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Chattanooga: Nazor set to swim English Channel

By: David Paschall
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Former GPS swimmer Karah Nazor is visiting England next month.

Whether she visits France is up to her stamina and the changing of the tides.

Nazor will attempt to swim the English Channel at its narrowest point, a 21-mile stretch from Dover, England, to Calais, France. The 31-year-old Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California at San Francisco was born and grew up in Chattanooga and is the area’s first person to qualify for the opportunity.

“I’m amazed at her determination, and I’m actually surprised that I know somebody and worked with somebody who is going to attempt this,” GPS swim coach John Woods said. “What a thrill. When you think of feats in any sport, swimming the English Channel is right up there with anything anybody does.”

To be allowed to attempt the English Channel, a person must swim for six hours in water that has a temperature of less than 60 degrees. Nazor completed her qualifying swim Sunday, going from Candlestick Park out into the Pacific Ocean and back into San Francisco Bay, finishing near the zoo.

The six-hour swim was her longest, topping the 4 hours, 36 minutes she needed last July to navigate the 10 miles across Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada.

Nazor often swam 10 miles a day at GPS during the combined morning and afternoon practices. She continued those distances during her college career, which began at the University of Miami and ended at James Madison University.

After years in the pool, starting in 8-under with the East Ridge club in the Chattanooga Area Swim League, Nazor developed an open-water love when she moved to San Francisco three years ago. One of the more popular routes is to and from Alcatraz Island.

“Pool swimming, for me, is a lot harder than open-water swimming,” she said. “Compared to open-water swimming, pool swimming is like being on a treadmill. Flip turns are energy demanding, and doing sets and having to stick to intervals is really hard. It’s good training and good for your lungs and good for speed, but when I moved out here I discovered a huge interest in open-water swimming.

“It’s just more fun for me. I don’t have to worry about my time, which is good, because I’m not going to be as fast at 31 as I was at 16. I like not knowing what the time will be, because you never know what the tides are going to do. I like to swim straight out into the ocean for hours, where there are no walls.”

Nazor will try the channel swim sometime from July 9 to 17. A member of the Channel Swimming Association will determine a day that is favorable, and an association member will be on an accompanying boat during the attempt. Nazor’s mother, stepfather, aunt and uncle also will be aboard.

The swim is expected to take 10-14 hours, so Nazor is guaranteed to experience two or three shifts in tides.

“There are lots of stories about swimmers doing great the whole way and then getting stuck one mile off the coast of France because of the strong currents,” she said. “Hopefully, my pilot will let me swim in place until I can punch through or until the tide changes.”

Nazor is the second Chattanoogan in as many years to attempt a swimming task most would describe as zany. Last year, former McCallie School and University of Georgia swimmer Jimmy Welborn won a 24-mile swim around Tampa Bay.

Welborn was 52 years old and went a longer distance, but he believes Nazor may have the tougher test.

“She will be in cold, cold, cold water, and I don’t do cold water,” Welborn said. “Another difference is that I knew mine was on a Saturday, so I went down there two or three days early and got ready. They go over to the English Channel and can stay up to a week or 10 days and may have to sit around, so she has to stay mentally ready and eat the proper foods for six or seven days.

“That would be like changing the Super Bowl the night before the game and saying it will happen the next day or the day after that. The mental part, to me, would be the hardest part.”

According to the Channel Swimming Association, England’s Matthew Webb was the first to swim the channel in 1875, accomplishing the feat in 21 hours, 45 minutes. Since then, nearly 800 swimmers have made it from England to France.

In 1994, Chad Hundeby of the United States set a record of 7:17.

Nazor has been accepting pledges for her swim, with proceeds going to the Wounded Warrior Project. The nonprofit organization’s national spokesman, Jeremy Feldbusch, was blinded while fighting in Iraq in 2003.

She is leaving with family members from Chattanooga on July 5 and will be back July 19. She will return as someone who swam the English Channel or gave it her best shot and couldn’t.

Either way, it will be a Chattanooga first.

“Her determination is really neat to see,” Woods said. “As a coach, you always want your athletes as excited about training as whatever they are attempting, and she’s got it. She smiles every time she talks about it, and when you think about what she’s actually going to have to do, you realize that’s some kind of determination and one unique person.”

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