Our Life In Miles

“You become the thoughts you entertain” – Something I realised

The Backstory

May 2018 – The Drowning – Right on my first date with Danish, when I tried to impress him by seeming adventurous 🤦🏻‍♀️ (and not confessing that I can’t really swim), I was knackered while doggy paddling through just a 25-meter swim towards Chunchi Falls and drowned because of exhaustion on the way back. Luckily Danish spotted my lone hand ✋🏻 jutting out in the middle of the waters and swam back to rescue me. Somewhere, this incident was imprinted deeply in my subconscious, and I had vowed to learn to swim – well enough to come back to Chunchi falls, and swim the 25 + 25 meters distance to and from the waterfall comfortably.

For the next 3 years, due to long work hours and high work pressure, I didn’t really get the opportunity to do anything about that vow though.

Jan 2021 – Wedding Shedding – Like many other naive and vain brides-to-be, I wanted to shed a lot of weight and attain a ‘flat stomach’ for my wedding in March 2021. Hired a personal trainer and asked him to pull out all the stops during the workouts he was assigning to me. Busted my knees and lower back in this process and started looking for less impactful fitness activities, dreading any injury again. 🤦🏻‍♀️

The Introduction

Jan 2022 – Baby Steps – So finally, after researching various sports and fitness options, I signed up for personal swim coaching with coach Harish at The Majestine Sports. He taught me the basics of all 4 strokes through the next 4 months and motivated me to sign up for Masters Games in May 2022. I somehow bagged a few medals there, but realised I don’t enjoy sprint swimming so much and I’m not as good at it, either.

June 2022 – My first 1K – So I started trying to increase my distances rather than speed. In June, I did my first non-stop 1K in the pool, and I was over the moon! I repeated the same again over the next few days just to be sure that it was not a fluke the first time 🙈

What next? – Now that I knew I could swim longer distances, I wanted to figure out what to do with it. I thought of participating in a swimathon initially, but I would’ve loved it if Danish accompanied me in the training. Since he was already better at running and cycling, and not so much at swimming, we finally came to the conclusion that we would participate in a triathlon and work on our weaker sport. After some bit of research, we finalised on participating in the Olympic Distance Triathlon at Kolhapur in October.

Sept 2022 – First Open Water Swim – While I was now comfortable swimming 1~2K in a swimming pool, the Kolhapur Triathlon was going to be organised in a lake; so we had to get comfortable swimming in open waters. We didn’t know of the triathlon and OWS communities in Bangalore, yet. Since we only had scuba diving experience before this, we knew wetsuits added buoyancy (somehow we didn’t come across tow floats at the time 🫣). So we rented wetsuits, headed to Thonnur Lake and got over our fear of Open Water Swimming. Took us a long time to go from 10m -> 20m -> 50m -> 100m -> 250m -> 750m into the water, but finally ended up swimming a good 1.5km in the open waters continuously.

The Ramp Up

Oct 2022 – Olympic Triathlon – After a decent amount of swim training and bare minimum cycling and running practice, I registered for and completed my first Olympic Triathlon. 45 mins-swim | 2hrs20mins- bike | 1hr40mins-run (walk really).
Respectable? Not really. Proud? Kinda! I completed my first legit triathlon! 🎉

What next? – But after this event was over, there came kind of a lull in our lives. Because we didn’t know what to work towards next. So through some chats I was having with my coach Harish, we decided to visit his hometown Karwar and experience swimming in the sea, with no goal as such in our minds.

Nov 2022 – 4K Sea Swim – The experience in Karwar was eye opening. We went in with no expectations on distance or time, but ended up doing a comfortable 4km long swim – and we came out because the tides started changing, not because we were tired. So there we had our next goal in front of us; swimming a 10K swimathon. Did a bit of research and finalised on the Kochi 10K swimathon in Periyar river.
To be honest, I also dreamed of swimming the English Channel right here in Karwar after the 4km swim. And my dream was that me and Coach Harish train for and swim the English Channel together. But he switched his job and my coaching with him came to a halt, soon after.

Dec 2022 – Introduction to the Deb Burmans – In parallel to the 10K swimathon goal, we also had planned to register for a Half Iron in Kolhapur in Sept 2023. Nalin dragged me and Danish with him to buy road bikes at Velo Studio – because it was stupid, according to him, to cycle 90kms on a BTwin Rockrider 👀.
Ritwik, who runs Velo Studio, told us about his sister Sucheta Deb Burman who is an ultra marathon swimmer, and his dad who is also her swim coach. That was how I was introduced to my now coach – Nupur Deb Burman! Talk about serendipity 💙
So I reached out to Sucheta, and started training under ND Burman sir right from Jan 2023! 🏊‍♀️🏊‍♀️

Feb 2023 – 10K Swimathon – As a qualification criteria for this swimathon, we had to submit proof of swimming 7kms in open waters. We did this in Goa with a beach kayaker at Palolem beach, and got an extensive experience with jellyfish stings during this swim. That was our first jellyfish encounter – and what an encounter it was 🥵
The swimathon went much differently than I’d hoped for. I was doing about 2kms an hour in the pool. So I was hoping to complete the 10km in 5 hours by that math. 😅 I had no experience in sighting and was swimming all over the place. After the first 2 kms, I was hardly moving at all. Somehow I completed the 10kms in 6hrs 30mins. I was the last person out of the water, and the organisers had almost shut shop and were picking up the tables and arrangements by the time I came out 😂
Respectable? Not really. Proud? Definitely! I completed my first open water 10km swimathon! 🎉 (I later found out I had actually DNFed in the event leaderboard 😶)

April 2023 – Introduction to Coach Sridhar – Our training for half iron was going very sluggishly; a run here, a bike ride there. Apart from swimming, nothing was really on track. Around April, we came across Coach Sridhar’s Instagram page and were awestruck looking at a 65+ year old person competing and winning Ironman races! We immediately reached out to him, discussed our background, our goals and started training under him. Finally our half iron training began in May 2023

June 2023 – 10K Birthday – While the Kochi swimathon was a significant feather in my cap, the way I swam the 10K wasn’t very respectable. I wanted to attempt a 10K again, after the 4 months of training I went through with Burman sir. So for my birthday, Sucheta arranged for a 10K time trial in Ray Center 50m pool and I swam the 10K in 4hrs6mins!! 2 hours less than my previous 10K timing. Granted that that was an open water swim and this was a pool swim. But a significant improvement in timing nonetheless. It felt like I avenged my DNF.

The focus then shifted to training wholeheartedly for the Half Iron. While swimming was a part of it, I was much weaker in cycling and running. And the sharp ramp up – especially in running – was causing injuries every other week. Knees, ankles, hip joints… You name a joint and I must have had pain in it during this period 🙄
My physiotherapy sessions and training sessions went hand in hand – working on the injuries and ramping up the training load side by side.

Sept 2023 – Half Iron – I was quite nervous about completing the Half Iron, what with the back-to-back injuries every other week. I hadn’t run a half marathon ever till now. My max distance was 17K. So I was quite skeptical if I could complete the race. The adrenaline kicked in at the right time and I was able to complete it in 7hrs 58mins.
Respectable? I think so.. for my ever first Half Iron, sure 🤔😇

However, after an injury filled training period, I had decided to hold back on ramping up the training load and focus more on strength and conditioning. However, I didn’t want to go with a milestone-less year ahead. Since running was my weakest link, triathlons were out of the question, but swimming didn’t give me much trouble yet. So I decided to focus on swimming goals. The dream from Nov last year came rushing back and my goal for 2024 was set – swimming the English Channel 😳💪🏊‍♀️

The Channel Dream

Nov 2023 – Fishing for Slots – Getting a slot for swimming The English Channel is usually a really patient affair, with a waiting period of a minimum of 2 years. But I didn’t have that kind of patience. So I joined ALL the possible Facebook Groups, emailed ALL pilots and fished for slots from ALL possible sources. I was pleasantly surprised with the options in front of me, and got a pretty decent #2 slot in the 12-19 July 2024 Neap Tide window.

Dec 2023 – The training begins – The training included quite a lot of work on the technique, dryland exercises along with ramping up the training load and strength work at CaliOG to help me sustain the load. Ice Baths to prepare for the cold, Weight Gain (rather fat gain) to build up some insulation were a few things I tried, to prepare for the cold waters of the English Channel
I had a pipe dream of hitting a pace of 1:40/100mtrs over 5kms distance by February. Haven’t gotten anywhere close to it even now 👀. Hit quite a lot of roadblocks with frequent spells of allergic cold due to water quality at our swimming pool, shoulder injuries and what not.
Through it all I had ramped up the weekly mileage to 20~25 kms per week. A few 10ks in the pool and the peak was an 8hr night swim in the swimming pool, a week before we left for our swim camp with King Swimmers at Menorca, Spain

April 2024 – The cold shock – The primary objective from this camp was to get the 6hr qualification swim certificate. And honestly I was quite confident that I would comfortably swim 6 hours. After all I had swum 8 hours already back home just a week ago.
The first dip in those piercing 15 degree waters felt like a cold tight slap on my over smug little face 🥶! I wasn’t able to swim for even 2 hours without shivering uncontrollably! Clawed hands, Pain in knees and hip joints from the incessant shivering, rough tidal waters, jellyfish stings in weirdest of places… I was completely out of my element. Even the thought of spending an hour in those biting cold waters was a nightmare. On my first 6 hour attempt I came out within 1.5 hours because I wasn’t able to bear the cold!
I had made up my mind that it was foolish of me to even dream of swimming the English Channel with such less preparation, and I needed a lot more training before I actually attempt a channel swim. Failure was rationalised and I had convinced everyone that that was the right thing to do.

Reigniting the cold flame – Except Sucheta. She just would not accept that I can’t do it. She sat me down, gave me a point by point solution to all the challenges I faced. Spent a good long hour with me calming me down and making me consider to try another 6 hour swim. Kevin Murphy and Marc Newman further gave me additional tips on how to battle the cold and stay put for 6 hours. And then finally on the last day of the camp, I did it! I swam the 6 hours in 15 degree waters! The Channel Dream was back alive! ❄️🔥

But I realised I definitely needed a lot more cold water acclimatisation. Previously I had decided to travel to Dover 3 weeks before my swim window. But that was definitely not enough. So I discussed with Marc & Kevin, formalised a plan and decided to move to UK as soon as logistically possible.

May 2024 – The cold water training – Got back home, figured out all the logistics – VISA, stay, car, etc and moved to Poole, UK within 2 weeks. Marc planned a very meticulous ramp up for me over my 6 week training period in Poole. Starting with an hour, two hour swims in the first week -> moving upto 4 hours over next week -> Then 6 hours, Then back to back 6 hours -> And finally ending with an 11 hour long swim in 15 degree sea waters!
Figured out various aspects for the Channel Swim during this training period – cold water and sea water swimming, obviously, but also how to navigate rough waters, my feeding preferences, swimming alongside a boat, optimising on feeding time, various small and big things were figured out during this training period.

I went from being skeptical about even dreaming to swim the Channel in the next few years to feeling confident of swimming the Channel this year within this 6 week period.

The Channel Experience

The rollercoaster that the Channel swim was requires a dedicated blog post for itself. You can read about my Unfinished Channel Swim here.