Second Challenge - Alcatraz Bay Swim

I'm not really sure how to describe this one so let's start with the bare fact and see where we go from there - I have successfully jumped in water at Alcatraz and swum back to San Francisco. Challenge completed.

Now to try and do it justice.

I met Gary at the entrance to Pier 39. And now, before even getting started, I am going straight off at a tangent. It is apparent that this year I am going to meet some incredible people (see the bit about team Revolution after Tough Guy to show that) and Gary is definitely in that category. Here is somebody who has swum the Bay 519 times and has guided many others through it. It would be easy for him to be jaded and yet, beforehand any questions I had were answered, any concerns were reassured and any doubts assuaged. Then, afterwards, as I jabbered on about things he has doubtless heard and experienced many times he listened and responded as though I was the first. I don't think I quite managed to express to him how grateful I am for his guidance.

So, anyway, I met Gary, boarded the guide boat and headed for Alcatraz (you jump in from the boat, not the Rock itself). I put on my wetsuit and before I could think about it jumped in. The water was murky and cold but neither was worse than Bognor Regis. My training looked like it had done the trick. I started swimming. I swam quickly at the start to try to warm up. I was also focussing on trying to keep a good technique. Within maybe 3 minutes I was exhausted and all hope of using a proper stroke vanished. I started breathing to my left side only because I needed to take in more oxygen and the waves were making breathing to my right too awkward. My shoulders started to ache. The boat was less than 10 metres from me and I thought how easy it would be to head over and give up. I force myself to keep swimming convinced that, I will hit a rhythm, my mind will wander and the distance will then vanish. Wrong. In the whole time I had four main thoughts depending on the most recent wave to hit me. It was either "I will do this", "I can't do this", "I have to do this" or "I wish I wasn't doing this". I told myself there was no more than 10 minutes left over and over (I was guessing) but if I looked behind me Alcatraz seemed no smaller and on the rare moments I looked ahead San Francisco seemed no nearer. I gave up looking ahead and focused on the boat beside me and tried to use it as guidance. This may have been a mistake in that he was also following me and together we managed to drift closer to the Golden Gate Bridge than anticipated, making the swim longer - I suspect that if I'd felt capable of looking right the view would have been quite impressive.

The waves varied from bearable to overwhelming. I tried to develop a technique with the roughest ones of slowing my stroke and using the buoyancy of the wetsuit to ride them - this was not always successful and if the timing was very wrong I would find myself gagging on salt water. The cold kicked in - I think maybe I was too numb to appreciate it as a physical sensation but at some point (I can't pinpoint time or distance markers, they were irrelevant) I discovered that my hands were frozen into a talon like grasp offering very little momentum through the water.

I kept swimming, or to bastardise a line from Toy Story, drowning with style.

I could see the area behind the guide boat was increasingly filled with an image of the city. This was a great moment because it meant I was getting closer and, in the glorious sunshine, I was distracted from my exertions by a view of the San Francisco skyline that not many get to witness.

Some 65 minutes later I half stumble/half crawl onto a beach, well down current from my target end point. I get out of the water dizzy like a child who is seeing how often it can spin before it falls over. A dog ran towards me - in my confused state I felt this was a gesture of its understanding what I had been through - mad dogs and Englishmen - in truth I probably just smelt odd. But I had made it. I was elated and then realised I had to swim back to the boat some 20 metres away. Adrenalin got me through that and we headed back to the pier. Gary let me use the facilities at his nearby club and I had my first hot shower in weeks. He congratulated me, gave me a book he has written on the swim and, I found out later, a swim cap (mine fell off in the water).

And that is pretty much it. I apparently swam 2.5 miles. To put the strength of the tide that carried me ever closer to the Golden Gate Bridge into perspective I would expect that distance to take at least 85 minutes in the pool.

And was it worth it. Undoubtedly, I have images and memories that I will never forget. Over the next few days I saw Alcatraz from various perspectives, none as remarkable as from in the water. I can understand how people fall in love with it and keep going back but maybe I am speaking from a hindsight made comfortably hazy by warm showers and working hands.

Deja Spew

[The first two paragraphs of this entry were written on the plane yesterday with the intention of adding it post swim but jet lag has found me a spare 30 minutes so it is being added pre-swim. Also this particular keyboard has very small keys for my fat fingers so apologies for spelling mistakes].

It's happened again. Two challenges undertaken and twice I have been very sick two days beforehand. At least I now know what is causing it - my own stupidity. I am pretty sure I have essentially been poisoning myself with nuts and seeds by eating too many in one go from a sudden panic that I have not put on enough calories to face cold conditions. The symptoms are consistent (if you don't like stories about bodily functions go to the next paragraph now). I wake up fine, about an hour later I start doing sick tasting burps and another couple of hours later I start to be sick - painfully but not violently. This can continue for hours with good spells when I have to try to get everything done (pack, drive etc) and bad spells when I am bent double and feel like somebody has hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat. Then comes the moment of most pain and yet, perversely, the moment I most look forward to. The "big one", when my stomach empties itself with such power that bile leaves through any facial cavity it can find (including eye sockets). Then calm - like the flicking of a switch all the pain and discomfort is immediately gone. Today the "big one" came at 5am - two hours before setting off for the flight.

So now I know what is causing it it should never happen in the future. That is my hope but my fear is I have gone Pavlov's dog on this and sickness will be part of my build up to each challenge. Health food should come with warnings. I might do a documentary style film where I only eat nuts and seeds in excessive portions all the time until I am so ill somebody insists I go to McDonald's.

Additional paragraph - quick pre-swim update. The wetsuit arrived and it fits so that is one worry down. I have spoken to Gary and he is all set so that is two worries down. Gary told me that he took a group out yesterday and the water was so rough they could not finish the swim, so that is one worry back up. Gary also told me that the route we are doing is the one that follows the Escape from Alcatraz Ironman Triathlon swim, which is worry neutral. So 2-1 to less worries, I'd have taken that result at the start of play, y'know.

Destiny's Child

The wetsuit is being delivered, the hotel is letting me use their microwave to make my breakfast and I have stood in freezing water off Bognor Regis to try to acclimatise. So, with just 4 days and one light training session left before, literally, plunging into the challenge that is scaring me more than any other it’s time to try to explain how I've managed to find myself swimming from “The Rock” to “Frisco”.

I was very young when I realised that I was unlikely to achieve my ambition of being a hedonistic, aristocratic, revolutionary, Georgian dandy poet. However, like the beer bellied middle aged pub ogre who still thinks he can play for Liverpool, the urge has never quite left me. So, about 5 years ago whilst reading an idiot’s guides to Lord Byron I found out that his proudest achievement was swimming the Hellespont. The women don’t fall at my feet and I don’t have a butler to lay out my ruffled shirt but, I thought, Byron had a club foot and so surely I can emulate his swim. Since then I have thought about it on occasion but never done anything about it. Then, as the 30th Year Challenges started to take shape I decided it was the perfect opportunity, so I made further investigations. I found out that the Hellespont, this classic stretch of water that drowned Helle in the Golden Fleece, was lashed by Xerxes and swum by Leander in the name of love, is now about 3 miles of commercial ships and man-eating sharks. It is also only closed for swimmers on certain days. This was too far and too awkward for me - my last hope to be like Lord Byron vanished*.

If there is one thing I have learnt from mythology it is that our fate turns on the most innocuous moment. For me it was not knowing how to spell Hellespont. I searched for it by Googling “historic swim Byron Turkey”. It was a successful tactic with plenty about the Hellespont in amongst the porn. Even though my dreams were shattered I decided to punish myself by reading more about the trip. That is when I found a link to www.lanelinestoshorelines.com a site run by a guy named Gary Emrich. Gary has swum Alcatraz Bay over 500 times and organises it so others can cross too. This swim was not so far (somewhere between one and a half and two miles) and could be done year round, albeit in colder water. The Hellespont was clearly working its mystic powers on my own destiny, I had already arranged to go to San Francisco for a holiday in March and I can’t fight such blatant supernatural forces. I emailed Gary.

And that’s it, I can’t do any more to be ready, it’s in the lap of the Gods. So let’s hope they have left Turkey to follow the American Dream.

*Refer back to this later in the year when I do the Slam Poetry Challenge.

The 30 Year Old Virgin

When carrying out any form of repetitive activity over a period of time your mind starts to wander. For me the most acute manifestation of this occurs when swimming, I assume because of the limited sensory distraction. To date, during the monotony a training session I have managed to write best man’s speeches for people not yet getting married (let alone likely to ask me to be best man), devised and forgotten the world’s funniest sit-com, pondered why it is that people are so obsessed about chickens crossing the road and had a one man debate on whether the green lobby are carrying out an important environmental function or just performing socially acceptable class discrimination by promoting higher prices on, or the boycotting of, products, services and goods that (as these front room ecocrusaders are generally members of the leisure classes) they can afford to either continue using or find an alternative whilst doing nothing of real value for the environment but instead burden guilt and financial pressures upon those who cannot afford to exercise the luxury of choice. But I digress.

Yesterday, at about 64 lengths, it struck me how this year, essentially independent of the 30th Year Challenges, I have done a number of things for the first time in my life. I am not counting travelling to new places (hello Ipswich, Brighton, Tuscany et al) or manufactured challenges. I am referring to things that millions of people do as part of their everyday lives. I quite like this thought and so have decided to keep a list of some of the best examples to remind me that it doesn’t take physical exhaustion, embarrassment, fear or even planning to obtain a new experience. I have added that list to the left hand side of this page. I might add to it or I might remember the sitcom and focus my attention on that instead.