Beyond the Job Project: How I Plan To Swim The English Channel

In this new series, project managers tell us how they are putting their professional skills to use in a personal project. Here, Kathy Stevenson, project manager at Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions UK, explains how she plans to swim from England to France 

The project concept and inception were easy enough. “I’ll do it with you, Liz,” is what I said to a friend who was looking for a team member for an English Channel relay challenge. The following week, the boat was booked, and we had 22 months to plan and train.

Although the distance between England and France is 21 miles, depending on the tides, weather and currents of the swim day, you will swim far further than that. The quickest recorded time for a swim is less than seven hours and the longest is around 28 hours.

As a project manager at Wood Environment and Infrastructure Solutions UK, creating risk mitigation plans is standard practice, but swimming the Channel means the key tombstone risks – those with a small probability but very large impact – are outside my control, and so will have to be tolerated.

The benefits for me are clearly the bragging rights that would come with being a Channel swimmer, having a new and revered swimming goal to train for, and having a personal project to organise. The objective? It’s not to get across in a certain number of hours, or even just to get across. The objective can only be to train and prepare enough that, should the weather and sea conditions allow, I can swim to France.

14 hours if we’re lucky

And so, the planning, training and execution began. We had decided on a relay as a gentler introduction to swimming the Channel. This means that swimmers alternate between swimming and resting on the boat, and the total distance is swum between the team. A relay usually consists of more than two people, who each swim for one hour at a time. We decided that, with fewer people on the team, the challenge would be greater (which we wanted).

As our training began, so the doubts crept in. Should we recruit a third person? I wondered whether I would be fit enough, and Liz was worried about the cold. We decided that these were risks we could mitigate with enough of the right type of training and eating.

We filed our paperwork with the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation. We will be swimming just the two of us, taking turns to swim two hours each. If we’re lucky with the weather, we anticipate that the crossing will take 14 hours. The swim is planned for the August bank holiday weekend.

There are many lessons to be learnt from previous Channel swims. There is a wealth of online advice from past Channel swimmers. We even went to a seminar weekend run by the legendary Dover Channel Training. The key success factor that is evident from all our conversations is that what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for you, so you must tailor everything to suit you – and practise.

Training consists of swims in rivers, lakes and the sea year-round, but with the focus in winter being on distance, skill and sprint training in the pool to improve fitness and stamina.

I looked at other people’s training plans but quickly found that working full time is not conducive to Channel training. I wanted to enjoy the training, not panic that I wasn’t doing enough or run the risk of injuring myself. I decided that I would build up to swimming a set distance each week (between 12km and 15km) in three two-hour sessions. This would be complemented with at least one boot camp, weight training or yoga session a week.

Training has meant that I have less time to spend with loved ones, so my stakeholder management and planning skills had to improve. I’ve become very adept at reactively scheduling evenings and weekends, and have the timetables of the local pools committed to memory.

No wet suits allowed

As the weather improves, so does the prospect of longer swims outdoors. Both Liz and I have some impressive swims under our belts, including 10.5 miles across Windermere, the Dart 10k and the 15km-swim/10km-walk Scilly Swim Challenge. The challenge will now be to up the distance while only wearing a swimming costume, swimming cap and goggles – no wetsuits allowed. These are the Channel rules. We will also practise getting warm quickly and feeding ourselves to mimic the situation we’ll find ourselves in on the day.

With longer outdoor swims, the mental challenge really comes to the fore. But it’s all fun, especially when joining the dedicated swim groups at the beach when the sun is shining.

Will the benefits be realised? I’m enjoying the training and planning so far and I’m sure this will continue with nicer weather. Time will tell whether this is enough to get us across the Channel.

Project wishes Kathy the best of luck. We’ll report on how she fared in the next issue.

This article appeared in the Summer 2019 edition of Project journal.