Cross Channel Swim

For those of you who try to keep track of our crazy athletic endeavors, you will be happy to know that I have survived the cross channel swim. Jaime was not able to participate because he had his clinical skills assessment which is his final exam for clinical medicine. The first picture is the group before we embarked on our journey and the second one is once we are happily finished and on solid ground. It was a really hard swim. It is a bit over two miles over and once you get out beyond the point at Oualie Beach the water is churning and moving and scary. As soon as I got past the point I got a mouth full of water and my friend Jenn's husband Eric who was a kayak support person came over and asked if I was ok. I said "I really don't know, I don't know if I can handle this." He told me his friend had turned back and I said that sounded like a good idea. Eric encouraged me on and told me he thought I was good enough to do it. He said he would paddle next to me for a bit so I set out again. About 15 minutes later I got more water and Eric was there again to help. He told me I should breath on the other side because the side I was currently breathing on made me face the waves that were coming at me. I started breathing on my left and it helped a ton because my head broke the waves and gave me a minute to close my mouth before the water went in. After about 45 minutes I got into a groove and started breathing better and felt less anxiety. I could see the bottome the whole way over but did not see much going on below me. I saw some fish, starfish and sea urchins but missed the sea turtle and school of sting rays that some others saw. I think maybe I am happy about that! Anyway, I finished in one hour and 42 minutes. Not too bad. I was in the middle of the group but while I was out there I was sure I was last. Most of the time I was out there on my own swimming by myself and could not see any kayaks or other swimmers. It is a scary feeling and the water swelling around me made me feel like I was in the perfect storm. I'm glad I did it and also glad that I am done! To see more pictures you can log onto www.neviscycleclub.com and go to the pictures link. There are lots of pictures of the races we do here.