Some stats about our swim:

• Dover, UK to Calais, France
• 14 hours 23 minutes
• 21 miles
• Water temp 60F
• In terms of nutrition… We each fed once every 30 minutes in the water on GU Roctane and GU20 using the Gu-Bot bottle. The bottle held 2 GU packets in a separate chamber from the warmed GU hydration. We ate 2 packets and 12 ounces of warm water during each feeding.
  
• Seas were pretty rough at times
• Our pilot on channel day was David Whyte. Seriously folks, he’s the best in the business and has piloted over 350 successful channel swims. 350!!! His support was phenomenal. His thoughts we only on the swimmers — and his hand-picked crew helped our crew huge. His boat is one of the largest in the fleet. I remember late during the swim when he turned around and shouted encouragement to me in the water at the top of his lungs, flinging his arms in celebration. He was wonderful. It’s a pity he’s retiring this year — but we hear he’s trained an awesome successor in Chris Osmond.

Check out these videos and photographs:

A shout-out to Skyline Goggles, especially our friend Rick Runckel, President. Neal used the Predator goggles (pictured) during his crossing. These goggles are built for open water swimming — they have a huge viewing angle and don’t hurt eye sockets during swims, whether those swims are 1 hour or 14 hours.

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The below picture is a view near our sandy starting point in Dover. The videos are taken from the hilltop shoreline of Dover, looking out across the channel toward Calais, France.

• 2 hours
• 10 dudes in drysuits diving for shipwrecks in the harbor

Well, we did yet another training swim. Got the call from our pilot (Dave Whyte) last night that we weren’t going to be relaying the channel, so we decided to acclimatize swim again. Since we couldn’t go we did 2 hours today. Adam in one shot and me split between morning/evening (just for kicks).

In other news, Adam’s son Joshua almost walked for the first time today, which would have been amazing. How cool would it be if he took his first steps on the same day that we swam the channel!

Hopefully day after tomorrow is our day. Tomorrow I will post my exploration video of Dover’s anti-French fortifications — cool stuff.

• 1.5 hours
• Serious chop, especially on the east side of the harbor
• 200 gulls, zero fishies

Hello from Dover! Another nice swim today. Might head out for a night swim close to sun-down. Due to the relatively high latitude of Dover (and England itself) the sun rises earlier and sets later than much of the USA. Sun rises here at 5AM and sets at 915PM. Nice long days for swim workouts.

On the home front, the last days have involved a lot of time cooking around the house and some hanging out by the beach and swimming. Here are some pics and a vid of both.

Warning: Seriously boredom inducing video to follow. If you watch 2 seconds of it you’ll get a taste for the conditions.

• Nottingham to Cambridge
• 70 miles
• 100 sheep. 25 cows. 1 pony on a leash (see video)

Today started out a bit rocky but ended on a high note.  We’ve been in the UK for nearly two weeks now, and the longest rain we’ve biked through has been 30 minutes…until today.  I guess we’ve been pretty lucky so far.  Today was a different story.  The skies opened up, and we were wet.  We’ve been wearing an Aqua-No Jacket, and today we even threw on the Aqua-No booties.  They did a good job, but were no match for the deluge that hit us.

Then at lunchtime, and without warning, the rain broke, and the skies were blue and beautiful.  The rest of the ride was quite enjoyable despite a stiff head wind.  Cambridge is a fantastic city.  It’s probably my favorite so far.  Neal’s mother Laura arrived into town and was there to greet us with a smile when we rode up to the hotel.

We are staying at the Crowne Plaza in Cambridge.  The hotel is absolutely beautiful and service has been first class all the way.  We were met by the duty manager Carlo, who had heard about our venture.  He wanted some pics of us with our bikes out in front of the hotel for some PR opportunities and local press releases — we’ll upload those when we get them.

Below are videos from the ride and photos of Cambridge.

A shout-out to Gu Energy Gel, especially our good friend and fellow athlete Holly Bennett, Marketing Manager. To keep us going during our 4-8 hours rides we consume 1 gel per 30 minutes and Gu H2o hydration in our bottles. The stuff works great and they are constantly innovating new flavors like Blueberry Pomegranate. It’s delic, who knew?!

• Leeds to Nottingham
• 75 miles
• 1800 feet climbed
• 1000 sheep. Some cows. 63 pigs.
• 2 nuclear reactors

Our route took us through Sherwood Forest, which was fun for me. It’s hard not to feel like a kid again riding through Sherwood Forest into Nottingham!

Today was a pretty nice day.  It’s a shame that as we come further south our surroundings are less desolate and the roadways are much more populated.  As a result, we spend more time concentrating and less time enjoying our environment.  Weather today was beautiful.  Winds were calm most of the day, and there was only a 15 minute patch of rain that we unintentionally but fortunately avoided on our lunch break.

To say these last 3 days have been tough would be an understatement.  Mentally, there were a lot of obstacles to overcome.  Physically the back-to-back-to-back days of punishing terrain and distance were difficult.  I can’t tell you how many times over the past several months, I’ve cursed the name of Mike Kuhn, our coach (another link) as I opened the dreaded email that laid out the workout for the day.  “Tell me again why I’m riding 6 hrs today  I just did 4 yesterday.”  Today it’s clear.  This guy isn’t just a sadist. He had a method to his madness.  It was good to finish this segment of the ride and still feel pretty strong (and injury free!)

Tomorrow we’ll rest up and take care of some minor aches and pains and then it’s on to Cambridge.

• Perth to Edinburg
• 60 miles
• 3000 feet climbed
• 1 huge bridge
• 1500 sheep

Our blog today will come in the form of 3 videos.  We’re too tired to blog.  Short version…Ride today was scheduled to be 40 miles.  Arrived at Edinburgh bridge (5 miles to hotel) at 2 PM.  Arrived at hotel just after 4 PM.  We saw a lot of Edinburgh.  It’s a beautiful city.  I would have rather seen it on foot.

Tomorrow is a rest day in the capital city of Edinburgh.  We’re looking forward to it.

A shout-out to Bellwether Clothing Line, especially the awesome and honest Barry Smith, Marketing Director. The weather here is extremely temperamental. Just today we went from cold (50′s) to rain to warm (70′s). The gear has been fantastic. The chamois technology is layered and padded perfectly (FYI: chamois = butt pad) and the jerseys have awesome finishing touches like rubber gussets on the sleeves and waist to keep it from slipping. It’s gorgeous stuff, and it’s all we wear.

Here’s my poolside review.

And a video of the player in action.

So as you can see from the review we think Finis is pretty awesome. They’ve wonderfully offered to lend us extra players if we wear them during our 15 hour swim across the English Channel. I suppose it’ll be the first time that anyone has had the opportunity to rock-out during a channel crossing.

[UPDATE] The Channel Swimming and Piloting Association (the org that certifies channel swims) voted in 2007 to ban MP3 players on official swims of the English Channel. I think the Association’s decision is overly nostalgic, but c’est la vie. At least I can use the Finis during my training swims. The vote from the association’s minutes looks like this:

MOTION 3 “The use of MP3 players shall not be allowed by the swimmer while swimming during any English Channel swim attempt” Prop. – D Carter, sec. – C. Golding. 15 for, 2 against, 3 abstain – carried)

Everyone wants a healthy lifestyle. There are new trends that help a healthy lifestyle fit into our day-to-day. I put together a list of what I think are THE leading-edge fitness trends; and just for fun I put them to the ABCs. I am involved in most of these trends, but not all (there are 7 that I’m not involved in). I will let you all postulate in the comments which of the ABCs I do not do.

A for Adventure races – like 10 Degrees!
B for Balance training (taichi, yoga and pilates)
C for Creatine
D for Dry-land training for swimmers, or the reverse
E for Eating breakfast – eating early makes you thin at night
F for Fixed-gear bicycles – brakes are for flakes
G for Google map your next run
H for Halfsizes – restaurant portions are twice the FDA recommendation
I for Intense workouts trumping long workouts
J for Juice bars
K for Ketone breath avoidance
L for Lactive threshold (LT) training
M for Mind/body exercise (yoga, tai chi, and qigong)
N for Navy Seal bootcamp-style training
O for Online videoconferencing allows group training at home
P for Power meters for bikes
Q for Quest-based adventures (7 Summits, et al)
R for Recovery drinks
S for Stability balls
T for Thule roof racks to bring your kit with you
U for Underwater MP3 players for swimming/surfing
V for Video analysis packages for bike fits like Dartfish
W for Wrist computers to track workouts
X for Xtreme sports
Y for Yoga
Z for Zucchini

Thule makes roof racks and external modular storage for vehicles (they are the world’s biggest). And they’re Swedish, so you know, they make pretty stuff. Today Adam and I are driving up to Connecticut to visit Thule’s US HQ. We’re going up to ask advice on how to best equip our logistics van. We’ll let you know how those discussions go!

Ohh yah, totally wanted to share this with you. Check out this viral video created by Thule Marketing. This guy totally geeks out on Thule.

Video 1: This video model from NOAA is based on over-flight observations. With each tide the oil from the spill is being pulled out to sea, and then pulled back into the bay.

Video 2: This second video is a photo montage of the damage done to the San Francisco Bay (aka. my former training grounds).

What is the moral of this sad story? If you can, and I realize this isn’t practical for most, but if you can, sell your car and buy a bike.

Exciting news, Adam is back from his recruiting trips in Seattle and Denver. The dude can’t stop raving about Denver. I’m just glad he’s back. While he was gone I was without a regular training partner. Now that he’s back the problem is solved, but… I’ll poke fun at him anyways.

I saw this video from Chris Prouse and it really made me laugh. I’m like Chris, in that my bicycle has been my training partner for the past days while Adam way away.

Hope your autumn training is going well out there. Enjoy the video, hope it makes you all laugh too.

My favorite moment in the movie:

“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”

Here is the trailer for On A Clear Day: