GRANNY But this isn’t a case of bravado. Palfrey doesn’t freak out, she
explains, because it’s her job to keep swimming and it’s a job she takes very seriously. “The pilot’s job is to pilot the boat and I let him do that. My crew’s job is to look aſt er me and keep me safe and I let them do that. And I just keep going, concentrating on the swimming I have to do.” Like the Queen, Penny oſt en uses ‘we’ when she is talking about her swim, and this stems from a belief that any swim of this magnitude isn’t the work of just one person, but the dozens of people behind the scenes in the support crew. But, although it did involve many people – on six support boats – and months of preparation, it’s fair to say that her modesty is misplaced. Her training schedule in the run-up to the swim was vicious, with 100km a week actual swimming, plus an hour of strength training, stretches and other land work every day. “Then on top of that there’s an awful lot of emails,” she admits. “Three or four hours of emails sent around the place, talking to the organisers, talking to boat captains, marine experts. Finding out the weather. It became a lit le bit overwhelming.” If the preparation was overwhelming, then the facts of her swim
are even more so. Before she set off , she mentally broke the swim down into 11 swims of 10km each, and she completed the fi rst four of these in around ten hours, before 2.5m-waves and a strong anti- current began to slow her speed. This current was so strong that, for much of the last third of the swim, she was swimming at full pelt just to stay in the same place. She was followed by four oceanic white tip sharks for much of the journey and struck by jellyfi sh on two occasions. The second of these was when she was just a few miles from the fi nish line, and she worried it would fi nish her off , having been pulled out of the water for jellyfi sh stings before. “I’d been swimming constantly for 36 hours and I knew I was weak; that it wouldn’t take too much toxin to wipe me out,” she says. “When you’ve been swimming for more than 30 hours, no one knows what to expect. You don’t know how much you can push it.”
Despite these troubles, she says that, even when things got really bad, she never had the urge to stop. “So much goes into a swim before we pull our goggles over our eyes. Many miles of training, many early morning wake-ups, many thousands of dollars, many emails to organise the swim, fl ights, accommodation, crew, equipment,” she explains. “I want to do all I can both before and during the swim to make it successful and that’s what keeps me going at the toughest of times, remembering all that it's taken to get this far and that my team have taken time from their busy lives to support me.” It’s this determination that saw her make it on to the beach at Grand Cayman, surrounded by the world’s press – the latest pinnacle in a swimming career that has taken in some of the toughest crossings in the world. Swimming guru
21
HOW TO ACHIEVE A LONG-DISTANCE GOAL Penny’s top tips for endurance training
○ It depends on where you’re starting from and what the goal is, but distance is all a mat er of building up. Do a 2km swim, do a 5km swim and see if you like it; see if your body holds up.
○ Every single time you do a distance you’re learning about yourself. You’re learning about any shoulder problems that you are prone to and that might stop you from swimming longer distances.
○Build up slowly. It’s very important to have stepping stones. Sure, have that main goal but have lots of lit le stepping stones on the way so you have regular successes.
○ Practise your feeds, practise the conditions. Even things that go wrong can be helpful. Each time you’re learning and you know what to work on.
○The open water swimming community are fantastic. They’re very supportive so ask for advice.
○ You don’t have to swim the Channel, just start with a race that's 500m long – they’re a lot of fun. Just enjoy it and keep going!
Palfrey in 2006 as she gets ready to face the English Channel
Photos © Penny Palfrey
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