Doug McConnell and Don Macdonald

The English Channel Swim

Friends Doug McConnell and Don Macdonald, both of Barrington, are training to
swim the 21+ grueling miles of the English Channel in August of 2011. The
English Channel is one of the busiest commercial waterways in the world, with
ferries, freighters and fishing boats. Approximately 200 people attempt to swim
the English Channel each year, but only half complete it. In recent years, only
1,600 people have successfully made it across the channel. The English Channel
is considered the Mt. Everest for swimmers.

Doug McConnell
Doug McConnell, 53, began swimming competitively at age 7. His summers were
spent swimming on a park district team and during the winters, he swam with a
local YMCA team. When Doug competed in the Illinois High School State Meet, he
placed among the top 15 finishers during his junior and senior years. A walk-on
swimmer at the University of Illinois, he broke the varsity record in the 200 yard
butterfly as a freshman, and by the time he was a senior, he was captain of the
men’s team.

Swimming has always been a passion of Doug’s. Today, he is using his

experiences and love for swimming to make a difference to those affected by
ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Doug will be swimming in memory of his father, David, who passed away from
ALS in 2006 and in honor of the thousands of people throughout the world who
are currently living with the terminal disease. He is using this athletic challenge
to bring attention to ALS, and he has created a comprehensive effort titled “A
Long Swim.”

Through “A Long Swim,” Doug is pursuing his life-long dream of swimming across
the English Channel while also fundraising for scientific research programs at the
Les Turner ALS Research Laboratory at Northwestern University Feinberg School
of Medicine.

As owner of investment banking firm Halyard Capital Advisors, Doug balances

work, family and swimming. He lives in Barrington with wife Susan and their four
children.
Don Macdonald
Don Macdonald, 49, began swimming at age 5 in Goshen, Indiana. In high school
he was an individual state finalist and broke multiple swimming records that
stood for over ten years. Don’s competitive swimming continued at Indiana
University. Today, he is still ranked on United States Masters Swimming Top 10
list for all time records in Illinois for several backstroke events. Don began open
water swimming as a way to relax, but most of all to enjoy the people and
experiences while swimming from point A to point B.

As an adult with a full-time environmental and energy engineering career, father,

and husband, Don has had to make some adjustments to his swimming. His
progressive neck skeletal C 5-6-7 damage has required him to swim differently
than his college days to compensate for the near constant radiating pain.
However, this stroke technique change has actually enabled him to gradually
speed up as swims go longer and to tolerate cold water better since he can
balance carefully the energy to swim thousands of strokes with staying way.
Experiences such as these demonstrate Don’s resilience.

Resilience is exactly what Don wants to share with his adopted hometown of
Barrington, especially the students and parents of Barrington. He has a blog that
chronicles his journey not just in the pool or lake, but in life’s little experiences
that come with such an endeavor: www.one-stroke-at-a-time.blogspot.com. In
addition to “resilient living” by example, Don will be swimming The English
Channel to help raise funds for Social Emotional Learning programs for Barrington
220 students. One hundred percent of “One Stroke at a Time” donations will go
to these programs via the Barrington 220 Educational Foundation
(www.220foundation.org).

Don lives in Barrington with his wife, Jennifer, and daughter Rachel.

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