An Cosantóir

www.military.ie THE DEFENCE FORCES MAGAZINE | 31 BY CAPT DEIRDRE NEWELL, OIC AREA RECORDS, 2 BDE HQ I swam with a club when I was younger and it was always the thing I was good at. However, on joining the Defence Forces as a cadet in 2003 I had a rude awakening when I found out that swimming and running had very little in common, and running was what you needed to keep up in the Cadet School! I still loved swimming, though, and when I heard someone talk- ing about an island hopping holiday with a difference, in that it involved swimming from island to island, it sounded like heaven to me. Then, in 2014 I came across a swim-holiday company, Swimtrek, and went with them on a trip to Croatia. While there, I fell back in love with open-water swimming. I'd had a brief falling out with open-water swimming after my first experi- ence swimming 13km across Galway bay in what I can only describe as horrendous conditions; a swim in which I was supported by the Army Dive Group, and after which I said "Never again". I stayed true to that sentiment until 2016 when I decided to give it another go. In preparation for the Galway Bay Swim 2016 I was back in touch with Swimtrek and booked on a 10km training camp in Mallorca. Sian Williams, who had been a guide on my trip to Croatia and the first person I had ever met to have swum the English Channel, was guiding on this trip along with Cliff Golding, who went on to be my English Channel mentor and number one crew for the swim. When I met Sian in 2014 I was blown away at the idea that she had swum the Channel, something I had never even dreamt of doing. During a motivational talk, Cliff told us about his decision to swim the Channel, and that it was only on his seventh attempt that he successfully landed in France. (Had he been successful on his first attempt I'm sure he would not have been such an influential mentor in my life.) During the week there was one swim in jellyfish soup. As the ma- jority bailed out and got back on the boat I pushed on and Cliff said, "Dee, you will be a Channel swimmer." It was the first time I thought it could be possible. In 2017, after I completed my first six-hour, qualifier swim in un- der-16° water, I knew I was going to swim the Channel some day. Booking a slot to swim the Channel must be done two to three years in advance, due to the popularity of attempts and restrictions on the number of boats traversing the busiest shipping lane in the world at a swimmer's pace. As a member of the Defence Forces it was more difficult to plan an attempt. For example, given the amount of training required and the training conditions required, it is difficult to return from overseas deployment to do this swim. I returned from UNDOF in October 2018, which meant I had missed the whole swimming sea- son of 2018. I didn't see this as a problem until I began to really feel the cold on training sessions, where the majority of my training was done in under 14°. Long-distance training coupled with low temper- atures made it very hard for me to put on additional weight to help insulate against the cold. Nevertheless, when I arrived in Dover to a heat wave, with air temperatures of 32° and water temperatures of Mid Channel

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