26. Swim the equivalent of the English Channel

The story behind this is quite a sad one so please have tissues at the ready. I’ve always loved swimming. When I was a kid my local pool gave out fabric badges for distance swimming starting at 5 meters and going up to 1 mile. I can’t remember how many there were but my swim suit was covered in them and they were my pride and joy. The only one I was missing was the 1 mile badge. Once I had that final badge, I thought my life would be complete.

The big day came. I was ready for my 1 mile swim. I stood on the side of the pool and the swimming instructor put us into groups based on the distance we were due to swim that day. I sized up the other 1 mile swimmers, I wasn’t worried, I knew I could do it. Then the instructor announced that there would be no 1 mile swim that day because there wasn’t enough time.

I was crushed.

That was my one and only opportunity to get the 1 mile badge. I have absolutely no idea why that was my one and only opportunity, I think it was the end of the swimming course but really I have no idea. My mother doesn’t know either. I don’t think she was really tuned into the earth shattering pain I felt that day.

So when I put together this list I decided that I wanted a physical challenge and I wanted it to be a swimming one. A friend suggested this:

The challenge: Swim the distance of the English Channel (22 miles) in my local pool over a 12 week period to raise money for Aspire. Twenty-two miles works out to be a total of 1,549 lengths of my local pool, which is a lot.

The charity: Aspire is a UK charity that works with people with spinal cord injury. Their national services and programs include adapted housing for people leaving hospital if houses aren’t yet accessible, specialist computer equipment and independent living advisors.

The dates: I started the challenge on July 24^th and I hope to complete it by October 16^th.

To date I have swum 492 lengths which works out to be 6.9 miles. I try to go in the evenings after my daughter has gone to bed because then I don’t lose any time with her and the pool is quiet. It isn’t easy, especially on the days I take my daughter to nursery so get up at 5:30am, but I’m enjoying ticking off the miles and Mr B is being very supportive, not complaining once about me smelling constantly of chlorine.