Training

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6th August - 3.30pm

Anna is now ensconsed with her Super Support Team in her house preparing for the Big Day tomorrow. Having just spoken with her she is extremely calm, very prepared and really looking forward to the swim tomorrow. We know she can do it and we are looking forward to reporting on her success tomorrow. Keep logged on for reports of her progress tomorrow. (ali)

Sat 28 July

Up in Hull this weekend working – it is the Wilberforce International Festival and all the boats have raced across from Rotterdam. I’ve had to bring lots of supplements, training gear and even my big gym ball. Although I have now finished the worst of my training I still have to maintain my fitness and keep myself in the right frame of mind. Had to duck out of a VIP dinner at 10pm last night to get to bed. I’m getting ulcers in my mouth with is a sign that I’m run down and exhausted. I can’t afford to get ill at the moment so I have to sleep lots and look after myself. After losing my appetite last week and struggling to eat at all, I now can’t stop. Yesterday I ate an incredible amount: Blood orange juice, banana, protein shake, pasta pesto and chicken, a butternut squash, beetroot and feta salad, a McDonalds cheeseburger and fries, a club sandwich and potato wedges, 5 pieces of chocolate crispy cake, a dozen canapés, a strawberry scone with jam and clotted cream, Serrano ham, melon and figs, bread roll and butter, salmon, sliced roast beef, couscous, coleslaw, new potatoes, green salad, pasta salad, packet of ginger Nairns crackers, and a slice of lemon tart. Now if that isn’t 4,000 calories, then I don’t know what is?! Maybe I should swim across the River Humber this afternoon to burn some of it off!

Friday 27 July

Up at 5am today to drive to Hull. Didn’t get to bed until midnight. I am hopeless at getting to bed on time. Shaun has told me that it is essential that I get minimum 8 hours sleep a night and I am failing miserably on that count. I’ve got a daily sleep log and it should be a long list of 8 hours, but it seems to be anywhere from 4-7 hours and it isn’t nearly enough for my body to recover from what I am putting it through at the moment. There always seems to be a million and one things to do before I go to bed. It is so frustrating as I am totally aware of how crucial sleep is and still can’t do it. It seems absurd that I am determined enough to train for nine months to swim across the Channel but I can’t make myself go to bed a 9pm at night. What is going on there?

Thursday 26 July

Today was my last long sea swim before the real long sea swim. After yesterday’s training I was exhausted before I started and woke up feeling like I couldn’t move – the muscles in my shoulders were so sore. Shaun came round at 6.30am and we packed the food and carb drinks into the car and whacked the kayak onto the roof. The weather was looking a bit dicey with the wind blowing through my eucalyptus tree in the garden but I didn’t want to think about it too much – I needed to get my last long swim in. So we drove to Hill Head, realised that I’d messed up the tides, had a debate about what the tide coming ‘in’ and ‘out’ meant and drove back to Stokes Bay. We called the Coastguard, greased up and launched into the rolling brown surf and started what I thought was going to be a five-hour swim. For two hours I ploughed through it, despite having very little energy and feeling very cold. The waves were breaking over my head and washing me around like I was in a mashing machine. For a while I was body surfing on the waves – and feeling the full force of the sea. Shaun was having more problems than me, trying to contend with the wind as well as the swell, and was finding it almost impossible to hold course. The wind and waves were building and two hours in I suddenly realised that I could see him. It’s not hard to spot a bright yellow kayak and after looking around 360 degrees I started to worry. Suddenly things weren’t going to plan and I was very worried. I took my goggles off, something I’d never usually do during a swim, so that I could get a better view but I still couldn’t see him. After ten minutes we were reunited on the beach – I’d never swam so fast as I did to shore when I spotted him. He’d also lost sight of me in the waves and was also worried. It brought home how quickly things can turn and how things can suddenly not be okay.

Now stranded with me at the other end of the beach with a kayak, Shaun had to get back to the car to come and collect me. I lay down on the pebbly beach covered in lanolin waiting for him to arrive and wrapped a transparent dry bag round my head to keep me warm. Lying there next to the water covered in grease with pebbles stuck to me and not moving with a bag over my head, I must have looked quite a sight. Apparently so, as a passer-by came to check that I was okay, probably thinking she had stumbled across a corpse washed in by the tide.

Back home and warm, I felt exhausted even though I’d only done two of the five hours. The adrenaline was pumping through my system from earlier on. We had to abort, we had no choice and the weather got even worse later in the day with a photographer out sailing in the Solent reporting gusts of 55 knots. Above all though, I was just relieved that we were both safe and well. For a moment I was worried that we weren’t going to be.

Weds 25 July

These last couple of weeks of training really have pushed me to the limit. Just when I think I can’t take anymore, there’s another five or six hour swim to contend with. My exhaustion has reached a whole new level – everything aches all the time and it takes all my will power to force myself back into the sea or pool for each of the ridiculously long sessions. Some days are harder than others and today was probably as hard as I’d like it to ever get. I needed to squeeze in an hour of weights with Shaun, a 3-12 hour swim followed by a four hour swim along with some pretty urgent deadlines in the office and a photo shoot for the Daily Express in my swimmers on the beach to go with an article I’ve written for them. All this and I needed to cram in at least 3-4,000 calories and get to bed by 9pm ready for a five-hour sea swim early on Thursday morning. Just typing it makes me feel pretty weary, let alone doing it, but somehow I managed it. I am acutely aware that these final days of training are crucial to my success in just over a week’s time. There are always a million excuses not to train, and I can’t even let myself go down that avenue. To add to the fun today, I had to drive around three different swimming pools to try to find somewhere free of screaming school holiday kids.

In the evening I messed up swimming pool times and got kicked out of Fareham at 8pm for the Disabled Swim Club after I had completed just two hours of a four-hour swim. This meant that I had to pool hop mid-swim, and drove the three miles between the two in my wet swimming cossie, all the time questioning the sanity of my Channel Challenge. I finally got out of the pool at 10pm and drove home to cook my high-carb dinner – all the time aware that I was going to be well short of my eight hours minimum sleep ahead of my 5-hour swim. With the wind howling outside, thankfully I’m too tired to worry about my final long swim in the morning.

Sunday 22 July

Lou came down from London today to be my safety kayaker for my five-hour swim. She was great and somehow we managed to keep going without gossiping between feeding breaks – quite a feat for the pair of us. On our Swim Trek holiday swimming between the Cyclades last month, we were told off for gossiping too much although we insist we were providing each other with moral support. I must be serious about this swim to stop talking – very serious. Shutting up for an hour is almost as tricky as swimming 22 miles for me. After the swim I went through the familiar routine of scrubbing off the lanolin in the shower that I am beginning to hate with a passion. It is such horrible stuff and just will not shift – no amount of hot water, shower gel, soap and scrubbing will budge it and I walk around constantly coated in a film of the horrible sticky stuff. It’s disgusting and I dream of the day when I don’t have to be sticky anymore.

In fact at the moment I just have two wishes:

To not be sticky

To drink alcohol

Is it too much to ask to be drunk and not sticky?

Friday 20 July

Today was my charity auction at the Clarence Tavern in Gosport and what a night it was. I was totally overwhelmed by the support of everyone involved. I’ve been astounded by the generosity of people over the last months when I’ve been focusing on this challenge. I’ve been helped in so many ways – from Matt coming down for a week to sort out my garden when I was totally flat out to the many friends who’ve got up as early as 4.30am to kayak alongside me as I swim in the sea. The auction was no exception and people donated the most incredible things for me to auction from a football signed by the 1966 World Cup Squad (thanks Bob) to Ben Ainsley’s Athens Olympics jacket (thanks Henri Lloyd). My enormous gratitude goes to my wonderful friend Jeremy Waite who wowed everyone with his auctioneering talent. After an epic battle to get down through the floods after his auction site in Henley flooded – he managed to raise loads of money for my two charities. Jeremy – you are amazing! There was no end to the lengths people would go to in order to help with the fundraising. Shaun somehow managed to squeeze into my bra – and got over £100 stuffed into it. One of the 07-08 race crew paid £90 for an inflatable dolphin that will be heading off round the world later this year and I even ditched my top in the name of charity. Altogether, with a quiz, prize draw and the auction – we managed to raise £5,600. What an effort and super special thanks go to all the people who helped me make it happen – Carie, Shaun, Ali, Vikki, Al, Bol, Lucy, Jo, David, Jeremy, Polly (and Elsie and Rigel for the mad dash to deliver Jeremy) and Mark. For donating fantastic things – a huge thank you to Bob Dench, Alex Thomson, Nigel Beacham, Toby Oliver, Amethyst Beauty Retreat, Suething Hands, Yvonne and Peter Oliver, Portsmouth FC, Henri Lloyd, Shaun Biddulph & Helen at Firm Move, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, Pam McQueen, Mark Preedy, Gordon Ritchie, David Cusworth, Sapphire Computers, Carol Blyth, Colin de Mowbray and Simon. And a very big thank you to the Pumphouse for providing sandwiches for the hungry masses. Mark and Vikki deserve a special mention for ‘Feeling my Pain’ – agreeing to get coated in lanolin and having things stuck to them for a good cause – you’re the best. It is all this support that will help me to keep going in a couple of weeks’ time and it is massively appreciated. Please keep it coming.

Training update – 8 July

It’s been an incredibly hectic couple of weeks since I last posted a training update. In fact, the reason I haven’t managed to write an update is because I’ve been so busy training. The length of the swims has really ramped up now as I get closer to the big day, and I seem to be spending more of my waking hours in the water than out of it. Last Thursday I had three swims to cram in, as well as a full day in the office – so the whole thing started at 6am in Fareham Swimming Pool and finished at 10.15pm in Portsmouth Harbour in the dark.

I’m also busy trying to get my fundraising party organised for Friday 20 July at the Clarence in Gosport. I’ve managed to raise almost £3,000 up to now - thank you all so much for your generous donations. Alex Thomson has very kindly donated a sail on his brand new Open 60 which will really boost the fundraising tally for the two great charities. Thanks Alex – you’re a legend. At the launch of the new HUGO BOSS on Friday evening, I broke my alcohol abstinence to toast the new boat with a shot of Black Sambuca. Let’s just hope none of my other friends are launching new boats in the next fur weeks, or it could all go pear-shaped.

So with just 28 days to go, I’m feeling great. Shaun is doing a supreme job and making sure that I sleep lots, eat properly and leave the office on time (If you think swimming the Channel is tough – try getting me to leave the office at 5pm!).

Thanks to him and everyone else supporting me, I feel strong and ready for it. Lucy has been a star and managed to find us a great team house in Folkstone for the week of the swim. Despite been told by every tooth-sucking inhabitant of Kent that she’d left it a bit late, we are the proud occupants of a lovely five-bedroomed farmhouse in Ruckinge from 4-11 August.

Thursday 5 July

Setting off on a 3-hour swim at 7.30pm on a Thursday evening is not ideal, but sometimes needs must. And Thursday was one of those days, as I’d had to squeeze two other swims in earlier in the day. Dragging myself off to train at that time of night is bad enough in itself, but the worst part is having to drag other people off to provide my safety support. In this case my unsuspecting heroes were Tom Cecil and Colin de Mowbray, who came out after a long day in the office to sit in the RIB in the drizzle tied to a buoy in Portsmouth Harbour as I swam on the spot in the tide for most of the three hours. If you think that swimming for three hours in the murky waters of Portsmouth Harbour is dull, try sitting in a RIB in the rain watching someone swim in the murky waters of Portsmouth Harbour. Tom and Colin – you are my heroes!

Sunday 1 July

I reached a major training milestone last Sunday, when I swam for 6 hours continuously – my longest swim to date and my qualifying cold-water swim required by the Channel Swimming Association before I make my solo attempt to swim to France next month. It was the day after our Clipper 07-08 Crew Allocation Day in Portsmouth which involved me running around in the rain and shouting from 7am-10pm. I was pretty shattered before I set off, and with a nasty weather forecast for Sunday, I started to think I should postpone it until Monday. After speaking to Shaun for advice, I called Tom and Sally who were driving down from London to provide me safety cover to tell them to hold fire. But they didn’t get the message until they had set off in the morning and we decided to give it a whirl despite the force 6, gusting 7 and white horses breaking on the Solent.

I sailed round the world with Tom and Sally on Hong Kong Clipper in 2002-03 and if there was ever a pair I’d trust to keep me safe – it’d be them. The fact that Sally is almost 8 months pregnant excluded her from kayak duty, so she provided moral support from afar whilst buying baby grows with her mother-in-law at West Quay Shopping Centre. Meanwhile, Tom brushed over his lack of sea kayaking experience, we ventured onto the motorway with the big yellow kayak (AKA The Big Banana) sticking out of the boot and headed for more sheltered waters at Langstone Harbour for our 6-hour marathon.

After a call to the Solent Coastguard to inform them of our madcap plan, I coated myself in lanolin, packed my snacks, drinks and Tom into the kayak and we headed off at 11.27am in fairly breezy conditions.

We swam to the top of the harbour and up the river towards Portsmouth Harbour. It felt very odd swimming under a railway bridge as the South West train flew past en route to London. Wonder what the passengers thought of me swimming along in my bright pink cap. Tom had to take a loo break en route – six hours is a long time sitting in a plastic kayak in a dry suit – and paddled ashore to relieve himself. Realising he couldn’t unzip the dry suit without help, he had to flag down a couple of passing boys on the towpath for assistance. As far as I know he hasn’t been arrested yet, but then again I haven’t heard from him this week…

Some of the half hour segments between feeds lasted forever, others flew by, and we spent a lot of time battling with a foul tide but we made it to that crucial 6-hr mark at 5.27pm. Getting out was a challenge in itself as we were left to wade through thigh-high mud to get back to Locks Sailing Club at low tide. There was a moment where I thought the whole thing was going to end in an embarrassing rescue, but I realised I could do an elegant combination of rolling on my belly and crawling to avoid sinking and finally made it to the Club and a much-needed hosepipe.

Sunday 24 June – Stokes Bay to Ryde

As my training progresses towards the Channel Swim itself, I have a list of longer swims to work my way through on my weekly programmes. I’ve had the swim to the Isle of Wight from Stokes Bay in mind for a long time ever since I started my sea swims back in April. I do most of my training in Stokes Bay as it is just down the road from my house in Alverstoke, and with a view across the Solent to Ryde and it’s pointy church, I’ve had my sights set on swimming across for a while and I chose my 5-hr training session on Sunday 24 June to go for it.

It takes masses of preparation to do a major swim like that. Firstly, I need to have a crewed safety boat - so that is a qualified RIB driver along with one or two more people to feed me and help out. Then there is all the equipment to gather together – energy drinks, snacks and a laminated feeding plan, wet weather gear, an A-flag to show other vessels that there is a swimmer/diver in the water, safety equipment, tidal information, a net to pass me the food and snackettes, etc. Then we need to inform the various organisations (Solent Coastguard, QHM) that need to know that someone is attempting to swim across what is a very busy shipping lane (especially as it was the day after the Round the Island race when more than 2,000 yachts converged on Cowes). And the list goes on. By comparison, the swimming is the easy part.

So with the most over qualified RIB driver I could lay my hands on, Clipper CEO William Ward, and my trainer Shaun Biddulph and long-suffering friend Jeremy Waite onboard, we slipped at 0730 from Royal Clarence Marina on William’s 7.4 metre RIB. The conditions were far from ideal – it was blowing and there was a fair amount of chop, accompanied by rain and general greyness. The only upside was that it was likely to reduce the amount of leisure traffic we’d encounter.

By 0755 I was greased up and in the water. I nipped ashore to say a very brief hello to Polly, Elsie and Rigel who had come down in the rain to see me off, and then waded into the water to start my longest swim to date. The guys were great – there’s something so comforting to know that they are right beside you and know exactly what they’re doing. There were a few near misses, but in most cases they were coming close to see why on earth some nutter was in the water swimming when they were all huddled up in full oilskins.

I had a couple of nice surprises en route when two of the Clippers returning from Cowes popped by to say hello. Mark Preedy on Uniquely Singapore and Hannah Jenner on Glasgow: Scotland with style, came alongside and gave the shock of my life. I breathe on the right-hand side and they approached on the left, so I had no idea that they were there until William waved at me and pointed across. I looked round to see a full crew lined up on the rail just a few metres away. I hope they can do the same mid-Channel to keep me going.

It took around 3-1/2 hours to get to Ryde as we were battling against the tide, but we made great progress back towards Stokes Bay for the final 1-1/2 hours when we turned round. I had considered getting out and buying an ice cream in Ryde, but it wasn’t the weather for it. Lucky really, as I didn’t have anywhere to keep my money.

It was a long slog, but I was so chuffed that I did it. It’s another step closer to success in August. I think so much of it is down to having the right people around you – this swim was testament to that. Thanks guys.

June 19th

With less than seven weeks to go until I swim to France, it now seems frighteningly close. After almost nine months of training, I feel like I'm almost there. I think that fitting in the training is the biggest challenge of all, and still having enough time to do my job, eat and sleep. Everything else has gone out of the window and I'm getting up at 4.45am in the morning to fit in 3-hr swims before work, but there still aren't nearly enough hours in the day.

As my countdown clock reminds me that there is just 47 days to go until the start of my window to swim, I am frantically trying to fit in all the training, eat the right food to maintain my energy levels and help my weary muscles recover and get lots of rest. The people around me keep me going. David is a hero - geting up at 4.15am to kayak with me before work. How do you even start to thank someone for that sort of support? To Carie, Tom, Heather, James, Mark, Hannah and everyone else who has given up their time to paddle or even swim alongside me, to make sure I don't get hypothermia or mowed down by a passing Isle of Wight ferry. Without them there to feed me every half an hour, I wouldn't be able to do it.

Their tolerance knows no bounds. Not only do they get up at the crack of dawn, they smear me in grease, listen to me whinge and trash their cars by transporting the big, yellow, sticky kayak back and forth to the beach. David and I seem to have a disaster every time we go to train together, which is very often and thus very worrying. From leaving the car keys on the beach (YES, David is was MY fault) when the tide was coming in resulting in them being swept away along with my clothes, to shoving the kayak through my car windscreen when we were loading it in - there's never a dull moment for the Super Support Crew. I've come a long way since my 30 length swims in Hamble Pool last autumn. David has come a long way since his first nervous outing as my safety kayaker last month. He capsized within a few minutes of getting in the sea, leaving me to rescue him in my swimmers. With the help of our resident kayak instructor Chrissy, he's now masterful with his paddle and I can swim without worrying about the safety of my safety man!

I'm beginning to get used to life coated in lanolin. Everything I own seems to have got smeared with lanolin - one of the most disgusting, sticky and slimy substances you could ever imagine coming into contact with. Imagine a combination of axel grease, golden syrup and Vaseline and add a rancid sheep smell and you'd be along the right lines. It's on my clothes, my towels, the inside of my washing machine, the radiators, in my car seats, my seat belt, my steering wheel, my loo seat - anything that I come into contact with between the beach ad my shower has become soiled with it. Once it is on, it stays there and it takes a good half hour of scrubbing with soap, hot water and a loofah to get it off. I'm regularly finding it in the most unexpected places as the day goes on - like a nasty surprise. I suppose if it makes sheep waterproof, it is bound to be heavy-duty stuff.

Last week I got to ditch the lanolin as I was out in Greece training in the balmy waters of the Aegean. On a SwimTrek holiday, I swam between five islands in the Cyclades and enjoyed some Greek Island Hopping without the ferry. As SwimTrek's slogan goes, ferries are for wimps! Under the expert eye of guides John Coningham-Rolls who has a successful Channel swim under his belt and Melissa Cave, an experienced open water swimmer from Australia, I spent the week swimming in some of the cleanest, warmest water I could have hoped for. Despite days packed with long swims, sailing, running, weights, coaching and hiking - I felt totally reinvigorated after a few days of sunshine, early nights and hearty food. If only I could have stayed there for the next seven weeks.

At the end of the week we climbed Mt Zeus on Naxos to gat an eagle's eye view of where we had swum throughout the course of the week. Now I am back in the UK and back to swimming in the cold and murky waters of the Solent. So after a week of lathering myself in sunscreen and Vaseline, I am now back to slapping on a layer of lanolin before I get in the water to keep me warm.

I'm supposed to be in bed every night by 9pm to give my body the rest it so desperately needs and to allow my muscles time to recover, but I'm not doing very well at that. The training is eating up around 5 hours a day, things are reaching fever pitch at work in the run up to the race start and I'm also working hard at getting to my fundraising target of £20,000.

This weekend I will be doing my longest swim yet at 5 hours. The plan is to swim to the Isle of Wight and back from Stokes Bay on Sunday. I've got the RIB sorted and a merry band of support crew, I've informed Solent Coastguard and QHM, and now need to get my feeding programme sorted and check the weather and tides. If only there were another 12 hours in the day, then I might just fit everything in.

March 2007

It’s a challenge in itself trying to fit in all my gruelling training sessions on a daily basis. If I survive all this training, the Channel will be a doddle! Finding a pool within a 50-mile radius where I can do a 3-hour swim before 9am is tricky, while swimming for 6 hours in one day and also squeezing in a weights session, a 70-minute run and a 15-minute cold bath is hard enough, before you try to hold down a full time job.

Over the next months as I count down to my swim between 6-10 August, I will post training logs to keep you up to date with how my training is coming on.