap swim (and then started a Masters team there).

When that pool (CSC) closed to the public at the end of the summer, I was able to continue swimming with Shawn that fall. I took a few months off (unintentionally – no one to swim with), and then swam again at CSC that summer. That was when I started the IMP Masters team there and swam with them the next winter (once I started swimming at CSC, my practices probably topped out around 2500 yards. Most were, you know, less). That brings us up to that April day in 2019 when I got my ass absolutely handed to me by middle schoolers.

[A side note, as I’m summing all of this up, I’m realizing how very many cost-saving measures I have used to achieve my goals without breaking the bank. Perhaps another blog is in order.]

This is also when I met (by email) Charles Van Der Horst, an incredibly nice marathon swimmer in the area who then perished during the 8 Bridges Hudson River Swim in the summer of 2019 (soon after I’d met him in person at Seven Lakes). He was the one who put me in touch with Loretta Cox, and I would not have a boat without him (or her).

Wednesday, April 10, 2019 – The day I finally booked a boat. I cannot emphasize enough how difficult I found this. As I say in the long version, it was a combination of help from Loretta and also being so fed up with the whole thing that I irritated myself into finally making a decision and commitment. But you can tell how overwhelming a decision it was because I ended up booking two pilots. Must choose now. Eek.

Summer 2019 – trained for the Fontana Lake 10K (The Tale of the 10K) while coaching summer league, masters and private lessons. That was… tough.

Fall 2019 – trained for the 12-mile Swim Around Charleston (The Tale of the Swim Around Charleston). Swam it October 6^th. Now feel bulletproof. Trying to talk myself out of hubris.

Covid Recap March-October 2020: All Plans are Schrodinger’s Plans Now

Here’s me at the beginning of July 2020:

I don’t really know how to sum up the last few pandemic months, but maybe it was –

March – Things are going great! Whoa, holy shit! Scramble, scramble, scramble.

April – I’m keeping in shape (drylands, bike trainer, riding with kids, yoga, pilates, running, etc.) so that I can come back at it when I can come back at it.

May – There is not going to be any coming back at it any time soon. Sad.

June – I unexpectedly CAN swim again. Yay!!! But it gets interrupted by this, that, and the other thing. Boo!!! Must buy my own pool for the garage to swim tethered so that doesn’t happen. Oh wait, everyone else already did that so there are none left. Sad. And then coughing, muscle aches, headache. Quarantine while waiting for test results. Negative. Sitting inside my room for 3 days doing nothing (BLM Netflix) actually gave me some perspective and rest from this whole thing. At the end of June I got my act back together.

July – Full implementation of doubles workouts (swimming most nights, rotating yoga, bike, run, HIIT most mornings). It’s July 4th and I’m tired and sore, but I’m going to keep doing exactly what I’m doing for a bit and see if it gets results. If I have to miss a workout, I’ll sub another workout. For the times I can’t do that, I won’t worry about it. I’m getting in 4-5000 a night. Times are all over the place. It’s really hot.

My Channel swim? Who knows? Nobody has gone yet this year… waiting. waiting. waiting.

October reflections:

So, the stream-of-consciousness above does reflect my inner monologue during that time pretty accurately. It was full of ups and downs and doing the best we could with what the world threw at us. I would do it differently if I had it to do over again with what I know now… but I’m hoping I won’t need to use that knowledge again. One global pandemic is more than enough for me.

At the same time, there are many things I will take away from the experience, and there have been many positives along the way. In late October 2020, I feel like I have made peace with the experience, and turned lemons to lemonade. And I’m proud of that.

A final takeaway would definitely be that it is CRUCIALLY important that I swim. Everything, and I mean everything, looks better to me when I have regular time in the water. If I could only change one thing, I would go back and buy a garage pool in March. And maybe swim some open water, although at the time, no one knew if there would be enough PPE, and I support former Laura’s decision to be very conservative about the potential to get in an accident and use up essential medical services and equipment.

Where do I stand now? Currently at peace with living in this brave new world.

And that’s pretty much where I’m at as of October 2020. For the rest of the story, Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog: