Wittering mother who beat Covid twice will not give up after Channel swim attempt

The personal trainer spent a year training for the approximate 21 mile (32km) swim from England to France in order to inspire her 6-year-old son, Zeke, who has high functioning autism, not to give up of life.

She said: “When you see your child going through that, it breaks your heart. I wanted to show him why he shouldn’t give up on life.

That is why I am trying to raise £10,000 each for Young Minds and the National Autistic Society.

It’s important to help young people early so they can beome stronger, happier adults. So many people can feel like that but I want to show them that so much can come out of life when you don’t give up.”

This mentality helped Liesl through her training, which wasn’t without its challenges. Not only, did she have to contend with having to personal train herself during lockdown, when it was not possible to get to open water but she also had to fight the virus herself. Once in December to January and again over the course of six weeks from May to June. All of this took around 14 weeks off of her training, which was ordinarily supposed to be two years anyway.

Leisl completed the precess in one given her background growing up as a compettivie swimmer, which she did for 13 years in Arizona as well as working for Vivacity as a personal trainer.

She said: “I loved every minute of the expereince, even the training. My own attitude to personal training helped me to stay focused.

I always look for creative ways to help people and try to make it fun. From time to time, I’ll add comedy into the routines and try and make pople laugh during a really hard exercise and before they know it the time has flown by.

It was the first time I had done open water swimming so I was practising in a ten-foot pool in the garden, at Rutland Water and in Dover alongside my strength training, cardio and biking.

With her every step of the way was husband, Steve, who formed part of the support crew.

He said: “It was a lot of mixed feelings watching her swim. There was the trepidation that something could go wrong and knowing that I had to keep my eyes on her at all times to make sure that it didn’t. There were times when all I wanted to do was pull her out but that main emotion was admiration.

She was violently sick for the first five hours, she wasn’t taking on the necessary fluids but then the overcame it and continued on like she had never been ill.”

Liesl did indeed battle on for 17 and a half hours, through twice swimming in darkness and multiple jelyfish stings to made it into French waters before being pulled out after showing signs of exhaustion and hypothermia.

She said: “I see it as a failure. I didn’t give up, it was my body. It does feel like a grieving process but if I had have carried on, anything could have happened, at the end of the day, I need to be around for my children.”

“It was a beautiful experience.’’