I am just a regular person… who wants to walk off of England and swim until I can walk onto France. (So “completely normal” may be a bit of a stretch.) I am a longtime swimmer, and I swam in college… but I grew up swimming in West Virginia (not known for it’s swimming prowess) and I swam in a very average way in NCAA Division 3. Since then I’ve had grad school and jobs and kids and a house and… swimming when I could fit it in.

So, a completely average person who frequently has other priorities.

But I do love to swim.

I’ve always loved to swim. My mother reports me crawling toward the water before I could walk. I love to be in the water and I love to train. Will it be enough? I have no idea! That is the fun part of all this. So come, if you will, on a journey with me to find out – Can I swim the English Channel?

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This blog actually originated in November of 2018, as I started to started to really mentally commit to an upcoming Channel swim.

But I was way too chicken to post it anywhere at that point. Even though there were people who knew what was in the works (a very small number integral to advising me how to make it happen – Thanks Sherry and Vanessa!), I was in no way ready to spread the word.

But now, here I am, ready to document my efforts to swim the English Channel for your entertainment and my own sanity. (And it only took me a year to get up the nerve.)

Key in that decision were thoughts from a very wise friend (thanks Alice!) – I was bemoaning that I was reluctant to blog about it, given the chance that I might not be successful. She made me realize viscerally what I knew in my head – failure is not disqualifying (and will not make people like you less. Do we ever recover from our childhoods?). People will be interested in the story, even if it does not end in the way that I hope. Success has many measures, and at this point, I have made a full mental 180, such that success is the people I will meet and the experiences I will have along the way. Living in England alone is worth the whole adventure. And, you know, if you’re going to live in England, you might as well try to swim the Channel, right?

I’ve generated a decent amount of reading material over the last year, so I think what I will do is put up my archives for any who would like to read my thoughts from the beginning, but also offer a summary here for those who want to take it from the present forward.

P.S. I’m assuming most people know that it is, like, crazy difficult to swim the English Channel. And that fewer people have done it than have summited Everest. And that even if you completely prepare yourself for the long distance (21 miles), the cold water (16C/60F; no wetsuit, baby), the jellyfish (owwie), and the weather (unpredictable); something totally random can stand in your way (I talked to someone whose boat engine broke down this year. Other people start uncontrollably vomiting. Then there’s always hypothermia). The success rate is about 66%.