I'm Laura, a swim coach in Palo Alto, California. This fall I'll be attempting to achieve a long-time dream by swimming the English Channel. I started swim lessons when I was four years old and joined a competitive team soon after. When I was eleven, I swam the 1650 free for the first time and thought, "Huh, that was a good swim - there's something to the distance events. Maybe I'm a distance swimmer." Open water swimming wasn't as popular when I was a kid, so it wasn't until high school that I heard about people swimming the English Channel and wondered, "Could I do that one day?"

Marathon swimming like the English Channel is distance swimming at an extreme level. The shortest distance between England and France is 21 miles, but tides and currents mean that swimmers end up covering anywhere from 25 to 35 miles in a swim that can range from 7 to 20+ hours. The water temperature is below 65 degrees and a good portion of the swim occurs in darkness in the middle of the night. Fewer people have swum the English Channel than have climbed Mount Everest.

Training to swim the English Channel is an intense process. I started seriously preparing for it three years ago, securing my boat in England and completing longer swims in the bay's cold water, plus increasing yardage in the pool. In August, I fly to England for three weeks and head to Dover to await the best weather conditions to attempt the swim.

There's so much that goes into an English Channel swim: hiring a boat escort, recruiting a crew, acquiring the necessary equipment, and flying to and spending almost a month in England waiting for the right weather conditions. Any amount of support you feel comfortable with giving is much appreciated! I've felt so much interest and best wishes from everyone - I'll be thinking of all of you during the swim as motivation to keep going.