THE HIDDEN WORLD - KATE UPSHALL DAVIS

THE HIDDEN WORLD

I was rubbish at all sports as a kid. I occasionally got dragged into making up the numbers in the netball team at primary school, because I went to a tiny village school with only fifty-two pupils. I have photos of me in the team strip, but no one ever explained the rules to me, for any team games.. or maybe they did but I didn’t pay attention as I didn’t see myself as a sporty person. That was OK though, because I was good at art, and maths and English. Sport and exercise just weren’t for me. No one in my family was very sporty, so that was fine.

In secondary school I managed to skive a whole term of PE by hiding in the library, covering my face with my long hair and burying my head in a book if a teacher came in looking for absconders. I still got a B grade though, probably because they couldn’t remember who I was! (Hope none of my teachers are reading this, they might want to take that B back!!). I remember always being the last to be picked for any team, but other people remember being that person as well, so it can’t have always been me. I managed to get out of sports day most years by walking around in my PE kit, but not signing up for anything. One year, I was 13 I think, I got forced into running the 1500m for my tutor group. That was torture for me, made worse by some lovely 13-year-old boy shouting out ‘You look funny when you run!’. That comment stuck with me..

But I’d always swam. I never really tried to improve or push myself, I just enjoyed it. There’s something about water that has always drawn me to it... I remember ferry rides across the Channel and the North Sea as a child when I would stare over the side at the water for ages, fascinated by it, especially in the dark. It was scary and inviting at the same time. Shortly after I started open water swimming this year I realised that almost all of the pictures and photos in my flat have water in them – sea, rivers, and lakes. I always swam in the sea when we went on holiday, though never went very far out. I swam in the pool on and off over the years, doing what I now know was a rather rubbish breaststroke. I could do a mile though! I swam lots when I was school teaching for a couple of years about ten years ago, as it was the only way I could get a clear head and feel relaxed..

In September 2007, when I was 31, I was working for Crisis, and because I worked on Sundays, it became my job to take a group of people to support our fundraising runners in the Great North Run. I was truly inspired that day. It was really quite emotional watching all those thousands of people pushing themselves to meet the challenge, whilst raising millions of pounds for charity. I noticed that there were lots of people who didn’t look like your average athlete. I made my mind up that I could do it, and I wanted to do it. I didn’t sign up straight away though, it took a second year of being in the support team to convince me I was ready.

I’d always hated running, I thought training was going to be painful, something I’d need to endure to achieve my goal. I joined a local running club in the February before the event, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there were other beginners there. Everyone was so helpful and encouraging. And I actually enjoyed it! I couldn’t believe I could actually enjoy running training. I completed the Great North Run, and loved every minute of it! Even when my hips were really aching in the last few miles. I did it again the following year. But then I needed a new challenge. I made my mind up I wanted to run the New York Marathon. The timing coincided with a very personal reason for wanting to do a fundraising event for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, so I took one of their places and committed to raising at least £1500. I remembered that comment when I was 13, ‘You look funny when you run!’, and I thought, well maybe I do, but now I’m 33 and I couldn’t care less! I was so pleased to have got myself fit and healthy, and I was focussed on my goal, it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. I recalled that comment a few times during my training, and during running the marathon. It helped me feel proud of what I was achieving. Another phrase that has stuck with me, it may be a bit sad but I’m a big Lost fan, is John Locke’s catchphrase ‘Don’t tell me what I can’t do!’.  Sometimes there is a fine line between my determination and stubbornness though (similar to Locke!).. my plan a few years ago to get over my fear of heights by taking trapeze lessons didn’t turn out quite so well!! I was really shy and under-confident as a child, so I think once I found my confidence I developed an attitude of ‘What have I got to lose? Let’s give it a go!’.

The training wasn’t all plain sailing though. A couple of days before I left for New York I set off for my final long training run. I was a bit distracted because I was hosting a fundraising quiz night that night, and I knew I still had lots to get ready, and this was my last opportunity for a long run so it had to be good. I trained in Low Fell, which, if you don’t know it, is full of big hills. It was great experience it turned out, as I flew up the inclines on the bridges in New York, whilst others decided to walk. I was less than a mile from my house, running down Bensham Bank, and I fell over my own feet, because I was distracted and not looking where I was going. It seemed to happen in slow motion... as I went down I had time to think ‘My iPod!’... ‘My teeth!!’... ‘Please don’t let me do any damage that means I have to pull out of the race!!’... I landed on my face. I got up, with blood pouring out of my chin and my hand, and purple knees with gravel stuck in them. A nice woman stopped her car and asked if I was alright. I declared I was fine.. and carried on my walk of shame back home. I patched myself up with spray-on plaster, and went back out and ran eighteen miles. I had to, it was my last long run!

So, the New York Marathon. It was the most amazing experience, I ran the whole 26.2 miles with a huge grin on my face, sometimes tears rolling down my cheeks. I was amazed with myself for completing something I would never have dreamed of a couple of years before, and I was over-the-moon that people had sponsored me £3000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust for doing it. I could say a lot more about it, but this is a swimming blog!

Because I’d participated in the Great North Run I got an email from the organisers about the Great North Swim. I watched the promotional video, and made my mind up that that was my next challenge. I’d always loved the Lake District, and swimming, so what could be better! I looked at images of Windermere and felt it would be amazing to swim it. I still have one of the photos as the wallpaper on my laptop, I couldn’t stop looking at it. I had no idea at this point that there were people swimming in lakes every weekend, and week day. I thought this was a one-off event. I actually signed up to do it in September 2010, but I deferred my place about a month before the event when realised I had run out of time to train for it properly because I was so busy training for the marathon. As we all know, it ended up being cancelled that year anyway. I’m so pleased I didn’t do it in 2010, because I would have been doing it in my rubbish breaststroke, and I would have been completely under-prepared. I might even have been one of those people who had a panic attack and got taken out.

So, 2011. The marathon was out of the way. I decided to concentrate on the Great North Swim. I’d already decided I wanted to do more swimming and less running this year. Partly because of a little worry about my ‘crunchy’ knees. I thought swimming might be better for my body in the long haul, and getting better at it would be a new challenge. I was also a bit apprehensive after my experience of sliding down Bensham Bank on my face. I decided I needed to take the training seriously, and do some swimming in a wetsuit, in a lake. I joined the GNS Facebook page. A discussion thread started on the page about swimming training in the North East. That was how I met Pauline. I’d already persuaded my old friends Marie, Tristan, Melissa and Alison to sign up for GNS as well, when I’d invited them to my GNS fundraising Facebook page.

Pauline gave us some great tips about wetsuits, and what other equipment we needed, and what to eat. She told us about a ‘start of season’ OSS social swim at Ellerton in early April, and Marie and I agreed to go. I have to say I wondered what I was getting into, meeting up with strangers from the internet to go to somewhere I’d never been before, dressed in rubber! The water was 9C that day. Marie got in for a short swim, but I wasn’t able to as I’d just had my arm tattooed. I probably should have waited a bit longer for it to heal really, but I was raring to go and got in on the second visit to Ellerton. Pauline showed us how to put water on the back of our necks to prepare our bodies for the shock of the cold, and taught us how to breathe through the ‘gasping’ reaction, and to watch out for numb feet and hands and our core temperature dropping, and about having lots of hats! I remember being so pleased that I hadn’t tried to do the swim the previous year, as I wouldn’t have known anything about avoiding hyperventilation or hypothermia. I also would probably have tried to swim in my wakeboarding wetsuit, which would have been really hard work.

One of my memories from that first day is how friendly and helpful everyone was. Over the season I’ve gone on to meet lots of new people ‘off the internet’ in strange places, but I’ve never regretted it as everyone’s been lovely, and I’ve had some great swimming experiences. Open water swimmers seem to be a special breed of people, everyone helps each other out and looks after each other. And we have to, as it can be a dangerous sport if you don’t know what you’re doing. I think people are helpful because other swimmers have helped them along the way. We get a bit competitive at event time, but everyone is so supportive of each other.  I think there might also be something about spending your weekends right in the middle of the elements of nature that makes you appreciate the important things in life.

So, I completed the Great North Swim. I didn’t get a fantastic time, but I was very happy because I’d swam the whole thing in front crawl, having only learned it a month before! I don’t remember if I ever learnt front crawl as a child. I certainly couldn’t remember it. I’d been listening to all the tips Pauline was giving others about how to alter your stroke in open water, I’d been taking it in, but I couldn’t get my head around it. Alison agreed to meet me at the pool to teach me, but when she saw my breaststroke we both realised she needed to help me sort that out first! In one session I massively improved my breaststroke with Alison’s help. I spent the next couple of weeks studying videos of front crawl on Youtube. And then Pauline told me I was going to spend the whole weekend only swimming crawl. I was quite worried, I thought I’d never manage it. But I did. Somehow all the tips I’d heard, and what I’d seen in the videos, just clicked, and I spent the weekend swimming crawl. I was over-the-moon. It was a different story when I tried it out in the pool a couple of days later though, and realised I had to work to stop myself sinking because the wetsuit had been keeping me up! Over the following months I’ve had lots of good advice from various fellow swimmers, and a Triathlon coach, on how to improve my stroke. It’s much better now, but I’m still working on it. Everyone I’ve swam with over the months has helped me in some way. I hope I’ve been of help to others too.

The GNS was just the start. My original plan was to train to do that event, and I hadn’t thought past that. But I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’ve kept it going and have no plans to stop. I’ve discovered there’s a huge network of open water swimmers, and that wherever I am I can post a message on Facebook and find like-minded people who want to meet up for a swim. I’ve also discovered that you can exercise and then drink coffee and eat homemade cake afterwards, and strangers can chat as if they’ve known each other for years! I’ve been told that if you’re in Alcoholics Anonymous you can go anywhere in the world, find a local group and have instant friends. It’s like that with open water swimming, only without the alcohol problem.. well, maybe!

 I’ve been to so many fantastic locations this season. My first race was supposed to be a mile at Coniston, but wild weather lead to that one being cancelled. You can swim in any weather, but gale force winds make the water quite hard work to say the least! After some close encounters with lots of sardines and an unidentified fish whilst swimming in the Altantic in Portugal, I decided to try and deal with my fear of fish in what turned out to be my first race at Capernwray. Capernwray is amazing, the water is so clear you can see all of the huge well-fed fish, you can even see divers stood at the bottom of the lake. I completed the 1000m. I discovered that I’m fine swimming with fish when I can see where they are, it’s when they appear suddenly out of murky water that they give me a fright!

Next after Capernwray was the Ullswater Epic 1 mile. I can’t say I really enjoyed that one. It was my first experience of a deep water start. We swam out to the first buoy, and I felt OK, I was where I wanted to be, at the back. But then they explained the course... I was swimming to the right, not straight ahead... I was at the front!! Arghh! I panicked and pushed through people to get to the back, shouting ‘I’m slow! Please get in front!’. When the race started, there were arms everywhere, I felt like I was going to be pulled under. I never really got my breathing right after that, and my goggles filled with water. I just wanted to get out... maybe that’s why I swam 12 minutes faster than the GNS? My personal best! I don’t look happy in my finisher’s photo though!

I had a great swim in Grasmere for my birthday weekend. We swam the width then the length. The weather was great, and the water was lovely. I was so pleased some of my new swimmy friends were able to join me, along with old friends.

The next race was Loch Ness, the first ever Monster Swim. We went up there en masse, in the Monster Bus! Staying in tiny rooms each crammed with three sets of bunkbeds, was an experience. We knew the Loch was going to be cold. It was only 9.5C! But surprisingly none of us were really bothered by the cold. Perhaps we’d built it up in our minds so much, that the reality wasn’t so bad. We’d trained for the cold, but some of the others clearly hadn’t. We saw one person decide to go home after the acclimatisation session. It was choppy though. I wasn’t prepared for that.. when I got out into the middle of the water I felt like I was in the middle of an ocean. You couldn’t see the huge inflatable buoys over the waves and swell. Luckily Verity went in first and was able to tell us what to sight on. I had another one of my irrational panics, and couldn’t bring myself to put my face in the water. That meant my stroke was terrible, and I was so slow, even slower when I got stuck in a rip tide! But I made it to the far buoy. I was so pleased, it was the easy stretch next, swimming back to shore. And I’d decided I was ready to put my face in when I got back towards the shore, I had my game plan in my head, I felt confident. But then the Red Cross volunteers in their boat congratulated me for getting to the far buoy, and said I would have to get out because I’d been in the water too long! I complied, thinking they must be making everyone get out who’d been as slow as me, though that later turned out not to be the case. I climbed onto the boat. They kept asking me if I was OK, and giving me strange looks. They must have assumed that anyone in that temperature for that length of time must have the onset of hypothermia. The average person probably would have, but I’d been training for this. ‘Yes I’m absolutely fine!’. I was. I knew the signs of hypothermia, and I had none of them. No numb feet and hands, no shaking, I hadn’t started talking nonsense, well no more than usual anyway. They’d asked us all at the far buoy to shout out our name and hat number, to check we were OK. I passed with flying colours! (That was a good way to tell who’d had too much to drink during the celebratory drinks in the bar later that night). So I was a bit miffed at being pulled out of the water, but I have to say, riding back to the shore on a speed boat was quite good fun! I contemplated finishing all my races that way..

After another successful race with the fish at Capernwray, this time the 1500m, my next challenge was a sea swim. I decided after Loch Ness that I wanted to build my confidence in swell and waves. So a group of us went to Seaburn. I’d swam in the sea lots of times before, but only ever gone a few meters out and swam parallel to the beach. This time I was with experienced sea swimmers, and we swam out what seemed a really long way to me, to the first buoy. At first I still had my fears of whether I was going to be able to breathe without swallowing water, whether I was going to be strong enough to battle the waves. But once I realised that I could breathe, and I was strong enough, I started to enjoy the ride, and had a blast! It was exhilarating! We swam from buoy to buoy, then back to the shore.

A few days later, another first.. my first river swim. A group of us met at Kirkham Priory to swim in the River Derwent. A fantastic location. It was cold, 13C, but lovely.  Swimming between the trees, sun shining. As it was a narrow straight river, I thought I’ll get my head down and swim and I can’t go far wrong. However, after smacking my head on a fair few tree branches, I thought I should probably start looking up a bit more often. I don’t think I’d really taken that point on board though, when you consider what happened next... We’d swam about a mile and a half upstream, decided that was far enough, and turned round for the easier stretch, swimming back with the current. There I was, head down, swimming away, still not looking up often enough... then smack! I’d hit something at full force, it was solid, covered in fur.. and part of it was slimey. What was it?? I looked up, as I tried to swim backwards against the current to get away from it. There was an animal on an outstretched branch. It was the size of a sheep, but it was short haired and a ginger colour.. well, the bottom half was blue with mould. A pig perhaps? I ruled out human, too hairy. I couldn’t see its face, only its back. I was frantically trying to swim away from it. It probably only took seconds, but it felt like ages. I got away, but I was a bit freaked out. I caught up with David... this time looking up every few seconds! I told him ‘I had a bit of an incident’. He said, ‘Oh you didn’t swim into that deer did you?’. Of course, only me! That was definitely the worst experience I’ve had whilst swimming, but it’s not put me off. It didn’t spoil what was otherwise a fantastic swim. I figure, what’s the chances of that happening again?? And I think I’ve learnt my lesson now to watch where I’m going!

So what’s next? Lots more events, and new locations. I’m back in Windermere this weekend to do a 2-mile event this time, and in November I’m back at Capernwray for ‘A dip in the dark’, a 500m race in the dark, with glo sticks, fireworks and a BBQ. Can’t wait! Next year I want improve on my one mile PB (personal best), finish the Loch Ness Monster Swim under my own steam instead of on a speed boat (!), work towards the 10K Dart next September, and then hopefully in a couple of years a 6-man Channel Relay (I made the mistake of reading three books, so far, about Channel swimming, and I’m hooked!). I also want to keep swimming through the winter, as I’ll be so sad if I have to stop when the season ends. I may have to cover every inch of my body in neoprene and only stay in for a few minutes, but I’m not giving up! I’ve already agreed to attend Shirley’s birthday swim.. in January!

I can’t quite believe this has all happened in just five months, I’m so glad I said yes to the email about GNS and discovered this hidden world.

The last word is always mine - as you can see Kate's entry into open water swimming has been eventful, she has a wonderful proactive attitude of lets do, shes trust us to teach her front crawl and to let us 'encourage' her to enter races! Through her work of helping others you can see that she is embarking on a personal journey of discovery as well although  i am sure she would rather forget the dead dear!!! Her first year has seen amazing progress in the world of open water swimming and i hope that she will continue next year and for many years to come, the are many more rivers, lakes and sea's to swim. One of Kate's dreams is to swim the channel andi have no doubt to that she will get there...what can i say Kate apart from GO LEFT!!!