Swimming across the English Channel!

The English Channel is one of busiest shipping lanes in the world.

At its narrowest point it stretches 21 miles across, from the shores of the England to the coast of France. Renowned for its’ changing currents and unpredictable weather, the channel is somewhere which many a yacht skipper would fear to tread. But then there is a different breed of person, who looks at the Channel and instead of on obstacle they see a challenge and a goal. Something which they aspire to not merely cross, but swim. Using nothing but the power of their own muscles and reserves of determination to conquer to cold water between two nations. 26 year old Cork Woman, Lisa Cummins, is one such person and in 3 days she will stand in Dover, England - waiting for her weather window. Lisa was good enough to take some time out to speak to EnduranceSource about her incredible adventure

So Lisa can you tell us a little about your swimming background?

Well I started swimming as a kid and did a lot of life guarding courses in the sea and in the pool. I have been teaching swimming since was about 15 and I guess swimming 2 or 3 time a week since then but none of that was competitive and was all for fun! That was about it until a couple of years ago.

What actually inspired you to want to swim across the English Channel once let alone twice?

It’s something that has always been in the back of my mind, that I’d like to do the crossing at some stage. I read about it in Ian Cocks book ‘swimming to Antarctica’, and thought ‘I really, really want to do this once day’. I ran a marathon in June 2007 and after that I stopped doing any exercise at all. So I decided that if I was going to get back to exercising I needed a goal!

What is involved in swimming across the Channel?

First you sign up and book a pilot boat (which accompanies you on the swim). Then you spend about 2 years training until the time comes for you to land in Dover and wait for the right weather to swim to France! It’s 21 miles across, and there are tides and currents that carry you off in different directions, making the task of swimming across by the most direct route even more challenging! The average time for a one way crossing is about 12.5 hours, but obviously now that I’m going to be swimming the distance twice, it will take a lot longer than that.

What was it that made you decide to a double crossing as opposed to a single crossing?
I had been training for about two months with my coach here in Cork, and had a conversation with her about possibly attempting a two way crossing at some point in the future. She basically said, ‘why not do it know?’. So it was a kind of nothing to loose scenario as I would be training anyway, and if I increased the volume of my training, I could attempt the two way now as opposed to have to train for it again in a few years. I think the reality is that this time next year, I wouldn’t feel like training again

You’ve been spending the last two years preparing for this challenge, can you tell us a bit about how your training has progressed?

I first signed up in December 2007, as due to demand for the Pilot boats - you usually have to book about a year and a half in advance. In the beginning my initial goal was to get up to about 10,000 meters a week in the pool and then in April of last year I began getting into the sea. At first I was literally only getting onto the sea for 6 or 8 minutes at a time, very short times that allowed my body to get used to the cold. Last summer I spent a lot of time in the sea familiarising myself with the cold and the waves and the other elements of sea swimming. Then it was in October of last year that I began to train with my coach Ailish who is a swimming instructor. I swan with Ailish everyday from October until May, increasing my training volume up to 75k / 80k a week in the pool and then getting into the sea at least one day each weekend as well. (And that’s even in winter when it was snowing!) and of course, all that without a wetsuit!

I’m guessing that all of you non-wetsuit open water swimmers must laugh at the Triathletes who turn up to sea swims with wet-suits?

Ha ha!! No, I think I’ll be investing in the luxury of a wetsuit myself after this swim. But for this challenge I’ve had to train to be heated by my own internal wetsuit.

The fact that you will not be wearing the wetsuit, is that to stay in line with a particular set of rules for the swim?

That’s right. If you want to have an officially recorded crossing you have to complete the channel swim without a wetsuit. You can swim the Channel with a wetsuit, but it just doesn’t go down in the same record books – but is still recorded!

From a nutritional point of view, how have you been eating to fuel all of this training you’ve been doing?

Well I was never a particularly healthy eater, but once I started training I increased my intake of fruit & vegetables by quite a lot. I also started having protein after every training session, even the shorter ones. I kept the source of protein as natural as I could, so it was lots of tuna and turkey etc.. I would literally leave the pool after a training session and then go into the dressing room and eat immediately. But by the time April came around I found I had lost quite a lot of weight due to the volume of training I was doing and the healthy diet I was following. This was a problem as I needed to build up a store of fat, which would keep me warm in the cold water. So I actually had to go back to eating more junk food to try and put back on some weight! You name it, ice cream etc it was all on the menu again!
Even so, I found that once I got back into the sea again I still kept on loosing weight, and it’s only in the last couple of months as I have been reducing my training volume, that I have found myself putting weight back on! One Triathlete I spoke with reckoned that I burning up to 6,000 calories at a time with some of the training sessions I was doing.

During this challenge you may be swimming for up to 24 or 26 hours. I know a lot of people will be wondering how you will fuel yourself during that time?

As I swim, I will have a pilot boat which will accompany me, to help to support and guide me and as well as provide me with my nutrition. About every half an hour they will have nutrition ready for me and will normally be given to me by a bottle full of energy drink at the end of a rope! They will throw the bottle to me and I will then tread water while drinking it, before returning to my swim. Also every once in a while I will be given some solids to give my body a bit of a break. The key thing will just to keep my consumption of calories up, while also ensuring that I don’t stop too often or for too long. Adding an extra minute or so to each food stop could cause me to miss a tide, and then that in turn could cause me to have to swim an extra 3 or 4 miles!! (The equivalent of a few hours!)

What do you expect to encounter during your crossing of the Channel?

Nothing hopefully! I’ll have my Pilot boat there to guide me away from anything nasty. But it’s a busy piece of water so everything from wood to raw sewerage has been spotted. I even heard that on a previous crossing; a fridge was seen floating in front of a swimmer!! But in general though it seems that most people just meet the odd jelly fish, so fingers crossed I’ll be the same!

Do you have any plans for after your crossing?

I think mainly I’m just looking forward to a rest, and also to loosing the 1.5 stone I have gained during my training! Other than that I think the next year or so will be about getting my swimming speed back up, as I’m not a particularly fast swimmer. Mainly though I think I just want to get back to enjoying the water, as through this process I have definitely began to associate it with hard work!

You are also helping to raise money and awareness for 3 Charities through this swim. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

The first charity is the Jack & Jill Foundation which is an Irish Children’s charity. The other two charities are local to Cork and are the Mary Mount Hospice which a lot of Cork people will be very familiar with and the final charity is the Cork Arc Cancer Support House, who do great work with the families of those suffering from Cancer. All 3 Charities are very deserving and anyone who would like to add their support can visit www.mycharity.ie and just type in Lisa Cummins in the search box. We are also doing something called “Sponsor a Mile” where anyone who contributes more than €50 can choose any one of the miles on my swim and my crew will text them while I am doing it to keep them updated!.

We wish Lisa the very best of luck with upcoming her swim and look forward to hearing from her afterwards how she got on. If all goes well she will succeed in becoming the very first Irish Person in history to complete a double crossing of the English Channel!

For more information, visit Lisa's website through the below link!