5 Reasons To Train in the San Francisco Bay

1. The Bay is clean and has less chemicals than the pool.
2. Swimming allows me the feel the strength of my body.
3. Time with the people at the Dolphin Club makes me a better person.
4. Being among the ocean creatures puts me in touch with nature.
5. The colder the water the better the sauna feels at the end.

Last night I swam in black glass. We jumped into the San Francisco Bay ocean water after dark. It was so darn peaceful as the light of the Ghirardelli Chocholate Factory shone across the black glassy water. These are the nights that can make any workday worth living. It was a wonderful cold water training swim. My buddy Dave joined us for the apres-swim sauna then we all went back to a French place and talked about adventures past and adventures future. These are the days worth remembering.

Adam has been training these days too in Denver, where the temperatures have dropped down at night to the 40s, so I suspect most of his training has been on the Wilier cycles (shameless plug, sorry, but we love these guys).

Hope everyone’s training is going awesome. Take care.

Ride stats today

• 129 miles
• Fins to South Paris; completing 10 Degrees Latitude
• Our most gorgeous bike day yet, a suitable end to an amazing journey
• 0 sheep, 5 buguettes, 2 barets
• 2 huge smiles and cigars at the end

Our journey took us 14 days of biking and 1 day of swimming across the English Channel. This works out to be 1000 miles on bike and 25 miles in the water. It was gorgeous, stunning territory, and the good thing about traveling as we did was that we really got to enjoy the countryside, see the people and smell the smells (most were good).

We have so many people to thank. Our support crew made our adventure possible. Our bike crew (Flora and Bob), our swim crew (Tricia, Amy, Flora, Laura, Dave, Teresa, and the entire Ocean Breeze crew) and our home crew (Michelle, Andrew, Ava and Joshua) were awesome. Our Cadence Cycling coach Mike Kuehn was super supportive. Our sponsors are all amazing people. Everyone treated us so well through the entire journey.

Here are some parting pictures from our final days in Paris. We took our final pictures at the Arc de Triomphe. A fitting end to a stunning journey.

14 hours 23 minutes

We made it! Everyone helped! It was awesome!

It was a gorgeous day for a swim from England to France. The middle map pretty well tells the story of our relay swim across the English Channel. We started the morning off strong on Shakespeare Beach and finished the day cold and weary just as the sun was dipping below the ocean horizon. Aches, pains, cold, and sea sickness took their toll, but they all disappeared as I walked up on the shores of France. Stay tuned for a longer trip log with more color. For now we are working through all these wonderfully supportive emails from loved ones and sponsors. Thanks for your warm vibes, we felt them in the cold channel!

A shout-out to Suunto, especially our friend Martin Schamboeck, Sports Marketing Manager. Adam swam with a T6 and Neal swam with a Core. Whether we’re defending presidents (as Adam has) or climbing Everest (as Neal has), Suunto is on our wrists. They also have this really cool software that we used during our bike rides to chart heart rate, speed and distance.

As part of my acclimitization I swam in the 45-degree Atlantic Ocean this weekend. You see, my two good friends Rick and Carla live smack-dab on the ocean, so my training was a great excuse to visit and spend some time with them in their home. I was the only swimmer on the beach and the fisherman thought I was bonkers. Truth be told, with the wetsuit it wasn’t all that bad. My core stayed warm and my cognition was clear (cold water sometimes prevents us humans from thinking straight). Here are some pictures of me and my good friends.

Next weekend I will try the same swims without the wetsuit — such swims have been done by our friend (Mark Robson) for several weeks. He is also training for the English Channel swim.

He was looking at because we’re looking for some nearby open water swims. Trouble is there aren’t any organized events until summer. The water temperatures in the East are sub-50F until April, which is chilly. It looks like we might plan a trip down to Florida in March. If you have suggestions please let us know.

It’s all lined up and we couldn’t be happier. Thank you all for your feedback and anecdotes relating your experience with your pilots. The one thing we learned from all of you is that all of the pilots are great. We did not get a single negative story about a pilot. Even those of you who had unsuccessful attempts, had nothing but the best to say about your pilot.

For our readers not familiar with this segment of the universe, the Channel piloting world is very small. There is only a handful of folks that do this, and they’ve been doing it forever. A couple of them are 2nd generation pilots. It’s an everybody-knows-everybody community, and most of them have close personal friendships with those they have taken across the Channel. The pilot also serves as a motivator and a coach. They know how to keep a swimmer motivated for 14 hours of pain and cold. They now how to manage nutrition, and they know how to spot and prevent hypothermia. They try to help alleviate all of the external factors that can affect the crossing. Now all you have to do is swim!

So here’s what we got…

Adam: Dave Whyte (Ocean Breeze)

Neal: Chris Osmond (Seafarer)

Our swim dates are 7 – 19 July. This block now gives us a target to start the first cycling leg of the expedition in the last part of June.