Interview with Pete Windridge - France after Swimming the English Channel
The following is a transcript of the documentary Pete Swims Across The English Channel
NICK: Well, welcome back.
PETE: Thank you very much.
NICK: But for those people watching this, I thought it would be kind of interesting to tell the story from the beginning. Which was when you first contacted me back in May, so maybe it would be useful to start off with how did… what happened… and how did this come about in the first instance.
PETE: Right. Why I came to you?
NICK: Yeah and also to tell people what the actual feat that you then did.
PETE: Right. About, I would say, two years ago, this has been a desire of mine for a long time, but it was always a pipe dream until fairly recently, which was to swim the English Channel without a wet suit.
NICK: Because you're not allowed to use a wet suit, not because…
PETE: The original guy who did it, Captain Matthew Webb, did it in 1875 and he did it with a swimming cap, fashioned from an old sort of air helmet, some goggles, some goose fat to stop the chaffing and stuff and then the traditional swimmers costume. And for anyone who wants to… he swam from England to France, Dover to Calais… now anyone who wants to go in the same book as him, this dusty tome with a padlock on it, that they open up with a creak, and it's got about 1,642… 43 now… people in it, you have to do it the same way. So you're not allowed insulation on your head, just the rubber cap that the official observer has to check. That it's not insulating you from anything, just so that you can be spotted easily in the water. They don't let you use a white cap for instance because they can't see you in the crests of the waves, it has to be any other colour than white. Just plain trunks, Speedos, embarrassing European style, you're not allowed the windjammers. The only thing that's changed is you use Lanolin and Vaseline mixed together because there are too many sharks now in the channel to put goose fat on because that makes you into a tasty morsel.
NICK: Ah not so good.
PETE: So. Whereas the sharks don't like that so much so you use that instead and that's just to stop chaffing because if you're in a saline environment for nearly a day, then your skin soaks in the salt and turns into sandpaper. So that was basically, I didn't know any of this when I started having thoughts about swimming the channel when I was about six, but that's about as far as it got to be honest Nick. I just thought… I told my friends I would love to swim the channel, but I didn't really think about it that much. However, eight years ago, well eight years and three months ago, we had our first child, Archie, who is a lovely kid but sadly turned out to have severe special needs. He can't walk or talk. He can cuddle and he can smile so he can do the important stuff, but he can't walk or talk. Once you find out that your child has got special needs you tend to spend two years being depressed and drinking too much and basically bemoaning life in general. Not one of my most productive periods for sure.
NICK: Yeah. Yeah.
PETE: But you soon get over that and decide that you can either stay in that state or you can actually start to see the positives and see what you can do about things. After the first two years also, Archie started to go to Pennyfield School which is a special needs school, which is nothing flash but the staff are really enthusiastic and caring and great, and when Archie started going there it was just such a relief. You just think 'Thank God, he's actually going to be alright now'.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And he goes there. It's like a normal school. He goes there during normal school hours and then comes home, as normal, on the bus, in his wheelchair and then we get him back in the house. And that's when… I think we had a few friends round… and on the other side of quite a few bottles of wine… I said it would be a good idea to swim the channel. Because I was saying I haven't achieved much since we've had Archie, because I've got a fairly mundane job, just so it was nice and near so I could get back. So in terms of my achievement levels, they've gone from being quite a high flyer career wise to not doing very much. Not changing the world or doing anything special. To having a boring job, not particularly happy with it. But then, as the drink was flowing, and we were talking with friends, I said 'Do you know what, I should do the channel because then I've achieved something and then I could get sponsorship… because Archie's school needs a new minibus and they're not cheap, so we thought that would be quite a good wheeze. When everyone woke up in the morning and we were having bacon sandwiches and watching the Italian Job as we normally do on a morning after too much to drink, everybody else remembered what I'd said… (Nick laughing)
PETE: Oh, ok. So I started to look into it. And I joined the British Long Distance Swimming Association, which requires nothing other than filling out a web form and sending a cheque and then you join and then you see what events are going on. And you realise that there are actually a huge number of nutters around the UK, who make a regular practice of jumping into freezing cold water and… you know… going across the lakes. It's fairly well maintained in terms of safety… they have canoeists going up and down the lakes whilst you're swimming and if you're in trouble they can fetch you out. My first swim was two years ago in a pleasant little pond called Budworth Mere and we had to go three times round that. That was ok because it was nice and shallow and it was almost like a typical sort of lily pad pond.
NICK: How far was that?
PETE: It's a mile around and we had to do three laps but, apart from the cold, nothing particularly bothered me because I was swimming right round the edge, in the shallows, and everything was fine. But then we started to do more serious events… Coniston, Windermere and things like that. This was, let's see, that was 2009. 2010 I had to take up quite a lot of time out because I got glandular fever from a very bad swim in Albert Dock where the water looks like Guinness and tastes like diesel. It was pretty bad. I felt ok after the race, but three days after I was in the hospital with suspected Swine Flu but it turned out to be Glandular Fever, triggered by whatever was in the water. Then I lifted Archie a couple of months later, a bit awkwardly and broke one of the disks in my back. I had to have that operated on that took me out for 12 weeks. By that point, we were getting towards the end of 2010 and I hadn't done a proper deep water swim. Then I went down to… I was ok over Christmas…then I started training again, but then realised, as I'd already booked this in ages ago, this Channel swim, and I hadn't paid for it yet, I just said 'Right, have you got any slots free'? because you had to book with a boat and a boat is allowed for swimmers per week and I wanted to be the number one swimmer because the weather is so terrifically unpredictable on the channel. So I had actually booked that pretty much after the booze up where we agreed that swimming the channel was really a rather good idea. So that was booked, so I was committed, but I hadn't done any financial commitment yet. Then I had my back operation. I hadn't had a really successful swim yet in deep water that was actually anything like what the channel was going to be like, and we were already at Christmas 2010. Then I went down to Dover in April and that was the first time I met loads of other aspiring channel swimmers. And Freda Streeter? Who runs these informal sessions on the beach, sent us in to the harbour for 20 minutes, because the water was really cold. It was about 7 degrees which is Baltic. If you did a cold bath, straight from the cold tap, that's 10 degrees so that's just unbelievably cold. So they only give us 20 minutes and then an hour to recover where you don't shiver you just spasm, because you're shivering so much and they are trying to feed you hot chocolate and you're just shaking it all over your legs and you don't even feel it because it it's so cold. (Nick laughing)
PETE: Then we went in again after 25 minutes. But it was at that time, that April, I'd just had to pay my deposit on the boat, which was going to come out of my pocket, because I didn't want any of the money that people were donating to the school, to go towards the swim. So that had to be paid for by myself. So I had just paid £1,000 deposit, which kind of focuses your attention a little bit.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And then, as I was swimming in this freezing, cold water, around the crescent of the harbour, I was getting really bad panic attacks. The panic attacks were really along the lines of 'Oh my God it's so cold my arms are going to lock up, I'm going to sink and I'm going to die' and thought like this were snowballing.
NICK: Not the best thing to be thinking of really.
PETE: Not quite, but I thought rational at the time, because you are putting yourself in an environment where you can see lots of signs saying 'No Swimming Here' unless it's supervised. And everyone else, even the seasoned swimmers were screaming when they were getting into this freezing, cold water. So I thought right, I know I need to spend a lot of time in Dover, but I'm just going to back off a little bit and go to a place called Ellerton Park, which is a bigger pond, bit colder, bit deeper, just to get outdoor swimming down a little bit, because it's very different from swimming in a pool in many ways. You can't follow the black line along the bottom and most people don't swim straight. They don't realise that until they're in open water and no real points of reference to look at other than trees and things as you swim and look up again. Unless you're doing breaststroke which is too slow for the channel. If you do crawl you've got your head down in the water and every time you look up you were give a new view and you think 'Hang on a minute I wasn't looking at that tree' and you get really disorientated. But Ellerton Park, I went to… I swam out… I'd already met this chap called Mark Robson, who's quite a hero in open-water circles. If you're in the North of England you want to do open-water swimming, then Mark is one of the chaps to go to. As we were getting ready… so this is still April, still cold… no sorry it's the 1st of May this is… he said 'How do you feel about things in the water'? I said 'What do you mean things in the water'? (Nick laughing)
PETE: He said 'Well they've put some stuff in this lake to make things more interesting for the divers'. I said 'What kind of things'? and he said 'Well, there's a caravan down there, there's an old speedboat, and they tie teddies on to them with rope to make them more interesting'. And the effect of that over 10 years is really spooky because you get to see these things looming out the depths, because it's very clear water and you can see right down. And all the ropes have gone hairy through all the moss, and the teddies look a bit freaky and he didn't mention the 4ft pipe knocking about that you see occasionally. But then he also said, just before we got in, 'Oh and there's also a mannequin that they used to scare the Newby divers. It looks like a corpse, but don't worry it's not, it's just a mannequin'. Ok. So all these things were stacking up. Luckily he didn't jump in, he just allowed me to walk in through the ramp. So you do the normal deep breaths when you get to the waist line in freezing cold water. Then your shoulders and then in. And it's going ok at first, but he's a much faster swimmer than me, and we got to the first buoy and turned right, and headed right into the centre of the lake, where you could tell the water was a lot deeper because you start to see less things underneath you. And I'd just got to the buoy and I saw the hairy rope going all the way down, and suddenly it reminded you how deep you are. And I just freaked out, I completely freaked. I looked around me and I started breathing faster. Really, really fast. I was getting anxious. Probably because I was repeating this thing in my head 'Oh my God, if my arms go, I'm going to sink and this is how people drowned, I'm going to drown'. And as I was looking around at the trees, they seemed miles away and I thought there is no way I can get back in from here. If things stuff up, I'm properly knackered at this point. It's not a useful thought and it's very difficult to control.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And at that point, I'd got in and I only did one lap, I was supposed to do five, and if I'm honest it wasn't even a full lap, because I got to that middle buoy and I could have gone round the lake but I didn't, I just went straight back to the peer and got the hell out of there. Then I just sat in my towel and thought there's no way. If I can't do this, then I can't do the channel you know.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: But I'd already paid the deposit, that's none refundable. I'd already told loads of people I'm going to do it. So in terms of commitment, I was committed. Publicly if not mentally. And that was when I got back to the office on the Monday and I just started doing searches for guys who knew… I didn't know much about the stuff that you teach, or what it would be described as, so I just typed in NLP Leeds or Hypnosis Therapy in Leeds. I don't know what you did to google but you were very high on the page rank, I think it was first choice, so I clicked on it. I didn't know what Provocative Change Works was or anything like that, but I thought I'd give you a buzz and explain what the thing was. First of all, before I gave you a buzz I had to fill in a form, which made you sit and think what you actually want out of it. It wasn't just a one page job, it was more in-depth, to say exactly what was your problem and how can I help you and how would you know if it was fixed and all this kind of stuff, which is a good way of trying to describe it better because I was just aware of being fearful.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And it was pretty vague, but actually laying down exactly what I want help with and how would I know when it's fixed. But anyway I submitted that to you and then you phoned me back. You sounded like it had peaked your interest somewhat. Well the first thing is, you contacted me to say 'I'm thinking of swimming the channel' and my brain goes 'Why? Why on earth would somebody want to do that'? So I had kind of like this initial reaction where I thought that. Then I think we had a conversation and I thought 'You know what, this will be really interesting'. I thought it would be fascinating to do a session, and then if we were both happy, then to do an arrangement, because it was essentially for a really good charity, Penny Fields, to just document some of this. And even in my head I thought I hope he doesn't drown halfway across. People would say 'What happened to that channel swimmer that you trained'? 'Erm, erm, let's move on'. But I thought it would be… because in a lot of the stuff that we do, and I also train people, you have different kinds of tests and things. For example, phobias, people that have got a fear of spiders. You do the work, bring in a spider, test it and then that's it. But that's like a one-off thing usually, or it can be over a period of time. But this was something that was completely out of the box. So that was my… that's caught my interest. So from the first… what was your recollections from the first session. Because I can recall… when I see people, the first thing for me is, my brain is going 'What are they doing that's not helpful'? I'm all about process as you now know. Not about… and also careful not to go 'Think about the most scary time you had… oh God that doesn't sound good' and to get you to think more about it, and it was like, what was happening, what do we now do that's different. And then the great thing with this is because obviously you do practice swims, now let's test the work to see what's different. So what were your impressions from our first session? The first session, erm, the biggest surprise, was you didn't spend any time going through the history of the anxiety, because that's what I was expecting. I was expecting you to go through it. How long have you felt this way? And what's been the cause of it? And did you fall into water as a child and get scared, and all that kind of stuff. Which I was glad about, but surprised. I didn't really have a frame of reference on this stuff at all, apart from what you see on television and all this kind of stuff. And there was no couch.
NICK: No there's no couch.
PETE: Just a comfy chair. So it wasn't the stereotypical encounter I was expecting. It was much more 'cut to the chase'. 'Exactly what's the problem'? 'How are you describing these events to yourself'? 'How are you becoming anxious'? And rather than spending an awful lot of time saying 'Well I think you may be having a lot of anxious thoughts because of this'. Or 'I think this may have triggered your anxious thoughts'. You were basically saying well 'Think an anxious thought, get an anxious feeling'. You just need to break the bit in-between. 'When you think an anxious thought, you can either misdirect it or take the punch out of it or stop you thinking the anxious thought in the first place'? And then rather than having to consciously distract your brain, the stuff that's not useful won't occur to you at all. And I know… the nice thing was that the stuff that you said was believable. Because if it was 'fix everything, no problem, two seconds, I can also make you swim faster and this is a certainly don't worry about it'. It was more like if the messages you are getting are not useful we can do something about that, but you weren't sort of irresponsible about it. You weren't going to go 'Wow, we can just programme you to swim like mad till you hit something solid that's French and don't worry about it'. It was more a case of any thoughts that crop up we can actually determine whether they are useful or not. And if you think they're not useful then, you know, we can sort that out. I remember one of my first requests was, because I knew I was going to get stung by jellyfish, which I was terrified about, and asked you whether you could make… when I got stung by a jellyfish… make it into a positive experience to super charge me full of their energy. You were reluctant to do that as you knew damn well I would be hunting out jellyfish in the channel, trying to find them, which would be counter-productive, big time, counter-productive. It was nice that you didn't just go with everything that I wanted because there was an awful lot which needed questioning. And also it wasn't just going to be a blink and get on with it. It was a case of if you deal with this you are actually going to enjoy the experience. It was more like it doesn't have to be really like bloody hard work.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And awful. It will be quite a hell of an experience. But the nice thing I liked was that you were obviously curious about the whole thing. It was like this is a bit off your normal standard 'I want to lose weight or stop smoking' or something like that. I could see that you were sort of drawn in as well about the nuttiness of the whole idea of doing it when there's a perfectly sensible ferry that goes from Dover to Calais all the time.
NICK: So when you listen back to the CD, because my big thing, and I learnt this years ago, is that the first thing you do is to get the client to define what they want, so that it's not what I think they should have and that gives a lot of clues as to how the persons creating anxiety. The session is really to sort of figure out, ok so what do we need to do differently and then to throw a whole bunch of things out as exercises and practice these. And then the CD is to be able to listen back and go… oh as I'm listening back to it, I am now getting a different perception. What did you notice when you listened back to the first session?
PETE: It's funny because I listened to the session a lot afterwards, but only I would say during the first month after I saw you. The reason for that is after a month or so it didn't sound like me anymore.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: Because the stuff… I hadn't become someone else… but when I was listening to it I was saying 'Oh I'm scared of this and scared of that' and I couldn't relate to it anymore because I wasn't scared anymore. So, the other CD's I do listen to because that when I'd sort of turned a corner at that point, but the original CD when I listened to myself, I was thinking that 'God I was getting in a right tizzy about that stuff wasn't I'? And I can still remember how scared I was when I was in the water, it was horrible. Certainly no enjoyment, it was more brazing it out and even… the narrative I was using was 'brutal'. 'horrible'. (Nick laughing)
PETE: It was like I was going to war every time I went in the lake. It was like a scrap of some sort. There was very little enjoying your surroundings or anything like that.
NICK: Well I'm always mindful when people use phrases like 'Break through' 'Battle with'. I think 'Oh God it sounds like it's going to be wrestling some mad hybrid from some Grecian movie.
PETE: That's what it felt like initially I think.
NICK: We obviously did… before the actual swim… because this was May, looking back at my notes, this was May.
PETE: Yeah.
NICK: And I think we did sort of maybe four or five slots in total, of which the first one was a couple of hours and then the others were an hour. So we probably did four or five hours in total.
PETE: Which is mad because it seemed like a lot longer. I said to you last time I saw you that it feels like we've been doing this a lot longer.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And I think that's because we've compressed the amount of change I'd normally experience, probably over 20 years. There are a few phases in your life, like teenage, University. You expect a hell of a lot of change in those periods. Then once you're married and got kids, you tend to not experience change, and in the last four months, crikey, a mad amount of change. Phenomenal I would say. From all this time you've been training me up to deal with anxiety in the water, by default, it helps you deal with anxiety everywhere else as well. So stuff at work has become easier. In fact I'm looking for new challenges now because stuff that used to freak me out a bit at work and lead to God knows how many meetings, and people raking over the coals, and huge explosions, angry people. But I'm being dealt with a lot easier. You just don't join in the emotional roller-coaster. You just step away. You don't become robotic and non-emotional about it, you just realise why these things are getting triggered and you just decide not to join the party. And you think what is the actual problem here. It's almost becoming a mini version of you. I wouldn't say it's anything like how you could do it because you've been doing it for ages, I've only being doing it for four months, but it is amazing how you can just detach from thoughts that are not useful.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: And help other people with thoughts that are not useful to them either. Just get to the useful stuff, get it done and get out. But as a consequence I'm getting really bored at my job now. Which is all your fault so I need to find something more exciting to do. (Nick laughing)
NICK: So before the actual swim, because we were doing sessions and you were off like most weekends…
PETE: Yeah, I was down to Dover every weekend.
NICK: What were the key three things that you noticed made the most difference in terms of being able to test this actually? Because there's one thing where somebody can say… and what appealed to me about this is it's a real test. You now go to swim for six hours. It's not a '30 seconds I think a feel a bit better'. What were the key things for you that changed from our conversations and interactions?
PETE: It was… well every time I went down to Dover, all the way down because it's a hell of a drive on a Friday night at six hours on average to get down there, it gave me plenty of time to listen to the audio. Obviously the bits where you'd to close your eyes I pulled over into a station, but by the time I got there, I was properly in the zone, really up for it. The nice thing was, because my wife was good enough to look after the kids and do all the kids stuff over the weekend, since I was down in Dover, all I could do was think about swimming and training and thoughts behind it, so weekends were a total immersion. Literally in the water and brain-wise because I had your CD's, so whenever I was wondering over the cliff tops and stuff like that for a walk, I was playing your audio and just changing perceptions, and the best thing was I could then get into the water, and you know that the swim this weekend was going to be more pleasant than the one the weekend before. As I was going through… I remember you made me question quite a few things that you assume are facts, because I would assume that the colder the water, the deeper it is, because I had a thing about deep water. And you would ask why. And you were right. As I was swimming and you go through this horribly cold patch, and I think it's just an underwater river coming off the cliffs, but you immediately think it's really, really deep water. And your first thought was how do you know its deep and challenge that assumption and that made me feel a bit better. Then you put in another thought which was that as long as it was deep enough to swim in, why was it a concern anyway, because as long as your arms aren't scraping on the floor, whether it's 150 metres deep or… the channel is 380 metres deep in some parts… why does it matter because you're on the surface. It's almost like you shouldn't be scared of flying if the aeroplane is on the runway, what's your problem? Maybe get concerned if you started to go down from a huge height, but the surface of the water is the safest place to be.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: In terms of when you're in the water. So that started to help change my perceptions a little bit. Erm. The best one was the voice tempo exercise, because there were a number of phrases that I was repeating, very fast, very high pitched in my head. Like the worst mantra you could have. 'If my arms go, I can't back' and that's the biggest fear when you're in the middle of the harbour. It's very deep underneath you, you've got P & O ferries going too and from that you can't get too close to in case you get in the rift that they create, but you need to be far away from the beach. First of all you are actually doing some proper swimming, you're not just on the sand. But also you're experiencing the waves and the kind of conditions you're going to get. And yes, that first time became much less scary because I was swimming past the same… they have these metal groins coming into the water, and they have baskets… they're on big poles and they have baskets on top and that warns you that there's a groin there so you know not to swim inside it because you might get ripped. And it was on the third one I always used to get this underwater outlet where it was freezing cold, the water's a bit blacker, so all these sensory things are going on that are designed by the Universe to freak me out. And I was swimming through, I just started doing your voice tempo exercises and the nice thing about it was I could do the voice tempo exercises whilst I was actually swimming. Which is nuts. You would have thought most things you'd have to sit in a dark room and concentrate really hard, whereas you can actually apply this stuff as a bad thought occurs to you. You can say 'Alright, I know how to deal with you' and go through the process and 'Bingo', it doesn't bother you anymore. And you brain actually then decides to present less useless thoughts to you because it knows you're just going to bat them away anyway. It was that feeling where you started to swim and you are no longer swimming in spite of your fears, you are actually enjoying it and you start to get into the flow. It's one of those experiences where say a really good joggers always says 'When you start running it feels like you're running on air' and all the rest of it, and I've never, ever, had that experience running. But with swimming, when you get in the flow, you can feel… you go through the water cleanly, it's a lovely feeling. I actually started to swim with a smile on my face for the first time, in I'd say two years, outside of a pool swimming experience.
NICK: Because there was, of course, a bit of a wobble within the first five or six weeks, where I got an email from you, which I think the phrase was… you can tell the story better than me… 'crikey moses'.
PETE: Was this the Champion of Champions?
NICK: Yes.
PETE: Crikey, yes, that was a test. I mean… I think what happened was you'd dealt with all the phrases that I was repeating to myself, to the harbour wall and back, to the harbour wall and back and I'd dealt with it. Even this bit that everyone calls the washing machine where the currents are very weird and you get waves bouncing off two walls in quick succession, so breathing's a bit of a problem. But you dealt with all that and I was using all the stuff and I was happy there. But then I was down for an event called the Champion of Champions, which is an event that the British Long Distance Swimming Association run every year and have been doing, I think, since 1978 and it goes ahead regardless of the weather conditions, which is important to note for what I'm going to tell you in a minute. But Freda Streeter, who in the same harbour but just a bit further along has been running her channel swimmer training sessions since 1982. She never cancels regardless of weather as well. When you sign up it says 'Conditions under which we would not swim – None'. So she'll send you out in anything basically. As I was driving down to the Champion of Champion event which is run in Dover harbour, normally in July so the water's still a bit… no it was in June… was it June/July… I forget now. The water was still damn cold anyway. It involves a… it's three races, one after another. You have a five mile race, then a three mile race and then a one mile sprint. And if you finish that then you get a medal and a certificate. And you're in very good company. There tends to be about 70 swimmers there, 60 of which have done the channel, or the Catolina Channel or the North Channel, all these other big swims and Manhattan Island and things like that. I signed up for it and they just phone you up and say are you sure about this and have you done enough swimming. And I said I'd trained with Freda and I'd done Coniston and they said ok you can be in then. But you have to sign all these waivers, you know, saying if you come to grief it's all my fault. I was warned about it. It's very dangerous. Anyway I was driving down and I'd got one of those phones that shows your email when you get it, and a message popped up from Freda Streeter, the lady who trains everybody for the channel swim and it says 'Sorry about this everybody, we are not running the swims today. There is gale force 9 coming and I am not prepared to send anybody out and I know I always do swims regardless, but this time not a chance'. So I thought Christ, does that mean the Champion of Champions is off then? So I texted a few other people and they said it sounds like it's going ahead. So I was like ok so I drive down and got there. When I got down there it didn't look too bad, nice and sunny, but you could see beyond the harbour wall it was getting a bit choppy in the channel and you could see the people who were setting the race up, scratching their heads. They were basically deciding do they run the normal square across the whole bay, or do they change it to a triangle. They decided to change it to a triangle so it was a bit more sheltered near the harbour walls. All the swimmers turned up and we were just nattering away, with some looking more nervous than others, and I was just sat there on a chair listening to your audio and just thinking this doesn't look too bad at the minute, its ok. Don't know what all the fuss is about. Force 9's not coming. Anyway we got into the water and started swimming and I think the first lap was the last bit of sun we saw that day, because as we were swimming round the triangle, you swim right to the end of the harbour where the rips are, the wind had started to really kick up. Really kick up. And it started to carry the buoys, you know the buoy markers, which are these huge things, as big as a double-decker bus, they are absolutely huge things. So you can see them, even in big waves basically, you can see the top of these buoys and that's what you head for. And you have to go around them. So if the buoys start to blow away, you still have to go around the thing. So you could see it was getting more choppy because they had to bring a rib boat, you know, one of those rigid, inflatable boats, with two motors on the back of it, pushing these buoys back into position whilst we trying to swim round them. So it was already getting a bit more bouncy in the water. And then it really started… I think three laps in… which is one and a half miles, it really started to kick off then. The heavens opened and the rain came so heavily, that is was splashing so deeply into the water, it was creating a mist of about a foot high everywhere, so you couldn't see where the hell you were. So you had to sort of supplement a front call stroke with a sudden butterfly stroke just so you could see above this mist to see where you were going. It was at that time when the wind properly unleashed its power and it was starting to throw swimmers against the harbour walls. If you went within 10 metres of it, the crest of the waves were carrying you and rolling you over towards the barnacle covered harbour walls and you really don't want to go against those walls because they scrape all your skin off. It's lethal sort of sand paper. So that was all starting to go. And I thought this is starting to get interesting. And I looked at Mark Robson who was swimming alongside of me and he was going 'This is mental isn't it'? and I had a big smile on my face thinking this is brilliant. I was swimming away, enjoying it and we ended up going around another couple of times and then I started to look around and though hang on a minute, there's hardly any canoeists around now and there are supposed to be quite a lot of canoeists out. And I looked up as I was coming towards the beach bit of the course, and I could see loads of blue, flashing lights… (Nick laughing)
PETE: It was ambulances fetching out two swimmers, who were being fetched by stretcher into the ambulances and a canoeist as well. A canoeist had been thrown against the harbour wall. So I was thinking they're going to call if off in a minute then because obviously if things are getting really bad, they've got to cancel it. Anyway we carried on… and this is July… I remember its July now because I couldn't believe it was hailing. But it started hailing in July. And it was really powerful hail. It was almost like you were having a severe massage on your back. You could see the canoeists were holding the paddles above their heads to try and bounce the hail off, because they were getting really sore headaches from all the stuff coming down. The buoys were blowing away because of the wind, so the course was getting much bigger as we were going. And there was a guy in the middle, Neil Streeter, who's Freda's Streeter's son, who does channel swimmer crossing and is a very confident pilot was trying to keep his boat in the middle of the course because when you've done the five laps… sorry 10 laps because it was a half mile course, when you've done the 10 laps you had to swim to the boat and tap the side of it and then that was you then finished. He was trying to keep the boat in the centre but it had broken its winch. The wind was that powerful that it had broken his anchor and his winch was bust. So he was having his boat on full throttle backwards to try and stay in the middle of the course. So as you were swimming past him, you were getting all these diesel fumes and everything else. Breathing in… and you can't see anything because hails coming down. You can smell all this diesel and then you're trying to find the buoy that last time you looked up was there but now might have blow off to over there somewhere. And it was about as bad as it could be with… what's the Universe going to throw at me to prepare me for something… but when we finished and we were also doing a body count to see how many… because you have a number written on your hand and on your arms as well, and you had to shout your number when you come out and they were doing a tot up of how many people were in the infirmary and how many people had retired… managed to get to the beach themselves and just crawled up and everyone else was coming out saying 'That was bloody awful' and I was 'That was brilliant, can we have another go'. And the only thing I can liken it to, is going to a fun park because it's like being on a rollercoaster or the rapids or anything. And then I sat back and it was mad because I actually enjoyed that. I really enjoyed it. It was more exciting than fearful. Because I think sometimes you have a borderline with butterflies of fear or excitement, and I knew it was more excitement than fear. There was a little bit of fear there but as unhelpful thoughts cropped up, I just thought no that doesn't work for me… see you. And a voice tempo exercise whilst I was in a curling wave which was pretty interesting, but the voice tempo exercise, once you've got it down, you can just keep applying it to any unhelpful phrases that crop up.
NICK: So times goes forward and then we're into… I'm away in Boulder… I come back and we had one session before… and then it's like basically the last stretch before you're due go to and I know it was sort of like on the last Saturday… because I think it was the 24th, which was the last possible day you could do and it's 5.00 a.m. and I'm watching the sort of like satellite thing and listening to the tweets that are coming across. What was that like because that's a different whole story because then it's actually a real thing isn't it?
PETE: The wait probably served me well because anyone who is not familiar with a channel swim is you book a tide which I think is where the earth's there, the sun's there and the moon's there, and it means that you've got a neat tide so that the tides are a bit less vicious than on a spring tide. As it turns out, this year's been a bit crazy. They've had equal failure and success on spring and neat tides, but they still won't go out in a force 6 gale. They'll go out in a force 4 if they think it's going to drop but we had nothing but force 6 to 8 that week. It never looked sunny. If you looked out to the channel you could see white crests everywhere and if you can see them from the beach that means that they are very high. So I had six days of twiddling my thumbs and thinking 'Oh my God, two years of training and seeing Nick for the last three/four months and it's all going to come to nothing'. If I didn't get the chance to go, and I had the tide booked from the 18th to the 24th. Now I was the first swimmer to go on my boat if we had good weather, so the second, third and fourth didn't get a look in. So if I'd done all that training and I was number 2 on the boat, then I wouldn't have got a swim. But if you get to the end of that week and you still haven't swum, you go to the back of the queue of everybody who hasn't gone yet this season, so I would have been number 85, which basically means forget it for this year, you're not going. But as you said… you sent me a tweet saying it was just the Universe giving me more time to prepare and to just chill out. Because I put on my tweet 'Just trying to chill out' and you sent one back saying 'Trying to chill out… you know exactly how to chill out and just apply what you know' and you were right. So I went for a walk and listened to the audio, and it did give me more prep time and it helped also to converge all my effort to say that right if we get the go on Saturday, there's absolutely no way I'm going to get out of that water, because you know, I've got all my team down. My team have had their lives completely destroyed that week. They were rescheduling meetings left, right and centre. One of them had had to fly over from Zurich. So I had a little multi-national crowd who's lives I was completely mashing for the week because everyone thought we were going the week before because it was looking good for Sunday 18th so everyone had thought brilliant we can go Monday or Tuesday. So all their important meetings they had booked for the back of the week. So there was a fair bit of pressure on. Sarah, God bless her my wife, had managed to raise a phenomenal amount of donations and get the word out through media and various other places, and everything was basically saying it's Saturday or never. So when the pilot phoned me… the pilot's the name for the captain of the boat, and it's a very specialist task because they have to take you across the shipping lanes in the channel, which are very, very busy. Busiest in the world apparently. 700 vessels a day go up and down there…
NICK: Wow.
PETE: So he's got to be talking to them all and making sure that we don't get turned into shark bait as we go past any propellers. He phoned at 8 o'clock on the Friday and said 'Right we're on tomorrow'. He said I was going to start in a force 4, which isn't ideal but he was pretty sure was going to settle down, but the first few hours are going to be a bit rough. And we'd be starting in the dark. I said could I start any earlier so that I would have less time in the dark overall and he said that if we went any further before that high tide, you get taken down to Folkstone and it would be too difficult to recover. So anyway we got down to the boat at 4.00 a.m. and started to load the boat up and just put the audio on again and had a listen to that. And your last audio wasn't so much about dealing with anxiety because you'd pretty much nailed that, this was more about enjoying the process. To forget about the time element because everyone knows that swimming for 18/20 hours is a bit mad if you think about it in those terms. We could have chunked it down and just said to think about hour to hour and hour to hour, but you said just forget the time element altogether. Just enjoy the process of actually being in this environment, because you know it's not going to last for very long. In a lifetime, it's just one day of your life and actually enjoy the fact that you're there in this environment that not many people get to see. And that puts a whole new perspective on it. And I'm glad that that was there because later in the swim I thoroughly enjoyed certain aspects of it. I'll be honest the start… when I jumped in the water… because the boat goes out of the harbour whilst your team are greasing you up and then the boat gets you to jump off… I've never done that before, jumping in to deep water in pitch black… but what the hell, jump in then swim to the shore. Then you've got to stand up out of the water and wait for the observer to say that's he's happy that you're officially out of the water on English soil, then they let the foghorn go and then you walk in, swim up to the boat, and keep going until you get to France. And as I was walking in, I was thinking of all the people at work who… because we were having a sweepstake at work… and there were loads of people at work who put one hour or 40 minutes or stuff like that, because they thought I wasn't going to stick….
NICK: How helpful!
PETE: Well I think that helped in a way, because it was like 'Do you know what, this is getting done whether you like it or not' because there were enough people who believed in me and I've got all the tools you've given me and I've got the donations. The donations worked out that every five strokes that I took in the water was worth £1 to the school because I was taking about 60,000 strokes to get across, or something like that. And as I got into the water, I was certain I wasn't going to get out of the water… and I think that was why Sarah was so worried because she thought 'Either he's going to make it or they're going to drag him out unconscious because I saw his face before he went and he's not getting out of that water'. And I'm glad I made that decision, because the first three hours were really hard work. Very choppy. Very dark. And you're just getting used to steering near to the boat. Keeping it near enough so you don't touch it, but not far away so you get too anxious about it. It was interesting the first three hours, it was quite tough. Lots of water taken in because every time I was breathing you couldn't see a wave coming because it was too dark so you just get a mouthful of water and it's not the best tasting water in the world, I can tell you. But swimming into the sunrise, that was just amazing. That was where all your stuff sort of came to mind. Just enjoy this because this not going to happen very often.
NICK: Yeah.
PETE: But swimming into an ocean where you can just see the sun and the waves are starting to calm down a bit as well and then I just got into my stride. I forgot about time, that just didn't apply, it was all about the process just like you were saying. Because since we'd dealt with the mental stuff it just became… the arms were just looking after themselves. And you'll see from the videos, I've got some videos that some friends took from the boat, that the actual stroke rate they couldn't believe. I think the stroke rate was 56 strokes per minute for the whole 18 hours. It didn't sop. It didn't deviate. It was very steady all the way. Erm. Except the very last bit. I think the very last bit was something like 75 strokes because I could see a tree so…
NICK: Yeah what was that like when you're actually in the last bit and then you're actually walking on land?
PETE: Well I had no idea where I was because it had gone dark again. I'd swum into the sunrise and I'd swum into the sunset. And when the sun set I'd worked out that it was probably 7 o'clock at night. So I'd been swimming for 14 hours and I still felt ok. I mean arm-wise, you're tired after seven hours so after that it's just immaterial how tired you are, you're just very tired. It doesn't really matter how tired you are, you're not going to get any more exhausted, but your brain is just saying can you manage another stroke, yeah I can. Right, shut up then. And I was also thinking of other people, that thanks to your techniques of stealing character traits off people, came in very handy. There was a number of people I met on the beach, who are far better swimmers than me, and far more inspirational. There's Ros Hardyman who's got polio and who doesn't have the use of her legs at all, and she got across without one single word of complaint. People like that… you gave me a technique where you could pretty much step into Ros's body… nab all the good traits that you want to take away, and then go back into your own. And I could actually do that while I was in the water. I'd done a bit of that beforehand, every time I was swimming in Dover, but that stuff really came to bear, because I did forget all about time and I wasn't deliberately looking to my left because that's were France was, and I didn't want to know how close or far away it was. I was just… every time I was breathing I was just looking at the boat and occasionally there would be a message… I'd given them that they dangle over the boat with a board… five minutes was a good one because that meant five minutes to a feed, so I always liked seeing the five on the side of the boat. But when they told me I was near, I didn't believe them at first because I was just sort of into it. And then my friend had joined me… because when you're either slowing down or near the beach… that's when one of your friends is allowed to join you and guide you in a bit. They can't go in front of you, they've got to go to the side of you because they can't be assisting you and they can't touch you but one of my friends jumped in. I could hear him going 'agh, ogh, agh, God it's freezing' and he had a full wetsuit on with hood and everything and he asked if I was alright as I had been in for 18 hours and I said he wasn't supposed to tell me how long I'd been in. But he said 'I'm allowed because the beach is just over there'. And I was like 'Is it'? because everything is like covered in mist and I saw a spotlight on a tree. And my first thought was 'A tree' and I carried on swimming because I thought I'd not seen a tree in the sea before and then thought 'Hang on a minute that must be land over there'. Anyway we were stuck in a very fast tide and it was going at about 10 miles per hour so we had to get in fairly sharpish. My friend is a triathlon, champion swimmer and he goes at a fair lick, but as soon as I knew that tree was there he said he couldn't keep up with me. He said I just shot off because I had a flood of adrenalin and I couldn't believe that we were already there. It was as if… I knew I had been swimming a long time… but it could have been 40 hours it could have been five hours. I knew I'd been swimming a while because the sun had gone down, but I had a bit left in my arms to do the sprint to the beach. I wish I'd swum a bit slower to the beach, because there's some sharp rocks there and they just tattered my legs, but never mind, but then when I stood up on the beach and my friend Paul, who was my best man and friend since I was 11 and on the same swimming team, and it was quite a moment when he came up to congratulate me. A lot of people told me that when you've swum the channel you immediately get depressed afterwards and stuff… no! (Nick laughing)
PETE: Never been so satisfied and happy about anything in my life. I got back to the news that we'd made £14,000 for the school, which was enough for them to get the minibus.
NICK: Excellent.
PETE: After this meeting this morning, I'm going to the assembly at Pennyfield because they are doing a big un-veiling of the amount that we've raised. And then I went back to some of the doubters at the company I work at, came up and congratulated me on it. The best thing about it is not just swimming the channel because that for me is massive. You know I had to go and sign my name at the white horse in Dover. Amongst all the greats you know… Captain Webb, just over 1,000 people have done it. And signing my name there was something else, but as I was driving back I was thinking it's not just the swim, it's everything else that I've got now. Much more confident to questions the limitations I might have given myself in the past. You used to challenge me all the time on anything I said. At first I was irritated but then no… a lot of the suppositions I'd been making, aren't based on fact at all, it's hearsay of someone else, or it's an opinion I've formed. And like you said, you get what you seek, you know. If you're looking for something to confirm a limitation, then you'll find it, but if you don't believe you've got that limitation then there's really nothing to stop you.
NICK: Well I think… thanks for telling the tale, because for me, it's been a combination of nerve-wracking at times, exiting, curious, surreal, all kinds of stuff, but I…
PETE: Good test of your methods though! Pretty black and white.
NICK: Well I think It's the methods, but I think it's also a lot of other things as well there, and I'm just delighted for you and delighted for the charity as well. I think that's just fantastic.
PETE: I'm pretty sure… I know you said I would have made it anyway and not enjoyed it, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made it, because Alison Streeter said to me, who's swum the channel a ridiculous number of times, 43 times, she said that swimming the channel is 80% mental and 20% physical and she's dead right. If I hadn't have sorted the mental stuff out… because after seven hours, you'll tire, there's no two ways about it, and it's just mindset and psychology. It's psychology that gets you across. Yes I had a positive outlook before I came to see you, but it wasn't robust. It wasn't good enough to get me through that. So thank you very much.
NICK: Well congratulations to you sir.
PETE: Thank you.
NICK: Thanks very much.
PETE: My pleasure.
NICK: I'm delighted. Absolutely made up.
For more information on Nick's Provocative Change Works approach to performance improvement e-mail info@nickkemp.com
Photos courtesy of Chris Keegan
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