Back in June 2011, Garry Partington (RealityMine CEO) was chatting to Dave Quartermain (USwim Openwater) where he mentioned that he trained solos and teams to swim The Channel. From this brief discussion, a thought started to form in Garry’s head, “I could do that”. One month later he emailed everyone at work to see if there was any interest and eventually assembled a team of 5 swimmers.
The challenge was born. The date was set 12th -14th September 2012. The training began. 14 months of training involved pool sessions, outdoor swim sessions, with the last 3 months being mainly in the docks at Salford Quays MediaCity. We also had a few training sessions at Ullswater, Windermere and the sea in North Wales, near Bardsey Island. The team would take it turns to swim intervals on the long (and cold!) journey from Dover to Calais in aid of Cancer Research and the Wish Upon a Star Charity.
As for the rest of us in the office, we decided that it would be interesting to get them to download AnalyzeMe, our passive metering app, onto their smartphone so we could track their journey in real time. We would be able to follow their progress throughout the day and more importantly, keep an eye on the altitude readings to make sure they weren’t below sea level!
Here are the locations recorded for the swim;
Having AnalyzeMe installed also meant we could look at what apps the rest of the team used on the boat while one person was swimming. At the start of the swim, there were regular updates on Twitter and Facebook. Someone even had time to check their email!
As the day went on, the conditions quickly worsened and soon it became difficult check Twitter – force 7 seas were recorded. Notice how the app use on the phone suddenly stops;
They did manage to get on the phone to take some videos and pictures though as they approached France!
The ride boat home was a lot faster and between them the team has raised over £3,600 for the chosen charities!
