“Keep swimming! You’ve got to keep moving, Tim!”
Those words, shouted from his coach a few feet away in the support boat, were the last Tim Lawrence heard before being pulled from the chilly waters of the English Channel, just eight-tenths of a mile from his goal. Hypothermia, a swimmer’s greatest enemy, had won this battle.
Three attempts later, Lawrence became one of an elite group of athletes to successfully swim the English Channel. In addition, in 2002 he was the first American to successfully complete the 41-mile swim around Jersey Island (off the coast of England) and the second person ever to swim from the island of Vis to Split, Croatia—a 43-mile swim into the tide—his toughest swim to date. He swam to Alcatraz, and around Catalina Island, Manhattan, and Key West.
Air Force Colonel Tim Lawrence, a Waterloo West High graduate, never swam competitively. At West High, he ran cross country, played tennis and was on the basketball team. “I never swam in high school because it overlapped with basketball season,” Lawrence said. At the Academy, Lawrence played intercollegiate rugby, lacrosse and threw the hammer for the track team.
So how does one decide to swim the English Channel?
“I was a pretty decent swimmer going through all the lessons at the Y and in high school, I taught swimming to kids and was a lifeguard Y. When I went to the Academy, even though I played those other sports, we had to do intramurals in the off season, so I chose swimming. It planted a seed I may be reasonably good at this.
“I didn’t really get going until I graduated from the Academy and showed up on my first assignment in California. My boss was a triathlete and encouraged me to get into the sport. I did RAGBRAI in 1979, so I thought I could do the long distance cycling. At the Academy, part of our PT program was running six miles every morning, so I figured it wouldn’t be a problem.
“But the open water swimming? I started swimming in a pool and then went down to the ocean and did a couple of swims.”
Lawrence’s first triathlon was a half ironman. “I had to swim a mile, bike 60, then run a half marathon. It was a typical California morning with a marine layer and no sun. I was the only guy without a wet suit. The race officials came up and said, ‘Where’s your wet suit?’”
“I actually did really well,” Lawrence said. “You get out there, and it’s very mental. I could see how you could get psyched out by the wind, by the cold, by the seaweed.” 
Lawrence continued to do triathlons and didn’t really think about any open water swimming until he was posted in England in 1995. “I started my Ph.D. and passed my qualifiers so I was through the really rough part of the program. I just thought, why not? The English Channel is here, if I’m going to do it I might as well just go for it.”
In October, Lawrence called the English Channel Swimming Association, the group that sanctions all the swims. A date was set for him the following summer. He was given the name and phone number of a coach, Freida Streeter. Her daughter had set the word record for the most crossings—34 at the time—and was the only woman to have successfully completed a three-way channel swim from England to France, France to England and England to France.
“She gave me workouts to do throughout the winter and set the first Saturday in May for my swim in the Dover Harbour,” Lawrence said. “It’s actually part of the Channel, and the water temperature that day was 49 degrees. Wet suits aren’t allowed for a swim, so Freida trains you to get ready for the event. It meshed well with my military background because that’s the way we’ve done everything. The more realistic you can make the training, the better your chances of success.”
Lawrence swam for 10 minutes. His body went into shock at first, but he adapted. Each weekend he added more yards to his training as the sea temperatures warmed.
His first attempt at the crossing was in October 1997. “I had swum for 28 miles when they pulled me out. I was at the furthest stage of hypothermia just before I would have blacked out. My skin turned a dark red/purplish color, and I stopped swimming. I remember them asking why I was stopping. It was almost like a dream. I said, ‘My ears are ringing.’ I asked if I could breaststroke and they said yes, but I had to keep swimming.
“The minute you slow down, you know it’s almost over because your body temperature drops even more. The next state I got to was hyperventilating. It was so bad I couldn’t put my face in the water. That’s when they knew. They yanked me out. The minute I started to warm up, I started shaking uncontrollably. It was like someone put a cattle prod into me.”
Lawrence and Streeter agreed that he needed more nutrition during the next attempt in order to generate body heat. He had gained about 30 pounds before his first swim.
“There are all kinds of rules when you’re swimming. No type of wet suit or flotation device is allowed. You can’t touch the boat or any human being. They have this high calorie energy drink in a water bottle that they throw out to you and pull it back in on a string after you’re done with it. On my second attempt, I got too much of this and started to throw it up, so I didn’t finish that attempt. My third time I was at the end of my Ph.D. and shouldn’t have even tried. My training was only half of what it had been the first two attempts.”
In 1999, Lawrence and Streeter went back to training. “She told me to get my weight up, and we’d do a 12-hour swim in the harbour to see how I did. Previous times I got cold at about the 12-hour mark. I did the training swim and was fine, so I knew I could do it.”
Lawrence decided that if he finished or not, this fourth attempt would be his last. Based on his training times, Streeter estimated it would take him 15 hours to complete. He called to tell his father. His father said, “You won’t make it 15 hours.”
“He came over for the swim, and I finished in 14 hours and 59 minutes! I’ve tried to do at least one major swim every year since then unless I was in transition with my job. Every long distance swim I’ve made since, I’ve completed.”
His father wasn’t the only spectator. “When you’re at mid-Channel, you think you are out in the middle of the Atlantic. You can’t see England, you can’t see France. All you see are waves. The cool thing is when ships encounter you. Initially, you are right in the ferry lane, and they just look like sky scrapers coming up on you. On my swim, we had a couple ferries. I could hear the captain’s PA saying, ‘Notice on our left side is a Channel swimmer’.
“When I got near the French coast, the Coast Guard came out. They were in these massive helicopters and came right down on us because, especially in Europe, there have been a slew of immigrants that have come in illegally, so any time there is a slow moving boat they suspect that it may be loaded down. They came out and saw me swimming, and, I’ll always remember, the pilot went like that (finger at temple) for ‘he’s crazy’.”
The sport of long distance swimming has grown over the years. “When I was training, there were eight of us. I was the only American along with five Brits, a German and a Spaniard. Freida still gives me training tips. A few weeks ago, she was training 176 swimmers. There are still only about 20 attempts to swim the Channel each year, but there is a lot more interest in relays.”
Lawrence spent last year deployed in Afghanistan. He set a goal to swim the Jersey Island again, but was called to the Pentagon in July and had to change his swim dates. He hoped to swim again in September.
“I made the decision in October to swim Jersey and booked the tides for July 6—10 because the tides there are on a two-week cycle. Ideally, the end of July would be a little warmer but that was full. I’ve pretty much been swimming every day since February. I started in the open water in April because you need it to be 50 degrees or higher to do any decent amount of distance.
“When the Pentagon called, I called Jersey, and they offered me another spot the third through the 10th of September, which is still part of the swim season, but it would be kind of the last tide.
“I’m a little worried because I’m a professor at the Air Force Academy, and our classes start on the 7th of August. All the other staff and teachers said they would cover me while I’m gone, but we’re also in the process of building a satellite with my students, and it has to be finished by the first of October. If we have a problem with the satellite schedule, then I may not be able to go.”
Lawrence credits his military training for his mental toughness in his swimming. “One of the biggest things you learn at the Academy is don’t quit. Most people that leave the Academy don’t get kicked out or flunk out, they quit. Having said that, anyone in Waterloo, Iowa could swim the English Channel if they wanted to. It takes dedication and commitment, not only on your part but your entire family as well.”
While Lawrence was training, a woman came to Streeter wanting to swim the Channel. Streeter asked her if she had brought her swim suit and the woman said, “I don’t know how to swim.” Streeter set her up with a coach. The first year she learned how to swim, the second, she trained in Dover and the third year, she swam the Channel.
“I’ve lived in Colorado, California, Boston, Alberta, England, and spent 21 years in the military. Growing up here in Waterloo, the quality of schools and coaches that we had laid a good foundation for me to go out and achieve these things. All of my coaches pushed us hard. It shows you can do things.”
|
