20 years ago today, I swam across the English Channel.
It was a different time, before every step and stroke was turned into content; before everything we did came with a caption. I have only a couple of shaky photos from that day, but somehow that makes it even more vivid in my memory.
I was 25. Still a child in many ways, but completely consumed by one goal: to swim a sub-9-hour Channel. I trained 8km a day, for months, years. I had put on 10kg to handle the cold. I ate, slept, breathed, became, the Channel.
On the day, I felt strong, focused, and in rhythm. I was even progressing faster than I'd hoped, I was flying. At 7 hours 30, with 33km down and just 3km to go, I was ahead of plan.
And then the tide came for me.
Based on my pace, I should've walked out triumphantly onto the French beach around 8h30. But at that moment, I was told I still had 4km left. I was no longer racing toward a finish line; I was being pulled backwards. It took everything I had just to hold my position, with the current relentlessly pushing and pulling me off course, off plan.
The next 3.5 hours were an eternity. They cracked me open and changed me.
With 2 hours to go, I hit a wall, no, more like a vast, invisible undertow pulling every part of me downward. My body was freezing, depleted. But it wasn't just physical. In endurance sport, in any performance, it's the mind that holds everything together. And mine was falling apart. I could feel my body starting to follow.
I was furious. Furious at the sea, at time, at the betrayal of the plan. I had done everything right, and it was slipping through my fingers.
That anger, mixed with exhaustion, nearly stopped me.
And then something shifted. Not because the water warmed or the current eased, it didn't. But I realised the swim was never just about the clock. It was about who I would become when no one was watching, when the plan disintegrated, when pride was stripped away, and only raw will remained.
It was about my support crew. About legendary CLDSA founder Peter Bales, a mentor and steady presence through it all, who stood by me on the boat that day, weathering my frustration. It was about those who believed in me when I didn't want to. I owed it to them, and to myself.
I stopped fighting for the version of the dream I had lost, and started fighting for the one still within reach. I stopped asking why and started asking how. How to take the next stroke. Then the next. Each one harder than the last.
That shift, from anger to purpose, gave me just enough. Stroke by stroke, furious and freezing, I missed Cap Gris-Nez completely due to the tide… but I reached Wissant Beach, France. I probably swam 45km instead of 36. (No GPS watches in those days.)
20 years later, I still carry that swim with me. Not because I reached the shore, but because I learned that some finish lines are only found when everything else is lost.
And the real victory? Is choosing to keep going, even when the goal has changed.
Because the deepest growth doesn't come when everything goes to plan, it comes when you learn how to keep moving when it doesn't.
Bring Carina to your stage.