This article is from page 26 of the 2011-07-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 26 JPG
A CLARE woman made history at the weekend when she was one half of the first two-person Irish relay team to swim the English Channel.
Maighread McMahon (33), who is from Kilmaley, and swim partner Lynsey Dunne battled fatigue, motion sickness, jellyfish stings and darkness to complete the swim from England to France in 13 hours and 53 minutes.
Accompanied by a pilot boat, the pair set off from the English coast at 9am on Friday morning. Alternating two-hour shifts in the water, the journey was eventually completed at 11.40pm when Dublin-born Sligo resident Lynsey climbed out of the water in France.
A jubilant Maighread told The Clare People yesterday that she was delighted to have been part of the record-breaking challenge. She said, “It was a long day but a good day.”
In crossing the channel, Maighread and Lynsey raised € 10,000 for the Irish Cancer Society. Most crosschannel swims are attempted in groups of six or as solo efforts. However, Maighread and Lynsey are believed to be the first Irish two-person team to complete the swim.
A former student of Killable National School and Coláiste Muire secondary school in Ennis, Maighread started training for the challenge last April.
She said, “I had been doing a lot of triathlons and swimming would have been my best event. So I said to Lynsey, would you be interested in swimming the channel?”
Training involved swimming six days a week in the seas around Ireland. Mairead, a quality manager with Diageo, explained, “It’s hard work when you are working as well. You have to do a lot of ‘carbing up’ to put on weight so you don’t get hypothermia.”
The rules of the challenge meant that Maighread and Lynsey could only be in the water for a maximum of two hours at a time.
Conditions may have been warm and relatively calm but the pair did have to contend with jellyfish.
Maighread said, “I got a few jelly- fish stings across the face. Some of them were really quite painful. But I thought, there’s no way a jellyfish is going to get the better of me.”
Despite temperatures hitting 29 degrees, Maighread had to stay well wrapped up while she was on the boat to keep her body temperature high. On board, she also had to fight the effects of motion sickness. However, the most dangerous part of the journey came right at the very end.
She said, “The tide changed and it was dark so you couldn’t see what was above or around you.”
Maighread is still in England, taking a well-deserved break. Now living in Carlow, she intends to take part in swimming events in Ireland and hasn’t ruled out the possibility of attempting a solo cross-channel swim. “I need to have a think about it. But after doing it, it would be fantastic to do it solo.”