Escort by Beth Barnes..(in her own words)

When a new neighbour invited me to dinner she was surprised to hear how I'd spent my life, she had one thing to say...'you should write a book'.  I scoffed, I'd heard all this before and wondered why anyone would be interested in what I of all people had to say.  I got home and realized that I SHOULD write a book, I did have something to say and it was important.

 

I wanted to tell my story of two years that changed my life and will hopefully change others lives too.  My story was one of adventure...and meaning.  

After participating in twenty Catalina Channel crossings, I knew that I'd learned a lot...a lot that could possibly benefit others.

 

Now, I hope that what I learned will spread like wildfire throughout the open water swimming world.  I have a dream.  My dream is that every person who even considers kayaking next to an open water swimmer, or who loves an open water swimmer will read my account of the past two years.  I am still not quite sure what drives open water swimmers to do what they do, but I know what drives me....safety!

 

Safety first, everything else will naturally follow!  You do what you do, and I'll do what I do, and in the end we'll get there together...simple as that!

 

Thanks to everyone, worldwide, for your love and support.

 

(Avaliable for all e-readers at Amazon or Smashwords...type in Escort, Beth Barnes.  Even free PDF download at Smashwords if you haven't joined the e-reader revolution yet)

Loneswimmer

Some will know, some will not know.... who is The Loneswimmer ......do You...?

if you don't and you are a Channel Swim aspirant (like me) then you should find out...but to save you the effort I will let the cat out of the bag.... Donal Buckley (practical joker extra-ordinaire) is a Channel Swimmer, having made an epic swim to France in August 2010...he writes on an almost daily basis at loneswimmer.com and has a wealth of news data discussion going at any one time, a brief look through his older posts provide mountains of informative reading for the dark nights now that the clocks have lost the hour.

Like lots of successful Channel swimmers DB has continued to swim and inspires me to pull my finger out from time to time..Last year after my first 1WW (one way windermere) I more or less stopped the open water swimming til the following April.

This year the plan is to drop the sessions back but attempt to maintain some acclimatisation and remind myself of the conditions that await in the Straits of Dover, as DB recently wrote something along the lines of..."Why do you think you can swim The Channel if you only train in lakes and pools"

DB is maintaining his 60 minutes swims as the temperature drops in the waters surrounding the beloved Emerald Isle and I am following suit..together with the re- introduction of pool/interval sessions..hopefully Donal will spot this post and write something here by way of a guest post..

So..training continues..the water a Seaton Carew is now 53f 11.6c, the air temperature is dropping but we are sticking at it, today was a great swim with Joe Hunter, the target remains 60 minutes and no less until we get below 50f 10c...it hurts like hell getting in and its so funny when we shake and giggle afterwards but you feel great all day once its done...you should try it...it wont kill you......well I don't think so anyway !

oh...if you hadn't noticed the blog now has an easy domain name..its now just www.markswims.com

Marcy MacDonald 11th and 12th

Marcy and her latest English Channel swims...lovely lady, how cool and happy is she about the whole thing!! Inspirational

More Joe Hunter EC pics

October H2Open Mag

Looking forward to the next issue which should be available around Monday 10thOctober....I wonder if I get a mention in this edition?? Its a Channel Special so it should be great