This water is really cold.
That was the visceral reaction when Joan Weisberg Beyerlein first stood on a beach in Dover, England, then plunged into the English Channel. At 65, she would soon become a channel swimmer, the only woman on a six-person relay team, and the team’s oldest member.
“It was five guys and me. No complaining and no wetsuit,” the Mill Creek woman said.
In the wee hours of Aug. 6 — 11 hours and 31 minutes after beginning their swim from England — her team’s captain, Australian Trent Grimsey, came ashore on rocks below the cliffs at Cap Gris Nez. That is France’s closest point to England. In 2012, Grimsey became the fastest-ever channel swimmer, crossing in six hours and 55 minutes.
Weisberg Beyerlein swam two hour-long legs of the Aug. 5-6 relay, becoming, she said, the oldest American woman to do so. “And we were the second-fastest relay team this year,” she said.
The shortest distance across the channel is 21 miles, but with currents, tides and shipping traffic, their swim spanned 32 miles in water 64 degrees and colder. For one hour, Weisberg Beyerlein swam in darkness. At times, she drifted away from the “Optimist,” their escort boat. Once, she was stung by jellyfish.
As she swam, her emotions went up and down like the sea’s rolling swells. “Your mind goes to dark, horrible places,” she said. “Then there are beautiful moments. You think, ‘I cannot believe I’m swimming the English Channel.’”
As punishing as it was, Weisberg Beyerlein is inspired to swim the English Channel solo, perhaps in 2017.
A Mill Creek coffee shop was packed the day we met, but there was no mistaking Weisberg Beyerlein, a lean athlete who has spent her career as a nurse. She was with her husband, Doug Beyerlein. A 64-year-old runner, he finished this year’s Boston Marathon in just over three hours, 26 minutes.
They met 15 years ago while both were living in California and competing in bicycle races. Weisberg Beyerlein is so fit it’s hard to picture the person she once was.
More than 30 years ago, “I was fat — 250 pounds,” said Weisberg Beyerlein, adding that she also struggled with alcohol. “And I was smoking. I quit smoking and started running.”
Distance swimming came later. “Swimming was what I did if I was injured from running,” she said. While training for a triathlon, her husband suggested that of the three sports, her strength was in the water.
She started training in Lake Washington about six years ago with open-water instructor Mary Meyer. “I really liked being outside,” said Weisberg Beyerlein, who now swims with a group on Saturdays in Elliott Bay off Seattle’s Alki Beach. While training for the channel, she was pool swimming thousands of yards each week.
After finishing San Francisco’s Alcatraz Sharkfest Swim, Weisberg Beyerlein got serious. “I was a rookie looking for a coach,” she said. “I wrote to Trent Grimsey, who was correspondence coaching.”
Grimsey suggested she join the channel relay team. Her other teammates were Pete Gillis, of Carnation, and Mick Bullen, Andy Plackett and Ben Freeman, all from Australia.
There’s more cold water in her future. Her plan for June is to train in waters off Cork, Ireland. There, American Ned Denison runs an arduous program to prepare brave swimmers for the English Channel.
“Every year, 50 masochistic souls show up,” wrote Matt Bondurant in a 2013 Outside magazine article about Denison’s no-wetsuit camp.
The water isn’t the whole experience. Weisberg Beyerlein described the scene at Dover’s Shakespeare Beach, starting point for English Channel swimmers. “There’s picture-taking, and interesting people from all over the world,” she said.
One character is an 83-year-old named Frieda. She is the mother of Alison Streeter, a British woman crowned “Queen of the Channel” by the Channel Swimming Association for her 43 channel swims.
“Frieda sits on the beach and smokes. She holds court and tells you what to do,” Weisberg Beyerlein said.
In chilly, salty or choppy water, Weisberg Beyerlein sometimes wonders, “Why am I doing this?”
In the coffee shop, she answered that question: “I think this makes you strong.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.w
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