About the event

The challenge is to swim the length of the lake from Raperswil to Zurich - a distance of 26.4k. The water temperature was 20-21C.

So how did it go?

A few minutes before the 7am start the names and home countries of all the competitors were read out and then we entered the water ready for the start. After lots of exchanges of wishes of luck there was a countdown and we were off!!

The first target was the first headland. Sounds simple but that was a couple of hours across the bay. It was going to be a very long day. Although I wasn't really all that far behind some of the swimmers I soon felt like I was last!

The relay swimmers started about 30 minutes behind us and it wasn't long before the really fast teams overtook.

I really enjoyed the first couple of hours and settled in for a long day after I'd thrown my toys out of my pram to get the rowing boat to stay beside me rather than going ahead (the continual looking up was really hurting my neck). However it was all a bit too good to be true. At about 3 hours I started to feel sick. This wasn't supposed to happen!! I took the feeds right down to try and correct the problem but it didn't do any good and at 5hrs 20min I was very sick. As well as feeling sick I had pain in my stomach which just made me want to crawl up into a ball which doesn't really work very well when you're trying to swim!! The other problem is that the effect of pulling the water with my arms just made me feel worse.

So the more sick I felt, the more I stopped and the less power I could put in my stroke and so the slower I became. This was not good. This was EXACTLY the same pattern as the sickness I experienced on my solo channel attempt in 2007 despite changing the make of feed that I was using. At least I now know that this has nothing to do with drinking too much salt water.

Every part of me wanted to give up. I don't ever want to feel this ill again. I thought about every person who has helped me get to this point and whom I didn't want to let down - the beach crew in Dover, my family, baby Leo and his family, my sponsors, etc. I couldn't quit. Just when I thought that there was no hope Paul told me that we were close to Meilen which is the 14.4k point which had to be reached by 6.5hrs. Somehow I managed to get there by 6hrs 5mins. If I could just get back on track the full swim would still be possible within the 12 hour time frame.

The problem is that even drinking plain water was making me feel ill and there is only so long you can go before you simply run out of steam. I became slower and slower and was becoming physically exhausted. The medical boat kept coming to check on me. At about 7.5hrs they gave me a concoction of ginger water with magnesium and something else and it was the first drink that didn't make me feel worse. At this point I accepted that it wouldn't be possible to make the full distance within the cut-off time and the normal strategy of swimming from feed to feed was not a good strategy as feeding was a very negative event, so I needed to create new mini goals. I told Georgia that I'd aim for double digits (10 hours) which at that point seemed impossible, but first I wanted to achieve 8 hours to match the amount of time I spent in the water on my solo in 2007. Once I got to 10 hours the finish was visible (albeit a long way off), I was starting to feel better and I knew I could continue until I either finished or I ran out of time.

I feel privileged to be in the position to be able to get Georgia to call Freda (the Channel General) for advice - it's reassuring to know that she's at the end of the phone with advice which is beyond question.

Once I started feeling better (about 9 hours) we started to re-introduce feeds, very weak to start with but gradually increasing in concentration. I also discovered that Jelly Babies made all the difference!! Suddenly I got a second wind and my speed started to pick up again. Unfortunately it was too little too late. At around 11 hours I started to feel ill again, so there is definitely a fine line to be found.

At 11hrs 20mins one of the organising boats came towards me and told me that it would not be possible to finish within the time limit and gave me the choice of giving up then or carrying on for another 30 minutes. There was no way that I was going to voluntarily quit at this point so I said that I would continue swimming until they told me I had to stop. By the time they stopped me at 11hrs 50mins I was about 2k off the finish. Frustratingly close.

Paul & Georgia had been conscientiously making notes of co-ordinates, stroke rates, feeds etc. So I now have some really good data to analyse.

The map below shows my co-ordinates at various points.

The graph below shows the information about the amount of feed and my speed at each hour and cumulatively.

Not surprisingly you can see the link between lack of feed and speed and the effect of the ginger and feeds bringing my speed back up again. Another hour and I would have made it.

After the event we decided to get the train back to Raperswil. Problem was it was a 15 minute walk and that was simply too much on dehydration and exhaustion. We got to the train station but I then went on to faint on the train - clearly I did push myself as far as I could. I should be pleased with that - no-one can say that I didn't try!!!

Positives and feedback

There are lots of positives from this swim:

If I hadn't have entered this event, this would have happened on my channel solo - I now have time to try and work on a plan C.
I have learned that I can survive on virtually nothing for almost 6 hours and still pick back up again.

I now have a month to work out what to change for my channel solo. I am very nervous - I really don't want to feel like that ever again and I am very scared that this will happen again on my solo or alternatively I'll reduce the feeds too much and completely run out of steam.

NOTHING GREAT IS EASY!!

Fingers crossed for the Channel solo which is in about a month's time, but before that I'm back to 12-13 hours training each weekend and a channel relay race as a light interlude!!