Day 1

Submitted by Adam.
Right, the purpose of this blog, is to keep a track of events on  our progress to swimming the channel in September 2011, so, let's start from the top!

Day 1; Aspire Orientation/Induction Meeting (13/11/10)
This was the first meeting held by Aspire and really was an Orientation meet. 
The selectors had already narrowed down 5000+ applicants to just 50, with 29 slots available over 5 boats. So we had already managed the first hurdle just being asked to come.

We all arrived a little after 10.30 and were welcomed by Andrew, the Aspire organiser and our main point of call for this whole journey. We were then introduced to some of last years successful swimmers, and Simon (a Swimtrek coach, and solo channel swimmer!). We spent about an hour listening to the swimmers stories, and (speaking from my own p.o.v) with each word, became more and more convinced that this is something that had to be done.

We then spoke to Chris (Aspire’s Head of Fundraising) and discussed the fundraising side of this challenge, and realised how this was just as important as the swimming!

The Small Challenge; 400m Timed Swim

Now, although we had already been chosen from 5000+, we still had to show that we were potentially capable of swimming part of the 21mile crossing. 

A 400m timed swim was the way of 'thinning out the herd'. 

400m doesn't seem far, one lap of an athletics track, if we can run it in a minute, we can swim round that in 8mins 30secs, sure. None of us realised how much harder this was to actually going to be. 

We were all shocked. It didn't help that we were swimming in a pool heated to 32degrees, but it dawned on us that our cardio/stamina was not what we had hoped it to be.

2 of us managed to complete the swim, but by all means, did not find it comfortable.

But we survived, and awaited our fate to see whether Aspire would accept us as part of their 5 boat swim across the channel!


(see our photo's of day 1 to the right; Apologies, there are only two!)