Barrington Men To Swim English Channel

When Doug McConnell and Don Macdonald return from their trip to Europe late this summer, their memories will be less about food and accommodations and more toward jellyfish stings and water temperature.

The men, both hovering around 50 years old, intend to swim from England to France via the English Channel as a challenge to their long-distance swimming skills and to raise money for charity.

McConnell will swim to benefit ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which took his father’s life in 2006. With a matching grant from Medtronic, a health-based organization, he aims to raise as much as $100,000.

Macdonald hopes to raise money for the social emotional learning programs via the Barrington 220 Educational Foundation. “They’ve had a rash of suicides in the past couple years. I was looking for an organization that not only focuses on suicide, but bullying and depression and I wanted to keep it very local,” he said.

Outside of swimming in treacherous waters, both men lead what most would consider normal lives, participate in normal activities, and more importantly, are part of normal families who provide support in more ways than one.

McConnell’s family consists of his wife, Susan of 25 years and his four kids, ages 23 to 13, who will be traveling to Europe with him to lend moral support. The group treats McConnell’s open-water swims as a family activity and integrates them into their lives. 

“It’s a huge sacrifice for the family. Susan is the glue that holds our family together anyway. To put this on top of a lot of other responsibilities was a lot to ask,” he said. “It’s really a family process and she was the one to kind of rally the family around.”

Team Macdonald also boasts family cooperation and spirit. Wife, Jennifer, and 12-year-old daughter, Rachel, are hands-on when it comes to encouraging their favorite swimmer. 

“They do all the crewing for me,” Macdonald said. “They get to come along on these adventures so they’ve figured out that there’s a trip to a nice place: San Diego, Boston, San Francisco.”

“There’s a lot of effort put into trying to keep things organized and keep everybody happy because its one of those lone, solitary endeavors so you have to balance it against work, family and other schedules,” Macdonald said.

Both McConnell and Macdonald have had a long love affair with competitive swimming, starting at local park districts, and moving on to high school and college. McConnell completed college after being named most valuable swimmer two of the four years he attended and squad captain as a senior.

Meanwhile, while growing up in Goshen, Ind., Macdonald had his first experience with open-water swimming. While he was still in high school, a nearby lake, about the size of Lake Geneva, offered a challenge to him and a friend. 

“We decided to swim across the lake to see if we could conquer it. We did that a couple of times,” he recalled.

Macdonald also excelled on school swim teams, breaking records and holding state titles in high school and swimming at Indiana University.

Swimming fell by the wayside for both men as they took on adult responsibilities. However, both returned later in life via U.S. Masters Swimming, a national organization that provides organized workouts, competitions, clinics, and workshops for adults ages 18 and older.

Macdonald holds “a few state records” with that organization, but the pool-based competitions began to lose his interest.

“I’ve found that swimming back and forth in a pool; I get bored,” Macdonald said. “Swimming from point A to point B provides a little more reward for me.”

“The difference between pool swimming and open-water swimming is really pretty dramatic,” McConnell added, citing climate control, guidelines, the lack of waves and the threat of being bitten.

“In open-water swimming, you reintroduce all those variables and then some.” he added. “Then it becomes a contest with the variables. You deal with cold, you deal with wind, you deal with waves, you deal with not knowing where you’re going. I was re-inspired about swimming.”

The swimmers’ roads intersected in a suburban home over wine with friends. Neither knew the other’s interest in open-water swimming until a conversation revealed their shared passion and goal: To swim the English Channel. By the time the next bottle had been split between the men and their wives, the decision was made to strike out on the adventure.

However, swimming the English Channel requires permission, paperwork and a solid date as well as the inevitable long hours and years of training. The commercial waterway is one of the busiest in the world, with ferries, freighters, and fishing boat trafficking every day. Boat guides need to be hired and reserved and a date needed to be set. After some research, Aug. 11, 2011 was chosen, when McConnell found the water would be at its peak warmth at that time.

Cold water is more than uncomfortable for swimmers and is the obstacle Macdonald finds most challenging. 

“There’s about as much energy used by your body to keep yourself warm as with the swimming activity itself,” he said. 

Their mid-century ages are an obstacle to overcome as well.

“There are only 50 people over 50 in the world that have done this,” Macdonald pointed out. “You have problems with your physical body and you have to approach it slowly, methodically, in a stair-step way.”

The English Channel swim is projected to take 12-13 hours and mental sharpness can be hard to maintain. “Doug counts,” Macdonald said. “But I don’t have that discipline. I try to break my swim into 30-minute segments: I think about my stroke, I’m going to breathe on the left side. I’m going to sing myself a song. You go into a mental trance.

“You can go into periods of depression because it’s very solitary. You can only see three feet in front of you and it’s all green.”

“You have to learn to let your body go the distance; what that feels like,” Macdonald summed up. “You have to tell yourself, I’m going to get cramps, I’m going to hurt, I’m probably going throw up. You’re going to have setbacks, and when that happens you gotta realize, it’s just part of the game.”

For more information:

To donate: McConnell’s web site: www.alongswim.com

Macdonalds’s blog: www.one-stroke-at-a-time.blogspot.com

District 220 Social and Emotional Learning programs: www.220foundation.org

ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease): www.lesturnerals.com