My Channel Challenge

Welcome to my new Blog! Where I keep everyone up-to-date about progress towards completing my latest challenge.

Fundraising link https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/victoria-gilbert2

Those of you who know me will already know I like a Challenge. Some more welcome than others though. One such Challenge, that sadly wasn’t chosen but needed to be faced head on, was the diagnosis of aggressive Stage III breast cancer is December 2016 (you can read more about that Challenge here)

Shortly before the diagnosis I had completed a pool swim over 12 weeks that was equivalent to the distance across the English Channel i.e. 22 miles.

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Why Aspire?

I had taken on the previously mentioned pool equivalent of the Channel for a couple of reasons; the main one being to raise much needed funds for Aspire , the Charity for those living with a spinal cord injury (SCI). I could not believe that 1 person in the UK sustains a SCI every 8 hours. Meaning there are 40000 people living with it in this country alone. There is no funding for them for specialist lightweight wheelchairs, other specialist equipment and adapted housing, that is not deemed ‘essential’ by an already overstretched and underfunded social care system. The charity’s strapline ‘From Injury to Independence’ particularly struck a chord with me, having overcome adversity so many times and facing the challenges of living with a physical impairment on a daily basis. Another reason was that I had reached the 20th year anniversary of my amputation. Having needed surgery to reconstruct the ligaments in my remaining ankle in December 2015, followed by 5 months in a cast...

Boat Practice

We were given the opportunity to go out with a pilot on one of the boats to do ‘a trial run’. As the rest of my Team (Hammerhead Sharks) weren’t doing it (some have done a relay before) I became an Honorary Sea Dragon for the day! This was especially nice because my swim buddy Ruth is one and we travel down together and share accommodation so it made it much easier. For me it was causing a lot of anxiety as to how I would manage getting on and off the boat, into and out of the water via a small ladder and especially in choppy seas. I’m sure it was also making the Aspire Organisers a little twitchy, as safety is of course paramount for them. On the day we were up early checking our kit lists and did remarkably well with the relatively small amount we had packed for the boat, considering it looked like Ruth and I had filled the car with everything but the kitchen sink! We had climbed aboard 'Anastasia' in Dover Marina by 10am and were briefed by our pilot Eddie and ...

My Channel Challenge

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