2011 - a sparse year for swimming, but exciting prospects ahead

Well, it's been a pretty sparse year for swimming, but with two young children, a new business to continue building and alot of time spent training in Advanced Clinical Massage in Brighton, it most certainly hasn't been boring! Apart from another swim around Brighton pier (pictured above) in September, my only swims for 2011 have been documented on this site. The problem is that I have been massaging from 10 am in the morning, sometimes until 9pm at night with virtually no breaks except for 20 minutes or so for nutrition. At 13.5 stones, I am some 2 stone (24 pounds) lighter than I was when I swum in the English Channel Relay in 2010, and this year has been somewhat of a blurr!

 In the summer, I thought of a quite unique swim which I believe to be possibly a world first. I measured it on Google Earth as about 26 miles in a straight line. I found a pilot who said they would help me, and their boat is shown above. It would be really tough and would probably involve 2 changes of tide. However, I cannot see at the moment how I would be able to train for such an event. I am still thinking about this one though.

 I did however, manage to complete my blog post for our 2010 Team Iryna International English Channel Relay. I started it just after the swim in 2010, but due to the delay in getting all of the team member's photos collated together, it never got finished. However, it is now finished and as it is in chronological order, you may not have realised it was there. If you click on the certificate above, or on these highlighted pieces of text, you will jump to the post. It brought back great memories finishing the post.

As I haven't got much else to do (HaHa), I have started writing a book based on my swimming an other experiences since I was five years old and joined the Bury St Edmunds Swimming Club. I have no idea how long it will take, but based on my word rate so far, it should be finished around 2020! I have provisionally called it "Journey to France...The Hard Way!". I will update the site with my progress over the next 8 years!

Lastly, I was delighted and humbled to have been include in the OpnWaterPedia website which I stumbled across by accident. Click here or on the logo above to access it.

I hope everyone has a very happy new year, and thank you to everyone who reads this site. I am still amazed that it gets around 60 unique hits per day from all over the world.

Cheers. Hoffy. x

Looking back at 2008...

2008 has been a fantastic year for swimming, probably my best ever. Below are a just a few of the highlights of the year, and at the end you will see the total we have raised so far for charity since we started this adventure in August 2006.

February 2008 - World Winter Swimming Championships - Tooting Bec, London, England

Above: Swimming with "Ice Bergs" in the 5.9 degrees Centigrade waters of the fabulous Tooting Bec Lido.

Above: The Ice man commeth... with Lewis Pugh, the first man in history to swim at -1.7 Degrees Centigrade at The North Pole.

Above: Tooting Bec Lido on an extremely warm February day, hosting the championships for the first time. Well done to all at South London Swimming Club. It was a fantastic weekend.

June 2008 - British Long Distance Swimming Association - Champion of Champions, Dover Harbour, England

Above: Competitors for the race line up on the beach in Dover Harbour prior to the race.

Above: Exiting the water having finished one of the three events.

Above: Keith Bartolo from Malta (centre), with my support crew for the weekend, James Patterson (left) and 'Little Hoffy' (right).

July 2008 - FINA World Cup Open Water Grand Prix - Serbia

Above: About to start my first training session in the River Sava in Sabac, Serbia. This was my first experience of what we affectionately started to call "Green".

Above: With English Channel World Record Holder and 8 times World Cup Open Water Swimming Champion, Petar Stoychev of Bulgaria, prior to the start of the race.

Above: Catching and overtaking Nikola Carradossi of Italy half way through the race.

Above: Finishing the race in 300mm thick "Green". A very interesting experience!

Above: The beautiful plaque presented to me by race director Vojislav Mijic after the race.

August 2008 - Dover Regatta 2000 Metre race

Above: About to enter Dover Harbour, my 'home pool' to start the 2008 Dover Regatta 2000 Metre sea race.

Above: Heading out to the start of the race.

Above: Running up the beach to cross the finish line and take 2nd place in the "Over 40's" event.

September 2008 - My second crossing of the English Channel in 13 Hours and 3 Minutes

Above: Battling the elements and the mental demons on a dark night, somewhere in the middle of the English Channel between England and France on Thursday September 11, 2008.

Above: Approaching Cap Gris-Nez, France on Friday September 12, 2008.

Above: Landing on a stony beach in France after 13 Hours and 3 Minutes with my support swimmer Mark Ransom, where we had a little 'discussion' about whether to swim back or not!

Above: A short video of the swim from England to France on September 11-12, 2008.

September 2008 - Winning my first British Long Distance Swimming Association title ... eventually!

Above: Out on my own in the 4.5KM race at Lynn Regis, Norfolk, England.

Above: Racing and beating Dee Llewelyn who finished in second place overall in the 2008 championship.

Above: Winning the "Veterans" trophy but not the "Senior Men's" trophy, which following an e-mail debate and a meeting of the BLDSA committee, was rectified when I was presented with....

...both trophies outside of my house by race organiser Stephen Smith in October 2008.

I was delighted to finish overall in 19th place out of 150 competitors in this years BLDSA Grand Prix, despite only competing in two events (Champion of Champions and Lynn Regis). A full set of results can be found by clicking on the link below:-

BLDSA Senior Grand Prix Results 2008

October 2008 - Eastern Region Masters Championships, Bury St Edmunds, UK.

Above: West Suffolk Masters Swim team who competed at the Eastern Region Masters Championships 2008.

Above: Starting one of my races at the championships.

Above: My 2008 medal haul from the championships.

October 2008 - FINA World Cup Open Water Grand Prix - Mexico

Above: Some of the competitors for the race, line up for the press at the end of a training swim. Left to right: Swimmer from Mexico, Stephan Gómez (France), Dörte Kamrau (Germany), Gabriel Villagois (Argentina), Stefanie Biller (Germany), Cesar Rodríguez (Argentina), Brendan Capel (Australia), Marianella Mendoza (Argentina), Tomi Stefanovski (Macedonia), Paul Hopfensperger (England), Larisa Ilchenko (Russia), Yury Kudinov (Russia), Natalya Pankina (Russia), Mariam Maricusi Sanchez (Panama), Brita Kamrau (Germany), Esther Nunez (Spain), Yuko Matsuzaki (Japan), Danil Serebrennikov (Russia), Damian Blaum (Argentina), German coach, Rodolfo Valenti (Italy). Front row kneeling - Shelley Clark (Australia), a Mexican swimmer, Noelia Petit (Argentina).

Above: Me with the 2008 Beijing Olympic 10KM Open Water Champion, Larisa Ilchenko from Russia.

Above: Preparing to enter the waters of the Sumidero Canyon, Mexico to start my second Grand Prix.

Above: During the race, and about to cross the finish line of the 15KM swim in energy sapping 27 Degrees Centigrade water.

I was pleased to finish ranked number 57 in the world in this event out of 65 total entrants, despite only completing 2 of the 9 possible events (Serbia and Mexico):-

Click here to download the final FINA rankings for 2008

Click here to download a full summary of my 2008 swims

FUNDRAISING

The purpose of all these swims is to raise £50,000 for two UK based charities, CLIC Sargent, the UK's largest Children's Cancer charity, and St. Nicholas' Hospice in my home town of Bury St Edmunds. I would like to thank all of my 2008 corporate sponsors who helped pay for some of these swims, which has now enabled us to raise a total of:-

£15,606.13p

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me, and please continue to do so as we still have another £34,393.87p to go! 2009's swims will be announced in January 2009. Happy New Year to everyone!

Looking back at 2007...

Above: Tooting Bec Lido, South London, venue for my first swimming event in over 13 years, the Cold Water Swimming Championships hosted by South London Swimming Club on March 24, 2007.

Whatever we do in life, it's good to reflect on things, to look back and see what you have achieved, what you haven't achieved and what, if anything you could have done better to reach your goals. Below is a summary of my swimming events for 2007.

1 - Cold Water Swimming Championships - March 24, 2007

After spending winter 2006 heavily in training in both the pool and the sea, I entered my first swimming event of 2007, and my first for more than 13 years on March 24, 2007, three days before my 44th birthday. It was there that I met Kevin Murphy and Cliff Golding for the first time. This chance meeting led to me spending my weekends in Dover this summer training on swimmers beach, meeting Freda Streeter, The Channel General, Alison Streeter, Queen of The Channel, and ultimately I believe this was the major factor which led to me completing the channel swim in July. The great Jim Rohn once said "Things don't just happen, they happen just".

I came away from Tooting having won a Gold in the Freestyle, and a Silver in The "Head Up Breastroke". These were my first swimming medals since 1983, some 24 years ago!

2 - Colwick Park 4KM Lake Race - May 27, 2007

Having joined the British Long Distance Swimming Association (B.L.D.S.A.) for the first time this year, the first event I competed in was the 4KM Race at Colwick Park, Nottingham in May. I had never competed in an open water race before, and it certainly was different to say the least, but also, really enjoyable. This was not a masters event, but an all age group event, and I was competing against swimmers from 18 years old, to some over 70. I was astonished and very pleased to come home in 6th position overall, in a time of 1 Hr. 1 Minute and 43 Seconds.

Above: Entering the water at Colwick Park (top - 4th from right), and (bottom) exiting the water and getting my breath back after a mammoth last 750 Metre sprint to the finish line.

3 - "Champion of Champions", Dover Harbour - June 16, 2007

This was the second (B.L.D.S.A.) swimming event I competed in, and it was a really tough one. It involves swimming in three races in Dover Harbour. The first is 5 miles, the second 3 miles and the third 1 mile. All times are added together and the winner is crowned "Champion of Champions". It sounds simple but the drop out rate was very high. I was pleased to complete the event, and come home overall in 5th place. This again I found astonishing as it was an open age group, not a masters event. It was certainly good stamina practice for my channel swim attempt which was by then, less than a month away.

Above: The running start of the first "Champion of Champions" event - The 5 mile race. Dover Harbour - June 16, 2007.

3 - English Channel Swim - England to France, July 10, 2007

July 10, 2007 will be forever etched into my mind. It was the day I swum to France. The elation I felt at having achieved something that had been in my mind for 27 years cannot be expressed in writing. Suffice to say I was ecstatic.

Before I swum, people asked me how long I thought it would take. Based on my swim speed in Dover Harbour, I had 14 hours as a figure in my mind, although with the channel, it is impossible to say how long it will take due to the tides and weather conditions on the day. I completed the swim in 13 Hours and 52 minutes. I was pretty close with my estimate.

It was a day I will never forget, and I can honestly say, that I thoroughly enjoyed it! I enjoyed it so much, that I agreed to do it again, only this time two ways! When I told Beccy I had booked a "two-way" she said "What would you like for tea?"!!

Above: In the channel swimming with the Ferries. Tuesday July 10, 2007.

4 - Dover Regatta Weekend - 2KM Race - August 11, 2007

When I asked my wife Beccy if it was alright to enter a race in Dover on her Birthday, at first she wasn't too pleased. As it turned out, it was a beautiful weekend which we all enjoyed thoroughly, and met Mark Robson who is attempting a channel swim in 2008 and his girlfriend Kelly. Loraine Verghese who was my channel swim support swimmer was also there collecting sponsorship money for her channel swim and it was generally a really great weekend.

The race was organised by Dover Lifeguard Club and was from The Prince of Wales Pier, across the harbour, back again and finishing by running up the beach across the finish line. I was again astonished when it was announced that I had won the over 40's race, and a beautiful glass trophy was presented to me.

Above: (Top) Little Hoffy, me with Over 40's winners trophy, and Beccy on her 32nd Birthday.

5 - Eastern Region Masters Championships - October 14, 2007

On Sunday October 14, 2007 I entered the Eastern Region Masters Championships held in my home town of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. I swum as a member of the West Suffolk Masters Swimming Club, and it was my first indoor competition since 1994, some 13 years ago. I was delighted to come home with 2 x Gold and 3 x Silver medals.

Above (Top): Swimming in the 100 Metres freestyle, and below, my medal haul for the meet.

All in all, 2007 has been a fantastic year for swimming. When I retired in 1994, I never thought that I would compete again, and yet, this has got to be one of my best ever years for swimming. It certainly has been different! We've met some wonderful people, visited some new places, raised just under £10,000 for charity and hopefully next year will be just as good, if not, even better!