Untitled - Quintessential Barrington Magazine

Marcia Cleveland is the 445th person to
swim the English Channel. This photo was
taken in Maine in 1994 by her mother,
Carolyn Cleveland.
CLEVELAND
ROCKS
Winnetka mom Marcia Cleveland looks like your next door
neighbor because she is. But she swam the English Channel
in 1994 and since has become one of the world’s top advisors
and organizers for open water swimming. She’s famous
in her universe, though you might not have heard of her.
She’s a Master Swimmer who is sought out worldwide for
her knowledge. She’s advising two Barrington men now on
how to swim the Channel in August. But her place in the
world was not so predictable. She was scared out of the
ocean by Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” at age 11 and didn’t get
back in the deep water until she was 23.
Quintessential Barrington: The year you swam the English Channel, 1994,
doesn’t seem like a long time ago. But the years pile up. What most do you
remember about the day you swam the Channel? What do you still feel in
your mind when the moment comes back to you?
Marcia Cleveland: Remembering that is one reason I wrote the book (the
“Bible” of Channel swimming, “Dover Solo”) because I wanted a memoir so
that I could remember everything. People always ask about it and this summer
it will be 17 years. It’s just that life was so different then being at a world
caliber level. What I remember vividly, of course, was the pain in my shoulders
and the cold. But I mostly remember what it felt like when my hands
touched the rocks (on the French shore). It was this feeling of complete relief.
QB: Why relief?
MC: You say to yourself: This is one of those days when you really feel like
you’ve done something in life. When you’re over there, all of these people
are involved in the same thing and it seems almost usual. My life had been
focused on that for such a long time. It was just my life. But the further you
are removed it, the more you realize how big of a deal it was. Not everybody
can get it together to do this. So in reflection – and even now – it sort of
amazed me that I could get myself to do this. Doing the training, everything,
every day. It’s even innovation of the training. I had a fulltime job at the time,
I was married, I was tired a lot, and I was just able to have my big girl pants on
every day. It took me five years to write the book. But it gave me perspective.
QB: Was the experience of the Channel swim what you thought it would be?
MC: Much better, a thousand times better. Before you swim you think it’s
going to be hours of agony and misery, but you get yourself so physically and
mentally prepared. First, my first hour in the water was in the dark, and I had
not prepared for that; so I was scared out of my mind. But then you realize
you are in your element. You are rocking and rolling. So you never whine
or cry. My husband and a friend were in the crew boat and they were in
their element, too. You begin by thinking it’s going to be 150-foot waves and
10-degree water. But you get so really, really ready. And once you start doing
it, you don’t pay any attention to that.
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