MONTREAL – Swimming across the English Channel means many hours of cold, lonely monotony.
Notre Dame de Grâce resident Alan Clack has some motivation, however: Two years ago, he promised his then 7-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son the family would get a dog – but only after he completed the swim.
The idea of swimming the channel was planted in his head decades ago, when a friend suggested trying it as a group after graduating from college.
But Clack got a job and had to move from Atlanta, where he’s from originally, to Russia.
His own training came to a halt, but one of his friends successfully completed the daunting 33-kilometre swim.
“Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about doing it and thinking about doing it. Finally, my wife said, ‘Someday means never unless you put it on the calendar.’ “
So Clack, an independent business strategy consultant who has been living in Montreal for seven years, did just that.
He began training again about two and a half years ago.
He swims eight to nine times a week for anywhere from one to eight hours each time.
He drives from N.D.G. to a lake in the Laurentians on weekends from the moment the ice breaks up in the spring until it freezes again in the winter.
In the past, the swim across the Channel has been completed in anywhere from seven to 27 hours. Clack hopes to complete it in 14.
Among the challenges involved in swimming across the English Channel: the frigid 15-degree-Celsius temperature of the water, jellyfish, and weather conditions that change with little to no warning.
And then there’s the fact that more than 500 ships, many of them large container ships and oil tankers, pass through the Channel every day.
“It’s like swimming across the Décarie (Expressway),” he explained.
In addition to wanting to fulfill a promise to his children, Clack has attached his efforts to a charitable cause, one that could help children and their families.
“(Swimming the Channel) is kind of an audacious goal, and … I wanted to do it for a reason. I needed that extra inspiration, that extra motivation,” he explained.
Clack, 43, found a cause close to his heart six years ago, when he and his wife brought their feverish son to the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
As staff tried to insert an IV into his son’s arm, the boy screamed in pain.
“As a parent, that feeling of helplessness that you have when your child is sick is the worst feeling in the world,” he said.
It was that feeling that prompted him to raise money for the hospital’s Family Resource Centre.
The centre is a space where parents can meet with hospital staff who can explain their child’s condition.
They can also use the space to meet with support groups or catch up on work without having to leave the hospital.
“The focus (of the centre) is to increase the quality of life at the hospital, and make a space for families to come, relax and enjoy,” said Marie-France Haineault, coordinator of child life services at the Children’s.
“I’m happy that someone is taking up this cause because it’s so important for the families, for the patients, to have an area where they can regroup.”
Clack has raised $1,205 so far. Through the hospital’s donation website, his goal is to raise $33,000, or $1,000 for every kilometre of the Channel.
He will embark on his swim between Sept. 6 and 12, depending on the weather.
He plans to start from Shakespeare Beach in England and end at Cap Gris Nez in France.
Ideally, he’d like to do it on the 6th, the date of his 44th birthday.
In order to get into Channel-swimming form, Clack reached out to Irishman Donal Buckley via email to be his mentor.
Buckley has swum across the Channel himself, and is something of an open water swimming guru.
“When people ask about doing the Channel online, I give them idea of what’s required, both training-wise and the Channel itself. I don’t sugarcoat it. That stops 99.9 per cent of people. Alan was the 0.1 per cent who it didn’t stop,” Buckley wrote in an email.
Buckley has been helping Clack prepare for the swim in every way, except when it comes to his technique.
That is where Mike Calcutt comes in. He is the coach at the Master’s Swim Club in at the Westmount Y where Clack trains.
Also among his crew are Andy Froncioni, a physicist and physiologist who helps him with nutrition and conditioning and Owen O’Keefe, who has crewed for other swimmers before and swam the Channel at 16 years old (he is now 19).
Except for Calcutt, they will all be on the boat, volunteering their time, when Clack attempts the swim two weeks from now.
And Clack is putting up a sizable sum to attempt the feat – it costs about $4,000 just to rent the boat that will follow him.
Then there are association fees, training costs, trips to Ireland to train there; in total, the attempt will cost Clack about $15,000.
Clack is among a group of eight people who participated in a swimming camp in Ireland to attempt the swim this year.
The seven others have already made the attempt and of those, only two were successful.
One of his peers died, one kilometre away from the finish, when he suffered a heart attack.
Though the death rattled Clack, he talked it over with is wife and decided to continue his efforts.
He’s leaving next week to swim in Ireland’s cold waters in a final attempt to familiarize his body with the cold temperature of the water in the Channel ahead of his possible departure dates.
If the weather’s bad enough, it’s possible he won’t swim at all.
Both Clack and Buckley have good feelings about Clack’s ability to finish the swim. But Clack knows it will be gruelling, both physically and mentally.
“If you’re lucky, it’s a very very hard swim. If you’re unlucky, you just won’t make it,” he said.
But whether or not he makes it, Clack said he will hold up his end of the deal and get his kids a dog.
“Although I will encourage them to look at the SPCA, they want a Golden Retriever and they want to name it Torch.”
O’Keefe will be updating Clack’s Twitter account and promoting Clack’s donation page during his swim.
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