First Weekend In England

[TNTCoachMatt]

Alright, get out the red Indiana Jones markers and maps; I took off from Newark airport 8am Friday morning and flew straight across “the pond” to London, took the underground to the train to Dover and now I’m just getting ready to swim on to France.  Dover is great; almost just as I remembered it, except now instead of 10 or 12 swimmers training regularly down at the harbor there must be close to 50!  It’s crazy.  In 2002 when I was here last it was bring your own swim caps, and do what Freda says.  Well you still better do what Freda says, except now she decides what cap you wear, writes down your number and keeps a record of exactly what you do.

Let me back up a second for those of you who don’t know Dover and Freda.  Freda Streeter is the General of the Channel.  She is the mother of Queen of the Channel Allison Streeter, MBE.  If you know what’s best for you, you better stay on her good side.  Also listening to her and staying on her good side is the best way to get the training you need to get across the channel anyway.  Not listening to her doesn’t do anything good for you.

Dover Harbor is about 1200 – 1400 meters across from wall to wall, and that’s where we train.  It’s somewhere around 57 – 61 degrees right now depending on who you ask and how they are trying to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit.  

 I began training first thing Saturday morning.  I did 2hours probably around 4 miles of just kicking Saturday and Sunday.  Just kicking is really cold because you don’t get all the blood flow in your upper body from moving your arms, not to mention that it is pretty hard and miserable on the legs too.  I get to start swimming normal tomorrow, Monday June 23rd.  I had a cortisone shot in my right shoulder last Thursday so I’ve been taking it easy as per Doctor’s orders, yea kicking 4 miles a day is taking it easy.  Tomorrow I am going to try for a four hour swim, we’ll see how it goes.  Tomorrow night I am also going to link up with some local triathletes who are doing a 1000m time trial.  They’ll all probably be wearing wetsuits, or as they call them over here, wimpsuits.  We’ll see if I can’t smoke some of them.

Last night was really cool.  I didn’t participate because I was taking it easy, but about 15 swimmers met up around 10pm once it was finally dark here, took a while to get dark with it being the longest day of the year, but they then put on glow sticks and went out for a nice little night swim around the harbor.  I’ve got some pictures, they are blurry cause it was so dark out, but I wanted to give you a glimpse of the event.

Tuesday I am going to take an 8mile walk over the white cliffs to the town of Kingsdown to meet up with some swimmers there for a four hour swim.  So that should be fun.

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