Swimming to Antarctica (6 page)

I’m not sure what I would have done if Ron had said no, but when he called and told me that he would coach me, I was excited and happy. Fifteen years old was considered young to attempt to swim the Channel, let alone go for the record. Most of the people who swam it were in their late twenties or thirties. Everyone knew that it took substantial mental and physical maturity. Swimming the English Channel was like climbing Mount Everest. It was the absolute zenith of the sport.

At first, I didn’t know anything about established thought; I was too young to know, too certain that this was something I wanted to do ever since that day in New Hampshire when Mrs. Milligan had planted the original thought in my mind. The day she saw me swimming through the storm. Ever since that day, the dream had been there, just waiting for the right moment to burst forth.

Fortunately, my folks were also able to overlook established thought. They believed age was important, but they also believed that you could achieve almost anything in life with hard work and talent. I was lucky that they were open-minded about this, because I’m not sure what I would have done if they had told me I was too young; I probably would have worked on them until they couldn’t stand it any longer and finally gave in. They knew I was determined; my father called it stubborn. Still, they also knew how important it was to have dreams and goals and a path in life. And they instilled this in me.

It seemed, too, that this was exactly the right path for me. Within a week of Ron’s commitment to coach me, a cousin introduced me to an Egyptian swimmer who had attempted swimming the English Channel five times. When we met, Fahmy Attallah was in his sixties, although he looked like he was forty. He was a clinical psychologist in
Long Beach, California, a humanist, and a gentle-spirited and enlightened man.

Fahmy and his wife, Donna, invited my parents and me to their home to make sure that this goal was something that I—not my parents—wanted to achieve before he decided to serve as a mentor and role model to me.

Fahmy was a short man, only five feet high; this told me that size, like age, didn’t really matter unless one let it. His shoulders were broad, as was his chest, and his arms looked powerful.

Still holding my hand in both of his, he led me to the table. There were piles of stuffed grape leaves, triangles of phyllo dough filled with feta cheese, roasted eggplant, and tomato and ground lamb, piles of fluffy rice topped with pine nuts, and wonderful dishes I had never tried until that night.

Fahmy had me sit beside him, and, handing me a platter of rice, he said in a melodious Egyptian accent, “Whatever questions you may have, I will try to answer them for you.”

Fahmy had grown up in Cairo and had swum for the Egyptian national team in the 1940s and 1950s. He was one of Egypt’s most celebrated athletes, in a country that names streets after long-distance swimmers. In 1941 he made a forty-one-hour long-distance swim in the Mediterranean, establishing a new record for time and distance. Fahmy made this swim at a time before goggles had been invented, or snug-fitting bathing caps, so to protect his eyes and ears from the salt water, he swam breaststroke with his head above the water. The longest swim he accomplished was in the Mediterranean. He swam nonstop for eighty hours. “The way I do this is, I meditate when I swim,” he said.

I did too. I knew that we understood each other. I immediately liked him. When my father told him that I was very stubborn, he laughed and tilted his head way back, until tears filled his eyes. “That is a very strong characteristic for a channel swimmer. Perhaps a better word for stubborn would be
determined,”
he said, wiping happy tears from his eyes.

During his daily swims, he pondered life’s big questions, and I
believe that through those daily meditations he had discovered the essence of himself and the answers to his questions. “You know, the ocean is a very, very beautiful place. It is God’s gift to us,” he said.

I was sure Fahmy was God’s gift to me. I think he saw in me a younger version of himself, full of hope, eagerness, and determination. That day I told him that I was very grateful that he was sharing all of his knowledge with me. He said that once there had been someone who had helped him, and one day I would also pass on what I had learned to someone else. That was the way it was meant to be.

He began describing what I should expect. He said, “The English Channel is filled with very cold water, strong tides, and strong currents. But you have already swum across the Catalina Channel, so I know that once you train for it, you can do it. One of the biggest problems is the cold water. It stings; it feels like prickers in your skin. The water temperature in the Channel is usually between fifty and sixty degrees. Many people have problems with the cold water. But you will not have any problem because you are training in the ocean in cold water.”

Fahmy’s confidence in me made me feel happy, and he made me feel more self-assured. He was not only giving me insights into the physical challenge of the English Channel; Fahmy was beginning to coach my mind. It was so natural for him; he did it without thinking. Everything he said about what I was doing was positive; everything seemed possible.

On the day we first met, Fahmy painted a mental picture of Dover Harbor for me. “The beach at Dover is made of pebbles. You can hear the beautiful waves caressing them. High above the harbor are the beautiful white cliffs, and always there are seagulls, circling overhead. Dover is a very beautiful place. It is well protected, and it is a good place to train.”

Fahmy told me that I needed to contact the Channel Swimming Association in Dover and become a member of the organization. They would send an official along on the swim to make sure the crossing was done under English Channel rules. He explained that I
could get a list of names of pilots. These were mostly fishermen who knew the tides and currents in the Channel, and, for a fee, they would accompany a swimmer, helping with navigation and ensuring the swimmer’s safety during the crossing.

After dinner, we moved into the living room and sat down. I asked Fahmy how long it had taken him to swim the Channel. A pained look quickly crossed his face, and he drew in a deep breath. He said he had attempted the English Channel five times and each time he encountered poor conditions. Swimming breaststroke with his head above water didn’t help either. He was a slow swimmer, and the tide was faster than he was, so on his first and second attempts, he was carried with the tide in an enormous circle, not even getting within sight of the English shore.

On his third attempt, his pilot got lost in the fog and guided him in the entirely wrong direction, back toward the Belgian coast. Despite this, Fahmy didn’t give up. He swam for twenty-six hours. With a trembling voice he said, “I got within four hundred yards of the English coast. I could see those very beautiful white cliffs of Dover and the pebbles on the beach. The water was very calm, and I rolled over on my back for a moment to rest. King Farouk, the king of Egypt, was standing on the shore. He waved to me. Suddenly two men in the boat put a blanket under me and lifted me out of the water before I could stop them. They thought I had passed out from the cold water. By putting that blanket under me, they disqualified me.” He paused.

“King Farouk told me afterward, ‘Fahmy, it broke my heart when you did not finish.’ And I told him, ‘It broke my heart too.’”

After all those years, the pain of not finishing was still apparent. He said that the English Channel had been his greatest disappointment and also the source of his great inner strength. Fahmy believed that long-distance swimming is as much mental as it is physical. He said that you can be physically ready, but if you are not mentally prepared you will not make the swim. He assured me that I had the right mind-set. And he explained that there would be times when I would be tired and cold, when I didn’t think I could go any farther, but he
knew that I would be able to push myself beyond the cold and the fatigue with my mental strength. Fahmy inspired me and instilled confidence in me, and I knew that when I left for England I would be carrying his dream of swimming the English Channel with me.

Fahmy had stressed the importance of being prepared for the cold. What I needed to do was to condition to the cold on a daily basis, so that my body gradually adjusted to it, and eventually I would be able to tolerate cold temperatures much better than if I had not gone through this process. After workouts I never took hot showers, just warm or lukewarm. At night I slept with my window open to let in the cool night air, and I wore light bedclothes and used only a sheet for warmth.

During the day, I wore sandals, never socks or shoes; that way my feet would always be exposed to the ambient air. Winters in southern California could be cool—temperatures could drop to the low forties—but I never wore a jacket or sweater, usually just a short- or long-sleeved T-shirt with pants or a skirt. Most national and Olympic swimmers shave down before a big race (they shave their entire body, sometimes including their heads) to both reduce drag and create greater sensitivity to the water. But shaving down was the last thing I wanted to do; I didn’t want to become more sensitive to the cold. Instead, I didn’t shave my legs or arms at all and hoped that this would reduce my sensitivity to the cold. This cold training diminished my ability to handle heat, not in normal daily settings, but when the air temperature rose above eighty degrees, I would sweat heavily and feel uncomfortable.

The best way to condition to cold water, though, was for me to swim in cold water. Ron offered to coach me in the early morning before school. He suggested that I get released from my morning physical education class to enable me to spend more time in the water. I thought this was a spectacular idea, but there was one major obstacle: Miss Larson, my physical education teacher. Somehow she wound up being my physical education teacher for all three years of junior high school, and her disdain for me had only increased with the years.

My father set up a meeting with Mr. Hughes, the school principal, and Miss Larson. Our goal was to get permission for me to be excused from physical education class so that I could train for the English Channel. My father argued on my behalf that swimming the English Channel took as much preparation as, or perhaps even more than, competing in the Olympic Games. In Miss Larson’s class, at the most, I would have one hour of physical education. Out of her class, I would be working for two to five hours a day—two to three hours in the morning in the ocean with Ron Blackledge, and two hours three times a week in the pool with Don Gambril, the Olympic coach.

Mr. Hughes agreed. He had already checked my report cards and said that as long as I kept my grades up at a B average or better, I could be excused from Miss Larson’s class. But Miss Larson did not accept this decision, and when Mr. Hughes said it was final, she stormed out of the office and slammed the door so hard the glass window on top shook.

This was a major triumph for me. I was able to have the time I needed to train for the English Channel, and I had escaped Miss Larson’s class in the bargain. I had also learned a very important lesson that day: it was possible to go against established thought and not only win but build additional support through the battle.

I continued to build support and to try to find out more about the Channel. I wrote a letter to one of the greatest long-distance swimmers of all time. Her name was Florence Chadwick. She had swum across the Catalina Channel and the English Channel and she had broken the women’s world records. She’d made her first Catalina Channel swim during the 1950s at a time when television was first becoming a new form of communication. CBS broadcast her entire swim across the Catalina Channel, and to this day many people remember staying up all night long to watch Florence break the Catalina Channel record. To my happy surprise, Florence Chadwick wrote me a letter wishing me luck, and she asked me for my phone number. A couple of weeks later, she called me, “What kind of workouts are you doing now?” she asked.

“I’m training in the ocean all winter long with Ron Blackledge.
The water’s in the low fifties. We usually start workout around five a.m. My mom takes me down to the beach and waits for me in the car. Usually we’re done by seven, or sometimes eight if it’s a long workout,” I said.

“Is this something you love doing?” she asked with a cautionary note in her voice. I think she wanted to make sure that this was my idea, not something my parents wanted me to do.

“Oh, I love swimming in the ocean. It’s so beautiful, and hard, and fun. Sometimes, though, it’s difficult to drag myself out of bed and go work out. Sometimes I’m just really tired. But I know that if I miss any workouts I won’t be prepared, and I have to train as hard as I can for the English Channel. I have to be ready for it. It’s supposed to be a lot more difficult than the Catalina Channel. Is that true?”

“Yes, the English Channel is colder by nearly ten degrees. And the currents in the English Channel are much stronger. You really have to find a good pilot and pick the best day. Do you have a pilot yet?”

“Not yet, but my mother wrote to the Channel Swimming Association a couple of months ago. Guess it takes the letter a long time to get to England. But we should hear back from them soon.

“Do you remember your swims?” I asked eagerly. “Do you remember if they were really hard? Did you ever get really tired or ever feel like quitting?”

“Funny, yes,” she recalled. “I remember some parts of my swims, but it’s been so many years ago. My English Channel swim took around fifteen hours, and it was very long and cold. It helps if you have some extra body fat on you. That will help insulate you from the cold. Yes, there were times when I got very tired, but I just kept going—you know, you learn to do that on a long swim. You just keep going and somehow you find more energy from somewhere so that you can do that. I don’t think that I ever felt like quitting. I trained hard for that swim. But I think you are training even harder.” I’d told her about the types of workouts I’d been doing, and she remarked upon that now. “You’re employing a new type of training method, something that was never done in my time. You do interval training in the ocean. You do repeats, and sets of swims. We just used to swim
for a certain period of time and then get out of the water. I think you’re doing exactly what you need to do for this swim. Yes, I think you’re going to be in great shape for it. Here, let me give you my phone number, and please feel free to call me if you ever have any questions. I’d like to help you as much as I can.”