The past weekend marked what I can only hope as being my last Dover Dirty Double for the year. With only two weekends before my swim window opens I expected it to be a medium to hard one.
As always the Saturday alarm goes off at 5:50am and the Dover routine kicks into gear. Pick up Deirdre, Tory and this time special guest Irene from Australia. Drive the 2 hours to Dover and set up camp on the beach. This time we had an addition of a tent courtesy of the super organised Nick Adams. On checking in with Freda and the beach crew the trepidation is always high - the fear/excitement of the unknown - what am I going to get? The usual conversation ensues Freda "when's your swim " me "window opens in just under 2 weeks" Freda ok "3 hours" me "ok that's good" ..... Walked away calmly then happy danced my way across the beach to find Deirdre who on the same tide as me had been put in for 6. Deirdre went back to negotiate and ended up with 4 - Tory who is on a later tide had the inevitable 6. All others who were on my tide ended up with 4 so I felt it only fair I should do an extra hour and do 4.
Suncreamed up, greased up, watered up, we entered the water at 9am. After just 1 hour of swimming I was thirsty & ravenous; this wasn't good I still had 3 hours to go and no pants treats. Small man up chat and kept swimming - the 2 hr feed rolled around quickly and by the 3 hr feed the rain had started to chuck it down and I was glad to be in the water. At four hours it was still chucking it down as we ran up the beach and changed under a shelter. By this stage the thunder and lightening had started to roll in and I heard Freda speak the unthinkable words "Barry they're all getting out at the next feed". I couldn't believe it - The Channel General had uttered those words which are like music to a cold swimmers ears - even though I was out I knew that in 30 minutes there would be some very happy swimmers.
Meanwhile stood on the beach in his bright yellow oil skins Barry was doing his very own rendition of singing in the rain as he skipped across the beach. The rest of the beach crew were soaked through but nothing dampened their smiles :)
The only thing left to do was take a pop up tent down in the wind & rain. This task proved more difficult than thought; but I got it down first go at a price - I wrestled with it, ran along the beach and used it as a kite and with sideways rain was soaked through before I managed to get it in the bag.
We stayed over night at the lovely Sandown Guest house (our usual). Ready for another day of training on Sunday.
Sunday check in with the beach crew and this time its 3 hours again and a hop, skip, jump and dance across the beach in celebrations. With Deirdre and I both getting 3, I felt no guilt nor remorse for only doing 3, I couldn't contain my excitement which was probably not the best of things as my lovely training partner Tory had another 6 to get through. The sun was shining, the sea was flat and I had a lovely time lapping the harbour for 3 hours - this was a real treat - every training day apart from one other had been tough, windy, wet, rough seas, seasickness - horrendous but I had made it through. Dover was giving me a present in return a flat calm training day. Only the second in 11 weekends of training and I relished every moment.
Here's hoping I get it for my swim.
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