Week 5: Hello sunshine my old friend!

Good things come to those who wait, and we have waited patiently for this spell of good weather. I don’t know about you, but I think I appreciated it all the more because of the wait.

With the way we train swimmers, you can’t look back at a previous season and work out what you’ll get given because our training plans are so dynamic. We adjust for the water temperature, the weather conditions, how you are coping as individuals, when your swims are. The list goes on. Where we need to have difficult conversations, we will. I know that some people fret that they’re not doing enough at times and I think that’s completely natural. The instinct is that more is better. That’s not always true. We want to get you to the start of your swim physically and mentally ready. That’s not achieved by mindless metres. It’s achieved through a cyclical plan that ensures you train enough and also aims to ensure you don't overtrain. Of course, much of that is down to you. You know that sleep is incredibly important. We take care of what you do at the weekends, what about during the week? Are you doing enough? Too much? The right things?

Those who are in training pods can talk as groups within the week or if you feel you need more support than that, please get in touch and we can chat through your options.

This weekend was a training weekend for SwimTayka, well done to everyone on their qualifying swims. Even those who didn’t think they could managed it. All your training and perseverance paid off. 👏👏👏. It was lovely to see Poppy, the swimming dog also enjoy the water.

If you want to find out more about SwimTayka and what they do? Click on the link. Could this be your route to a future Channel Relay?

Saturday was the first time that many of you fed (it won’t be the last, we ramp up pretty fast from here). I wanted to make it special and so we hired Stuart Gleeson to give you the special treat of being able to feed by the boat. Annie also got the treat of having a short swim alongside Sea Leopard (right place, right time!). Thank you Stuart for your assistance with this 😊🏊🏼‍♂️🏊🏼‍♀️.

Finally, the night swim was a storming success again. I heard lots of swimmers commenting on how warm the water felt and a few learn why you need clear goggles! I’ll never compromise on safety, especially on a night swim. When you see the green lights in the picture, you’ll understand how much of an impact on visibility they make. We can see you easily from the beach (NB it was darker than it looked in the photos!). It was lovely to hear the happy chatter both before and after the swim. Well done everyone involved. Thank you to all the pod leaders for the hard work setting up, running and dismantling and to Brian Alborough for safety paddle boarding and Jennifer Laffan for being on hand as extra safety cover.

Your pod leaders’ observations

This week I want to take you on a tour behind the scenes. To share with you some of what it takes to put on training each weekend. By doing so, I hope you’ll better understand how you can play your part to enable things to run smoothly.

Throughout the week

I process any orders for memberships or shop purchases and either post these or pack them ready for the weekend.

Thursday

I take a look at the weather forecast for the weekend. There’s little point in doing it before Thursday as it can change.

I then:

Update an overall training plan spreadsheet that I have that includes all swimmers who have training plan subscriptions with the details of what was achieved the previous week.
There are 56 people on this list.
For each swimmer I take a look at whether they are broadly within the original plan or whether tweaks are required. Aiming to still keep the cyclical pattern, including building in recovery weeks.
We also update for any known absences / illnesses / injuries etc. Fortunately, these are few and far between

As you can see, those of you who attend regularly, this is actually relatively straight forward. It’s more difficult if you train occasionally as we’re not as aware of how your overall plan is going.

Then I take a look at the weather forecast and predict what I think the water temperature will be. I use this information to create a more refined plan for the weekend that we then discuss as pod leaders on Thursday evening. During this call we also need to plan our own swims. Until now we have tended to do our swims at the end of sessions. Now that we’re into longer swims, this is no longer sensible and we’ll plan how to cover the beach between us and the volunteers that sign up.

Also on a Thursday, I download the list of attendees and take our overall plan for the weekend, the individual nuances and create the individual plans for each person attending. Where we have pay as you go swimmers, if we already have a good knowledge of where you are at we can suggest training for you. Otherwise, this is within your control to plan.

I chase any missing disclaimers.

I print out the spreadsheet with the plan in case of technical issues!

Friday

Having discussed the plan and refined it further with the other pod leaders, I upload all attendees and the plans for Saturday into our beach app. This is done manually. I also manually update any new swimmers including all the information you share with us in your disclaimer.

Where someone is attending, but hasn’t done a disclaimer, I can’t add you.

I seem to get a stream of contact from people who have forgotten to book. It’s actually not as simple as just adding you to the app and it causes a lot of extra admin if you fail to meet our registration deadlines.

We then pack up the trailer, ready for an early start on Saturday.

Saturday

The day starts by boiling copious amounts of hot water for soloists feeds. We pack any remaining bits and pieces into the van & trailer and head to Dover (it’s about 90 miles for us). I find myself still responding to last minute requests on the way down (don’t worry, I’m not driving!). I’m checking and double checking the app.

We arrive at the beach about 08.30 and set up ready for the session ahead.

You arrive and sign in with one of the pod leaders and the process is easy. We no longer have long queues. We know who we’re expecting. We have all the bands ready in advance. This bit is simple. Where we hold the plan for you, we’ll let you know how long you’re swimming and we’ll ask you what feed you want. Where you are pay as you go and in control of your own plan, we’ll ask you how long you are intending on swimming.

If we have someone who hasn’t responded to the need to do a disclaimer, they’ll find they aren’t on the app and I either need to get them to sort the disclaimer on the beach and get them processed before we start or they have to wait until everyone is in and things quieten down a bit (I think if you can’t prioritise doing this when asked then it’s likely that we’ll ask you to wait in future). During the period between swimmers arriving on the beach to check in and the briefing, we’re talking with swimmers about their training and, frequently, their concerns, worries and questions; about their training which is the focus of the weekend, and completing disclaimers and other admin at this point should not be where our - or your - attention is.

We hold the mandatory briefing and the swim starts.

It’s important that everyone starts at the same time so that we are clear about how long each person has been in for.

Once you are all in, we start to prep the feeds in advance of the first feed.

For soloists, the feeds are a very important part of our safety procedures. We get to see you and check that you are ok. You must get to the feeds on time. You have no idea how concerned we get on the beach when someone is late. You may know you’re ok. You may be loving your swim and enjoying the moment. If we have missing swimmers we are definitely not enjoying the moment and the emergency processes start!

The same is true of getting out time for soloists and relay swimmers. Be back at the beach when you say you will. If you want to do more, that’s generally fine, let’s have the conversation. Swing by the beach, have a chat and we can all be on the same page. Do an extra 30 minutes or so without telling us and expect stressed and grumpy beach crew when you do arrive.

We’re always watching swimmers as you come out and step in to help if needed. DryRobe zips can be a challenge with cold hands!

When everyone is out and safe, all the crocs are claimed and the bands are back, we pack up the beach and tweak the plan for the next day if necessary.

Paul & I head to the campsite and charge the iPads. I check to see if we’ve had any late bookings and update the plan spreadsheet and then load all the bookings into the iPad. Basically, the evening is spent setting up for the next day and recharging the technology.

Sunday

It’s pretty much a repeat of Saturday, except less travelling at the start and updating systems in a van or awning rather than the comforts of home!

Once the session is done, we pack up the trailer and van and head home. We start the process of washing feeding equipment, uploading photos & videos and there’s often a conversation with pod leaders about what to include in the blog.

Monday

I have training at 6am and once back I start the process of writing the blog. It can take a while, sorry about that!

Night swim

This weekend was particularly challenging with an extra training session built into the schedule. We arrived on the beach at 08:30 Saturday morning and left it again at 00:30 Sunday morning, only to be back at 08:30 again.

The afternoon was full on. As soon as training finished we started updating the app for the night swim and updating for late bookings for the Sunday. That took several hours on its own. We then had to set up the safety features for the night swim. Check all the lights batteries are working, inflate buoys, decide the finer points of the course (dictated to a certain extend by the fact it was low water). Once everyone was safely out, the safety equipment needed to be dismantled which also takes quite a while.

I’m sure you can imagine that we can’t offer this regularly as it’s completely exhausting for everyone involved.

Take away message

To the vast majority who are super organised, and follow all the guidelines, I am extremely grateful to you. You make this a joy to run.

If that’s not you, this is your prompt to think about the impact of not being organised. It makes a massive difference to how easy or hard this is if you are organised. If you sign up early you make our lives so much easier.

We’re generally so busy on the beach that I can’t easily respond to emails / text messages / phone calls / WhatsApp messages etc during the weekend. During the week, like many of you, I am also working. I could easily make DCT my full time job, and that’s not possible at the prices we charge. So a big plea from me is to ask you to help make this easy for all of us.

At the moment I am trying to be flexible and allow you to book up to 24 hours ahead, but this needs to be the exception, not the rule. Much longer is needed to work efficiently. I may need to make a change so that you aren’t able to book as late as you currently do and I may start being less accommodating to those who are not organised, so this is your early warning!

Shout outs

Once again, this weekend saw a combination of visible standout swims and some more quiet and personal victories. If you had a personal victory, very well done!

I’d like to give a shout out to (in no particular order):

The SwimTayka swimmers on their relay qualifiers. In particular, Sarah Thompson on doing what you didn’t think you could do.
John on a back to back 4 & 3
Nicki, Nikki, Patrick and Hannah on your 6 hour swims
Everyone who got to experience their first feeds
Shezza & Bond for their 3 hour swims on Saturday and for your lighthearted acceptance of the Mandi task (though it does look like only one of you attempted the task and the other was more of a supervisor…….)
Annabel for your 4 hour swim
Kev for your relay qualifier
Jane on your 4 hour swim and for being the last one out of the water on the night swim
Helen for your 6 hour lake swim

And for everyone else who did what was asked or more. The list of impressive swims is actually impressively long this week! Any omissions on this are purely accidental.

We had a flurry of celebration tunnels for our 6 hour swimmers. It’s always something to be proud of and even more so in these cooler temperatures.

Swim stats

Before I start to share stats from the weekend, I thought I’d give you an update on how many people are now signed up to do some or all of their training with us:

Membership:

We have:

133 Members
69 Non-members who simply pay as you go

Training

56 People who have a monthly or annual solo or relay training subscription
146 Pay as you go swimmers

We are geographically spread, too. With swimmers from the corners of the UK, USA and beyond.

Weekend Stats

Note: Water temperature taken during the swim session in the harbour. The lowest recorded reading is shown here. Air temperature, wind direction & wind speed taken from the Port of Dover app.

Saturday:

Swimmers: 48
Water temperature: 12.4C
Air temperature: 16C
Conditions: Calm water to start, choppy later. Sunny. Biting breeze. NE F3

Saturday (night swim):

Swimmers: 35
Water temperature: 12.4C
Air temperature: 11.3C
Conditions: Clear sky with a chill to the air. Water calm. Beautiful sun down. F4 gusting F5 NE.

Sunday:

Swimmers: 51
Water temperature: 12.5C
Air temperature: 11.1C
Conditions: Sunny, slightly choppy. F4 NE.

Volunteers & beach crew

Thank you to the pod leaders and to our volunteers. Hunter was on the rota for Sunday and thank you to everyone who helped out on both days.

Reminders

Remember to book your sessions online. Bookings close 24 hours before the session though as mentioned above, this is the very latest. It would be a massive help if you booked by Thursday morning.

The system doesn’t arrange automatic refunds, so please message me if you cancel ahead of these deadlines and I’ll arrange a refund.

You don’t need to sign into the website to book a session - just pop your email address in to the booking system and it will remember you. Remember to click into the discount code box if you are a subscriber and it will auto complete your discount code. If you are a pay as you go swimmer and are also a member, remember to use your discount code to get your membership price.

Please remember to give your number in when you get out, when you get back in for a second swim and when you feed. This is arguably our most important safety process. Please be patient too, we can only process one person at a time!

Remember to give your band in at the end, it is a back up check for us, as are all crocs being claimed. We’re thinking there may need to be Mandi minutes for repeat offenders - you have been warned! We now have a visible reminder in the form of the band boards.

Collect any shop purchases from Emma, this includes the personalised hats which have now arrived.

Remember to cancel any subscriptions when you no longer need them.

Pod Ponderings: Motivation 🤩🤗👊🏻💪🏼

Motivation.

It can seem like it’s the thing that makes or breaks our swimming.

On days when we are flush with motivation right up to the goggles, we feel like we can take on the world. In these best times, others had better watch out!

But then there are the other days…

You know…

The ones where our training buddy motivation is literally nowhere to be seen.

For those days, here are some truths about what’s causing your motivation to hide behind the sofa and refuse to shine.

The truth about why you can’t always get motivated in training

First, not always feeling motivated doesn’t mean there’s an issue. People make a bigger deal of motivation then they need to at times.

There are going to be times when there’s a battle in your head to get you to the pool or to the open water venue that you train at. That’s just how it is.

Fatigue plays a significant role in how motivated you are going to feel. Stress too. Even how hydrated you are can entice you to pull the duvet up and stay in bed.

But if you find that you are not motivated most of the time despite having big goals, then there is some trouble shooting we can do.

Motivation isn’t all that complicated.

Motivated athletes generally share the same characteristics.

They have ownership of what they are doing in the water. They find the daily experience of training to be fun and enjoyable. They like being part of a group that are also chasing greatness. And they relish the opportunity to build competency.

That’s it.

It’s not that they have a more motivating playlist or that they are naturally pre-disposed to being more motivated.

Now, those four things sound simple, and to a certain extent they are. Consistently living up to them can be more tricky.

Here are some ideas for how you can start ramping up your motivation levels.

Your big goals are actually demotivating

What? How can that be? Surely my big, hairy, audacious goals must be motivator. How can they demotivate?

When we make big, borderline insane goals, we give ourselves something massive to live up to.

The only problem is, eventually your effort and progress can seem too small in comparison to what you think your big dream requires.

NB, the same can be true when you have goals that are too easy. You quickly get bored. We liked to be challenged, and we like to dream big, but there is a sweet spot to be found in the middle.

On either side of that sweet spot your motivation can start to wobbly quickly.

I’m not saying not to dream big. I surround myself with people who dare to dream big. It’s really important to have big goals. You do need to be realistically insane when it comes to the goal and how to best prepare for it. Going big doesn’t mean training flat out hard all the time - that’ll lead you into over training pretty quickly and a steep decline in physical capacity and troughs of motivation.

In Dover you’ll hear stories of big swims week in week out. That doesn’t mean that you should be doing that! Look more closely and it’s different people as they follow their own plans.

You do, however, need to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable and to be receptive to people asking you to do more, when more is the right answer, and asking you to do less when you’re tipping that balance into over training.

Your big goals get you into the water

Not many people have goals as big as swimming the English Channel (other swims are available!!). Much of what happens on the big day is out of our control. We train for the worst and hope for the best.

This uncertainty can cause us to ride a roller coaster of doubt and uncertainty, energy that is better spent focusing on our process and the things we actually control.

(Tip: The things we control also happen to be the same things that give us that reward of motivation.)

By throwing all your attention and focus at the uncertainty of the outcome, you bypass or ignore all of the other perks and benefits to being a swimmer, whether that is in the pool with your club, on your own or in training on the beach.

How to remedy this in just a couple minutes?

Take a sheet of paper and write down the reasons you love this crazy little sport of ours. Hanging out with your friends. Pushing yourself daily. Getting to see what you can do. The camaraderie of the daily struggle with other like-minded people. Solitude. Cake.

And so on.

There are plenty of reasons to get motivated to go to training during the week and at weekends. This revolves around having fun and has nothing to do with the big day itself.

This exercise will help you develop a healthier relationship with the sport, one that isn’t described in terms of crossings, landing points and swim times.

And ironically enough, when your relationship with the sport is healthy, motivation to train and put in the work required comes naturally.

You are focusing all your attention on what other swimmers are doing.

I’ve talked a lot about the bear trap that is comparison-making. Most swimmers that I talk to struggle with it at some point.

They compare themselves to other swimmers and get discouraged. That swimmer is faster than me, did longer in training than me, handles the cold better than me, has a better stroke than me. The list goes on.

Some compare themselves to where they were at this point last year and feel down, even though we’ve just come out of lockdown and have lost some of the winter training and the water temperature is different to last year.

Either way, the danger is that you take today’s you (and often only the worst features) and compare it to the best of someone else or our best previous version of ourselves, which is guaranteed to leave us feeling pretty rubbish and unmotivated. We never seem to compare our best features with someone else’s worst features.

The golden rule with comparison-making is this: If it’s not motivating you, if it’s not getting you fired up to go training and have a cracker of a session, forget it. It’s not helpful.

The environment is making your motivational woes worse.

Do you buddy up with swimmers who have similar goals? Do you spend time with people who foster healthy lifestyle habits? Do you stay up until 1am Googling random facts about jellyfish or are you sleeping?

Your environment plays a massive role in how motivated you are on a day to day basis. (Sleep, stress, and even hydration increase or decrease motivation.)

Build an environment that fosters your motivation.

Write your goals on a piece of paper and stick it somewhere easy to see.

Write out a motto or piece of self-talk and put it somewhere you’ll see.

Prioritise good sleep and going to bed and getting up at the same time each day.

Look at your environment, and the signals and cues it is sending back to you, and ask if they line up with what you want to accomplish.

You are using the wrong kind of motivational tactics.

Extrinsic rewards and motivation— validation from others, or perhaps cake —can work for short term motivation. It’s amazing how many swimmers will do an extra hour for a piece of cake (that they could very well buy themselves once out of the water).

But this kind of motivation isn’t sustainable and bribing with cake isn’t actually teaching you the right process for the big day.

Intrinsic rewards, the warm fuzzy feeling you get when you have a great swim, are the ones you can wield more frequently.

Extrinsic rewards can help occasionally when they foster a sense of competence (like breaking a barrier that you didn’t think was possible), but can also backfire, with research finding that extrinsic rewards eventually discourage effort.

Make your daily training goals about doing your best and building then following the process. Putting forward your best effort each day is the most motivational thing you can do for yourself.

But how do I give my best effort if I am not motivated?

Motivation isn’t something you have to have in the moments you walk onto poolside or onto the beach.

You’ve had great training sessions before where you weren’t super motivated beforehand and yet something magical happened. If you are waiting to “feel like it” you may find yourself waiting a long time. Habits take time to build.

Make the goal each day to do what you said you would do (though we do also need to watch for the signs of over training and learn to distinguish between the still small voice telling you to take a rest and the small voice that quite frankly can’t be arsed!).

The goal shouldn’t be feeling motivated.

The goal is starting.

That’s the biggest secret to being motivated more often.

Because motivation comes in the doing of something, not from wishing you were motivated (and then mentally chastising yourself for not feeling motivated, only making things worse).

Walk through the door or onto the beach

Commit to starting.

And do the little things well.

Celebrate and build on the big and small victories along the way.

Motivation, and the feel good feeling that comes along with it, will naturally flow.

Trust the process.

Next week

Back to basics next week. We’re getting comfortable now with how things run, and the discipline of being on time to sign in, getting in promptly and turning up to feeds on time remains important. Let’s focus on that next week.