Six hours of open water swimming in temperatures of 60 degrees or colder.

That’s the required swim assessment that each Channel aspirant must pass before being allowed to take his or her crack at the real thing. Today, I did mine.

Overall, it was definitely a success, but it wasn’t without its issues too. I completed the swim, that’s #1. My plan for feeds and hydration went off without a hitch, and that was huge win #2 considering I hadn’t done an ocean swim long enough to require feeds, so I was largely guessing at what I would need and when.

As it turned out, my nutrition and hydration went like this:

• Breakfast (7:30am, 1.5H before the swim): Salami sandwich with a glass of water. Unusual, no doubt, but I wanted the salt and some carbs, and just anything in my belly.
• 8:00am: One scoop of UCAN (orange) with ~8oz water
• 9:00am: Swim begins
• 10:05: UCAN with 8oz water [Note: all water that I drank with the UCAN came from a pump pot which I filled with near boiling water about an hour before the swim. It was still very hot 10 hours later– good sign.) The water was almost too hot to drink at first, but as I shook the cup and mixed it, it cooled off.
  • Btw, I highly recommend the Vitamin Shoppe 28oz Jaxx Shaker Cup as a dispenser for powdered [anything] mixes. Pictured below, the three-dimensional asterisk-looking jax (jack?) does an incredible job of mixing the powder, especially UCAN which can be pretty thick. Also, you can’t see it in this picture, but the yellow ring below the blue screw cap has a loop on it. I’m planning on attaching a line to the loop, so the cup can be reeled back into the boat. The yellow poptop snaps down and allows you to drink from the cup without unscrewing the blue cap, which is great because otherwise the yellow ring might slip off and the cup could become detached from the line.
  • One other note: I placed all my feed items inside a wide green bucket on the shore line and simply swam up to it. The trick here was that I started at almost dead low tide and had to be sure to move the bucket up the beach every time I took a feed. I had one close call when I completed a down-and-back and found the water lapping the base of the bucket. Moved it just in time.

• 10:45: 1 Electrolyte pill, 2 Advil, water from bottled water
• 11:30: UCAN with 8oz water
• 12:15pm: 1 Electrolyte pill, 1 banana, water from bottled water
• 1:05: UCAN with 8oz water
• 1:45: 1 Electrolyte pill, 2 Advil, 1 banana, water from bottled water
• 2:30:1 Electrolyte pill, 1 banana, water from bottled water

I did the swim at Peggotty Beach in Scituate, which is a great crescent-shaped cove, perfect for this sort of swimming. A down and back, following the curve of the shore takes about 20′ when you’re fresh, closer to 25 or 30′ when you start to fade. And man did I start to fade.

The first 4H went great– glassy water, a clear, sunny day bringing with it warmth on my back. Often when I do a long run or swim, at some point after it’s started a mileage point or a time pops into my head as the point that, “after that, you’ve got it made”. I never plan that point ahead of time, and it doesn’t always occur to me, but today it did, and that time was 1pm, the 4H mark.

When I hit that time, I thought to myself, “This is it, you’re in the final window!” And yet, the last 2H was brutal. I had plenty of energy, I wasn’t too cold, and my stomach was fine. The issue was the increasing swell with the incoming tide and oh yeah– my shoulders were absolutely screaming at me. My long swim up until now has only been 4H, and while I’ve logged four of those, they’ve all been in the pool under controlled conditions. Also, my training’s been a bit scant lately so while I tried to rationalize it as a mini-taper, the truth is I could have used more training leading up to this swim.

I made it through though, calling on the mantra from Travis Macy’s book, The Ultra Mindset: “It’s all good mental training”. No doubt I’ll hit the wall harder than this on the day of the big swim, so I might as well get experience with this feeling of misery, and powering through in spite of it. I also invented my own slogan: “Slinging sausages.” Sometimes when I’m doing a long swim and my shoulders are revolting, it feels like all I can do is to whip my arm forward, accepting the agonizing pain that comes with it, and technique be damned, before repeating the motion for the other arm. As depressing as Slinging Sausages mode is though, for some reason it usually passes, provided I can get my mind on something else. Yet another lesson in pushing through the pain.

My shoulders, or more specifically my trapezius muscles seem to be pain free. This is a complete 180 from how I felt after my early long swims, and absolutely due to the pointer I received from a woman at my pool. I couldn’t be more grateful for what seemed like such a small tweak, and yet something that’s really saved my training.

On the other hand (so to speak), mysteriously my right hand is in a ton of pain. There’s a spot I just pinpointed– middle of the back of the hand, just above the wrist– and it feels like there’s a lump there. It must just be a strained tendon, but it’s really hampering what I can do with my hand. Must be poor hand placement into the water or during the pull. Will have to investigate.

Another fun/funny note to mention– when I came in for my first feed at 10am, I was greeted by the photographer for the Scituate Mariner, the local paper. I had done an interview with them a few days earlier, and they told me that they would be sending someone to take pictures today. He couldn’t have been nicer, and on such a beautiful day, I the shots he took turned out well. I can’t say I’m looking forward to a town-wide photo spread of me, featuring my gut enveloping my Speedo, but if the shots are from the chest up, they should be fine.

I guess that was the other thing to note– coming out of the water, even briefly to grab the feeds, I couldn’t have been more self-conscious of being the only guy at the beach in a Speedo. Early on, it was no big deal since the beach was nearly empty. By the time I finished however, not only was the beach packed, it was condensed even more due to high tide, and I didn’t relish being on display.

So, all in all, it was victorious day. I will say though, it was discouraging to think that I finished by limping back into port. If this had been the day of the crossing, 6H wouldn’t be nearly enough to cut it. The message then? Double down on my training. Thirteen weeks to go, and four of those are known travel weeks for work or vacation. Gotta make every day count.

[Update:] Here’s that article in the Scituate Mariner. Looks like they went with the gut shot…ugh.