Christmas and New Year

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully a much better one than 2008 for so many reasons but I won't have to state the obvious.

Next year, we have many Black-Ice swimmers attempting some big swims with Chloe's triple Rotto and her double Channel and Kevin's solo Channel attempt just to name a few. I am confident that they'll be successful as they have done the hard work and have the attitude and commitment that is required .

Earlier this year, we had an unsuccessful channel swimmer fail in his attempt for so many reasons. His attempt was best summed up by his observer’s “YouTube” report. The six "P's". “Perfect planning prevents piss poor performance”.

I have mentioned before that this is no walk in the park and unless you have ticked all the boxes, you should not even consider attempting the English Channel. If you say that at least you’ve made an attempt, well that doesn’t sit with me .

Don’t waste your time or money. Besides the swim, it’s just a struggle coming
to terms with living in Dover. When I made my attempt, I struggled for a short period and nothing could get me going until my observer yelled out “Do you want to crawl up in a corner for the rest of your life and make excuses”. This was the best motivation that I’d ever heard. He hit a nerve and had me so fired up, I put my head down and swam another eight hours until I landed in France. It felt like heaven.

See you all early next year as we look forward to the Bloody Big Swim
and the Rotto swim.

P.S

I’ve been reading many of the e-mails sent to the English Channel chat site and although many of the topics of discussion are quite interesting and relevant, I am getting a little bit sick of a few Aussies who make me cringe with some of their stupid comments that embarrass our fellow swimmers . For this reason, I have had to block the site because I am receiving too many ridiculous e-mails from imbeciles.

Talk is cheap, so try swimming more than the length of my bath or shut up.

Merry Christmas and go Dover Football Club who are still on top.