 Look in, Shane, congratulations. Well done. Thanks, my name's John, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Now, were you getting into the water at half three on Monday morning? How are you feeling? Were you apprehensive? Were you scared? Were you confident? I would say apprehensive and scared. The confidence kind of left me a wee bit to be perfectly honest because you know you're on the boat at three a.m and it's a three-mile boat journey during the coast to try and get the right tide and all you can see is just darkness in front of you other than the lights that are shining out in the boat and obviously the boat's not small enough to come into the coast so you must get into a dingy room and you know part of the stipulations on the rules are that you know it's a non-wetted swim so you're in a pear speed, it was one hat, one pair of goggles and that's it and I guess the big thing that I didn't necessarily factor in, I knew the water was going to be cold but it was 17 degrees so that was that was pretty good because you mentioned the qualifying swim, the qualifying swim had to be done on sub-15 and we did it importantly in 14.8 Celsius so the temperature in the water was like two and a half degrees warmer than it was important to but I didn't factor in the air temperature and the air temperature at that time in the morning and over it was like six seven degrees so I got a real chill at the start of the swim you know and I had that chill the whole way and the first two hours were just horrendous they were just horrific I just I didn't want to be there I didn't I just wanted to get out and I looked up at my boat crew at about the two hour mark so I had set out a sheet a feeding schedule because you have to be fed from the boat you're not allowed to touch the boat you're not allowed out of the water and so you've basically been fed on a string and it's it's liquid energy and snickers and energy bars and gels so I had my first feed after 90 minutes and then it was a feeding schedule of every 45 minutes and at the two hour mark I just I looked up and there was three people standing there was my friend Jane there was my best mate in Asia who's been on the on the journey with me for two years and then there was my wife Karen who's been on the journey with me forever um and they just all looked up and he said you have to keep going and Karen just shouted she was like look it's sunrise sunrise is coming she says swim to swim until it's light and then see how you feel and thankfully that was the darkest moment that I had and I could see the pink light on the horizon and I was like you know actually this has given me a bit of a lift now and then when the sun came and then it made a hell of a lot of difference there was a few other moments but after that I never thought about getting out I never thought about not finishing um but yeah at that 3 30 in the morning the confidence was just absolutely shocked just full of self-doubt full of apprehension full of fear so they they could tell it to our mark that you were it was touch and go yeah yeah they knew and I looked up and they couldn't see obviously because it was dark I've goggles on um I have to be honest I tears me eyes I was like you know and look and John I'm an out and out pool swimmer you know I'm just one I've just won 40 almost 42k in the English Channel and I'm still not a sea swimmer and I'll never be a sea swimmer you know uh so I was like I was dreaming of the 25 degrees chlorinated waters of the Virgin active in Fulham or rivers your waters in Strava and I was like no this is not for me just take me out I'm done but thankfully I stayed in and I lasted I lasted another nine and a half hours that wasn't too bad yeah absolutely because I suppose it would have been in such a shame and and I'm sure this part of this was going through your head and that you done all the training and I'm sure you've trained for I don't know for how long for this but you've done all the training and all the hard work and all the prep and everybody's there and and to back out you know it would have been it would have been just such a letdown and such a disappointment for you and others so small things like that probably go through your head and then determine you know what you do and whether you should push on or not sorry I think I just lost you there all right what I'm saying is to have put in so much effort to get to that point two hours and it would have been such a shame to just to get back on the boat oh absolutely and and you know um I think at one point I had swam the best part of like from from kind of January February this year and that's not counting what I've done the previous year I swam almost uh 500 kilometers 500,000 meters and as a competitive pool swimmer international swimmer I mean that I would have probably yeah well Shane's Shane's the link to Shane seems to have stalled there so that's uh that's a shame um maybe we could it's a it's a different type of change just back on the on the phone uh as opposed to in a video link just to punish the conversation because it's uh it is it's some achievements I've been able to cross the channel in fact fewer people have swam the English channel than have claimed Mount Everest