Dear Steven

I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier on this – term started and all hell broke loose, but I’m gradually regaining control.

I’ve written a brief abstract for a paper for the conference – could you have a look and see if this is the kind of thing you were thinking of. I’m doing the bulk of the interviews between now and next summer, so the precise findings can’t be articulated yet, but the key point is that I would like to talk about non-elite swimming – what it means for a relatively unremarkable swimmer such as myself to have done this reasonably extra-ordinary thing, but in a fairly ordinary way (but in a way which is also intensely meaningful to me). And how this can be translated into the promotion of OW swimming more generally.

Let me know what you think.

I’ve managed to secure some funding for the conf from my grant, which makes my life easier. And, I’m going to be in California for a month doing fieldwork interviews (and hopefully swimming the Catalina Channel) next summer (probably mid-July to mid-August), which is very exciting. Are you based in Calif?

Very best wishes

Karen

“An extraordinary thing that I thought I could do…”: narratives of becoming a Channel swimmer

In recent years, there have been around 80 solo English Channel swim attempts annually, with over 60% successfully reaching French shores. While a small number of these swimmers could be categorised as elite athletes with international competitive marathon swimming reputations, the majority of aspiring and successful Channel swimmers are not. For elite athletes, intense and sustained training is a part of everyday life, and upon which professional sporting success depends. However, for the majority of Channel swimmers, the process of training takes a very different form, constituting a purposeful and exceptional interruption to established routines, priorities and bodily management practices in order to be able to train. For most, it is a process that transforms the body, not simply in specific terms of enhanced physical capacities to swim and to endure, but also in terms of physical appearance and body composition (e.g. increased muscle mass; changes in body weight), as well as metabolic and other system bodily functions. Furthermore, the iconic status of English Channel swimming as an extreme endurance activity means that the body also undergoes a social transformation in the process of training and attempting a crossing, becoming laden with both positive and negative meanings (as worthy of charitable giving; as newsworthy; as self-indulgent; as foolhardy).

Drawing on a auto-ethnographic records of my own process of training to become a Channel swimmer, and through extensive interviews with aspiring, unsuccessful and successful swimmers, I will address two key questions which have informed the research process: (1) Why do people want to swim the Channel? (2) What difference does swimming the Channel (or failing to swim the Channel) make? Through an analysis of people’s responses to these questions, I want to argue that while the elite, record-breaking fast swims are important and deserving of note and celebration, those much less visible individuals who form part of the more mundane, unremarkable cohort of Channel swimmers offer valuable insights into the “everyday” appeals, challenges and meanings not only of Channel swimming, but also of open water swimming more broadly.

On 01/10/2010 13:10, “Steven Munatones” wrote:

Thank you very much. I will be posting the complete article soon.

And, of course, your research would be a welcomed addition to the conference! Can you write something up for me (a brief or lengthy description), so I can start promoting it and adding it to the schedule? It will be a great addition. Thank you very much for this offer, too.

Steven Munatones

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