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Dancing with Catastrophe

Well, I promised that if catastrophic things happened I would write about it, and this week is definitely the closest I’ve come so far. Tuesday the 7th was one of the just-plain-awefulest days I’ve had, internally, but I handled it, so I feel like I’m still coming away in the plus column.

Tuesday was my practice swim with my pilot. All through its planning, I had felt undue unease about it – could be we don’t give the psychic realm enough credence 🙂 The plan was to meet at Ramsgate (with Will, my fellow Channel aspirant) and swim down to Dover, where Paul would dock his boat. We confirmed on Monday that the weather would be sufficient to the task, and the plan was set to meet at Ramsgate at 10 on Tuesday.

As best I can tell, my troubles began with a piece of lunchmeat over the weekend.

Younger son: “Does this ham seem OK?”

Me: Smells it. “Smells fine.” *Determines the course of the next seven days and eats a slice* “Tastes fine.”

On Sunday night my stomach hurt. Badly enough that I asked the boys not to talk to me – not at all a normal thing for me to say. But on Monday I felt fine, and went through my rest day pretty normally. A was out of school with a stomach-ache (oh cursed ham!), so I didn’t have to go anywhere. I bought train tickets to Reading, and got to bed early.

But once there, I couldn’t sleep. Here’s how the next 24 hours went down:

11ish to 1:30 – slept

1:30-4:30 – felt wretched. Tried to figure out if I should still go, and what was wrong with me

4:15 AM – concluded it was probably food poisoning, and decided to hope that I would feel better. I went ahead and started getting ready, figuring the 25-minute walk to the train station might take a bit more time. Looked at the pork pies I had planned to take for breakfast on the way and went, “hrmmh, no.”

4:25 AM – left the apartment. Kept likely-looking bushes in sight

4:55 – arrived at train station. Couldn’t get door open. Had only started to panic a little bit when someone else showed up and *pushed*

5:19 – boarded train, jaw clenched

6:15 ish – did unspeakable things in train bathroom. Felt much better

7:15 – a mere 15 minutes from our destination, the train suddenly pulled to a stop. Information was slight, but a problem with another train delayed us for an eternal 30 minutes. The train got hotter and hotter, and I felt more and more like I might need another trip to the bathroom. But it was crowded by that point, so getting up would probably mean loosing my seat, and having to stand up in a hot, stuffy train for an unknown amount of time when I already felt I might faint.

8:00 – Getting off the train felt a ton better (misery is relative). It took a while to find Will – because my train was late, he had had to move out of the short term parking. Once we found each other, I explained my presumed food poisoning, possible contagion. He let me in his car anyway 🙂

[I’ll interject here – on tardiness – I kind of made myself a promise after grad school that lateness and unreliability were a thing of my past – I hadn’t liked being that person. And I’ve pretty much kept to that. Being late REALLY stresses me out. On the inside. This will become very pertinent in the next paragraph.]

8:10? – we got onto the road… and hit absolute masses of traffic. The estimated arrival time kept ticking up and up and up. At one point the fastest route was to turn around and go back the way we came. God bless Will for also being the kind of person that realizes that once there’s nothing you can do about something, you might as well just deal.

11:23 – arrived in Ramsgate, almost 1.5 hours late. Had one comedy of errors parking, and another comedy of errors trying to find the boat. Eventually, 8 days later, both were achieved.

Noonish? – at this point, I am tired, sweaty, filled with guilt about being late, and I have not been able to eat anything at all and I’m operating on 2 hours of sleep. Time to swim!

We got into our suits quickly as the boat pulled out, put on our caps, goggles, sunscreen, vaseline, etc. (for me at full pace).

12:15? – I climbed down the ladder at the back and asked, “Just jump in?” Given the nod, I did. And my favorite goggles popped off my head and sank to the bottom of the ocean. It was kind of emblematic of the day.

4:15? – We finished the swim. It actually went really well. Conditions were my least favorite – swimming straight into wind over waves, but I felt like I swam well and it was good practice. I “ate” the only things that I consumed that day – 3 chocolate milks. Honestly, the best part was knowing that if anything came out of either end violently, it wouldn’t matter in the ocean (as opposed to Will’s car). I fought with my replacement goggles the whole way – I wasn’t really able to adjust them (and hadn’t worn them in awhile), and my choices were for them to dig extremely painfully into my eye socket, or to leak salt water into my eyes. I alternated between the two. If you’ve never swum in “wind over waves” it is very slappy – as in the water slaps at you – and it repeatedly slapped me right in my painful goggles. I did not enjoy this part.

5:15? – Eventually the tide turned and we weren’t going anywhere, so we got back on the boat and chugged to Dover Harbor. But at the end of the swim, we WERE swimming next to the white cliffs of Dover, and it was amazing enough to give me chills. Haha – perhaps that was why I felt cold for longer than I ever have after a swim. Oh wait, perhaps that was the complete lack of food and extremely small amount of sleep. Will went up to watch everything from the deck; I stayed below where it was warm and watched through the windows – this is extremely unlike me. But I felt OK and didn’t get seasick, so I was happy enough with that.

6:15? – Loosing track of the time here (my watch died during the swim), but it took quite a while for them to dock the boat in its new slip. But it was cool to sit there in Dover Harbor. Paul and Jason then drove us back to Ramsgate, and we got the chance to talk to them and ask questions – it was great. And I didn’t puke in THEIR car either. Score.

6:30 – Will and I used the bathroom, and he got some quick fish & chips. Honestly, the few minutes waiting for his order in the fish & chips place were the diciest of the day, stomach-wise. But luckily there was nothing much in there by then.

8:30 – He drove me back to Reading, and I missed a train by 10 minutes. So I had to sit on the platform for an hour and 30 minutes. But honestly, at that point, I was just so grateful to have made it through the day (and without having any embarrassing bodily functions in front of anyone I knew!), I was fine to just sit.

9:52 – Got on the train (when you’ve counted down to a time for an hour and a half, this one you remember accurately. There was a whole thing about what train to take and if it was OK to take the one to Bournemouth (direct and faster) instead of going back to Pokesdown where I originated, AND my iPhone (where my tickets, maps, everything were) was running out of battery and I hadn’t packed a charger, but it all worked out in the end, and again, kind just encapsulated what kind of day it was.

11:14 – Got to the Bournemouth train station, hallelujah. E was waiting for me, to walk me home and make sure I wasn’t sold into white slavery. They wouldn’t have wanted me at that point.

Fun story to end the day – as we were walking, a cat meow-ed insistently to us from across the road. We made cat-friendly noises and said to come on over. He did, and then turned around to show the (very interested) dog that had been coming down the sidewalk toward him that he had found protectors. Smart kitty.

To sum up: I’m not sure any of this captures the mental and physical anguish of the day. Not only did I feel terrible and constantly need to guard against vomiting inappropriately (my most sore muscle the next day? not shoulders, not neck – my clenched jaws), I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing and didn’t feel like I had the mental resources to figure it out. I felt like total, complete, abject crap. I couldn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. But I swam fine anyway. Even though the second hour in the water was the longest 18 hours I’ve ever spent in the water, this was a confidence-building exercise. And I’m not eating anymore lunchmeat between now and my swim 🙂

I spent Wednesday and Thursday in bed, feeling like death itself, and began the return to function on Friday. By Saturday I was able to go volunteer for Durley Swims, although Sarah did the lion’s share of the work. Today (Sunday), I plan to get in the water for a bit and see how I’m going. Hopefully well enough to start Durley Week tomorrow.

My stomach (and it feels like most of my internal organs) still hurt a bit after dinner last night, but I am back to eating normal (not Channel training) amounts of normal food, so hopefully onward and upward.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures in Dover – I just wanted to go home. You can find pictures (better pictures) of the Castle, harbor, cliffs, etc. online

See, here’s a ton of pics

Giggle

On Wednesday, I attempted to start writing up Tuesday’s story. I think you’ll see why I quickly abandoned the attempt – this is what I wrote, verbatim:

“Although very little that I do at 4;51 AM COULd rationally be called «decision-making ».  For reference see « eating slimy turkey at cmu’ SPEAKING of the slimy turkey, a couple of days ago, I may have eaten some dodgy ham. D”

Channel Prep

I swam with my Channel Pilot and went to Dover. Huge checkmark.

Shopping for swim with Paul – waiting for confirmation – buying train tickets.

My eardrops are here!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally on Sunday I’m feeling good enough to start going through checklist and getting stuff together. I really should have been doing this since Wednesday, since I’ll want to be doing all of my final try-outs this week. Damn you, food poisoning! I did manage a couple days ago to go ahead and place an amazon order for more sunscreen, a tub of lanolin and another pair of goggles. They should get here in time to be useful.

The [Time Period] in the Water (Tuesday 6/7 – Sunday 6/12)

Summary

Pool Yardage ~ 0 M 

OW Yardage ~ 17,000 M

Total Yardage ~ 17,000 M

OTHER:

 miles of running – 0

 miles of walking (plus, you know, a lot more) – managed to pick A up from school on Friday

 miles riding – 4.4 (2.2 with broken Beryl bike – this should count triple 🙂

The Gory Details

Tue June 7 (~14,000 M) 4 h

I have no idea how far we actually went – it was with a push, so it really doesn’t matter. They told me it was just under 4 hours when we climbed out.

Wed June 8 – 0

Completely incapacitated by my digestive system

Thur June 9 – 0

See Wednesday

Fri June 10 – walked A home from school. Got out of breath going up 1 flight of stairs

Sat June 11 – biked over and back and volunteered for Durley Swims – it was nice to leave the flat, and not to feel like any morsels of food or even water might make things come spewing out of me. I can definitely feel the effects of lack of food and water. Time to build back up.

Sun June 12 (~3000 M) 1 h

I haven’t actually done this swim yet – but I plan to 🙂