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Staff writer
After a long hot summer day at the Anoka Aquatic Center last week, Jordan Jelmeland convinced a handful of her fellow lifeguards to stay with her in the water after the pool closed, just to play around and “see how it felt to bounce between the walls.”
You see, during the past six months, Jelmeland had grown accustomed to swimming with the horizon her distant finish line and the lapping waves and rolling current her only stroke-for-stroke companion.
July 30, Jelmeland, a long-distance swimmer and part of the five-member Minneapolis YWCA Channel Challenge relay team, had completed two hour-long sprints in the 64-degree water, stroking her way across four miles of the 22-mile-wide English Channel.
While about 25 U.S. relay teams have crossed the Channel, the Minneapolis YWCA Channel Challenge Masters Relay Team is the first all-Minnesotan adult relay team to swim the Channel.
When Jelmeland finished her leg of the swim, a relay teammate dove off the team’s support vessel and swam the next two miles, each stroke of each Channel Challenge swimmer bringing them closer to the finish line: a sandy French beach lining the Cap Gris-Nez shoreline.
 Having returned home to Anoka less than 48 hours later, Jelmeland was still getting used to having her feet on the ground, let alone swimming within the tile and concrete boundaries of the local pool.
And so a few days after coming home from her Channel swim, as she had done so many times before when facing a new challenge or trying to sort things out, she dove into the water and, wrapped in its warm liquid embrace, swam a few laps and rode the waves to better understanding, letting the water carry her back to familiar territory.
“From the boat during the swim, you could see France, but when you’re in the water swimming, you see nothing but water. It’s the coolest thing,” Jelmeland said. “All I could see was water, the horizon, the sky. It’s the neatest thing in the whole world.”
It seems fitting that Jelmeland’s favorite view of the English Channel is that from within its waters. You see, to swim the English Channel has been a life-long dream of the Anoka swimmer.
“I’ve dreamed about this since I was eight years old,” Jelmeland said. “When I dove in, it hit me: This is it! I’m here! I’ve got to give it my all.”
And so she did, swimming at a faster pace than she had in all her training swims.
Jordan Jelmeland, Anoka, crossed the English Channel last month as part of the Minneapolis YWCA Channel Challenge swim team. (Photo courtesy of Jordan Jelmeland)
The YWCA Channel Challenge swim relay team trained for its historic swim in chilled indoor pools and in Lake Minnetonka and Lake Superior, getting the feel for the temperature and traffic of the English Channel.
Jelmeland and her Channel Challenge teammates arrived in Dover, England, July 22 but didn’t swim the Channel until more than one week later, as high wind and waves and scattered thunderstorms made the crossing attempt far too risky.
“When we got there, the local people were saying, ‘This is the worst weather we’ve had in a long time.’ So it wasn’t just that it looked bad to us. It was bad,” Jelmeland said.
The week-long delay may have been tougher to swallow if it weren’t for the hospitality, encouragement and understanding of the Dover folks.
“Channel swimmers come from all over to train in Dover Harbor,” Jelmeland said. “It’s like a big family of swimmers. To be there among those swimmers – some had swum the Channel many times, some had tried and failed, some were part of a relay team, one had crossed the Channel 30 times - to be there was so inspiring, it was like we had been swimming blind before we went there and met those people. Swimmers are a totally different breed of athlete,” she said.
Now that she’s crossed the English Channel as part of a relay team, Jelmeland’s next goal is to cross it solo.
But for now, she’ll teach and guard young swimmers at the Anoka Aquatic Center and at the Minneapolis YWCA while attending Anoka-Ramsey Community College. Next semester, she hopes to study abroad.
And, of course, whether bouncing between walls or stroking in the waters of one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes, she’ll swim.
Sue Austreng is at
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