Meet The Author: Sarah Thomas, “The After Drop”

Swimmer’s big comeback proves cancer didn’t destroy her

When Sarah Thomas, a then-37-year-old healthcare recruiter from Conifer, Colorado, stepped onto the beach at England’s Samphire Hoe in the early-morning hours of Sunday, Sept. 15, 2019, she felt she had something to prove.

“There were people out there that were like, ‘She can’t do this, this is impossible,’ so I was definitely feeling like I had something to prove and that cancer didn’t destroy me,” Thomas said. “This is what I love to do and we’re not going to let cancer take it away.”

Thomas had booked her historic four-way crossing of the English Channel in April of 2017. Seven months later, she found a lump. At first, she dismissed it as a cyst, but it didn’t go away. After getting a mammogram in November 2017, Thomas was diagnosed with Stage 2 triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of the disease.

During her cancer treatment, Thomas consistently swam three-to-four days a week, getting up in the morning before chemo appointments, since that was when she’d feel the best all week.

“The nurses were like, ‘your heart rate is 110 right now, why?’ and I was like ‘well, you know, I’ve been out of the pool for like 45 minutes,’” Thomas said.

Nine months of treatment later, including 16 rounds of chemo, a mastectomy and radiation, Thomas set her eyes on training for the English Channel four-way, a feat that had never before been accomplished. But everything about her stroke had changed, and she had massive muscle and endurance to rebuild.

“I was out so much toward the end of treatment that when I got back in, I really had to learn how to swim again,” Thomas said. “I went into the English Channel knowing that I was not at my peak. It’s hard to go from Lake Champlain (Thomas’s 104.6-mile world record for the longest solo unassisted marathon swim) where I was the best physical fitness I’ve ever been, the strongest I’ve ever been, the greatest I’ll ever be, to then two years later when I know I’m not my greatest.”

Thomas and her crew needed at least two days of forecasted perfect weather in order to start the 54-hour journey, which is hard to come by in the English Channel. They waited for a week and a half, and the boat captain had even suggested rescheduling flights, before the weather suddenly shifted, and the swim began.

The weather held out for Thomas and her crew, and everything was going well enough until the start of the third lap. As they were making the turn back toward France, Thomas was overcome by a 6-hour-long fit of nausea and started vomiting every 15 minutes.

“They were very close to pulling me because they were like, ‘you cannot keep swimming and vomiting without having any hydration,’” Thomas recalled.

During that time, when she was “puking (her) brains out for six hours,” Thomas fantasized about crawling on that boat, getting wrapped in something warm, drinking hot chocolate and calling it quits.

“It’s really hard to fight that temptation because it’s right there,” Thomas said. “It’s 10 yards away for two days, and if I had enough and if I didn’t want to do this anymore, I could just go crawl on that boat.”

But her friend and pace swimmer, Elaine Howley, gave her some advice: just wait until the sun comes up; don’t make a decision now.

Thomas had anti-nausea medicine from her cancer treatment on the boat, which she had brought in case her mom needed it for sea sickness. After her crew tossed her some of the meds to take, Thomas trudged on through the night while the pills helped settle her restless stomach. In order to replenish lost calories, she started eating “excessive” amounts of M&Ms, she said.

After sunrise, Thomas had made a decision.

“The sun was up and I yelled up at everyone, ‘alright guys, we’re gonna make the final turn,’ even though there were still six hours to go until we got to France,” Thomas said.

Twelve years earlier, one of Thomas’s swimming teammates had talked her into signing up for a 10k race in Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins, her first open water experience. Back then, she said, she couldn’t fathom swimming a 10k nonstop.

But she gave it a try and “totally fell in love with it,” Thomas said. “The water was like 72 degrees, and I was freezing and I was sore for days afterward. I was like, ‘this is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.’ It’s exhilarating because you’re out in nature, seeing eagles fly over you and fish below you.”

But as Thomas and her crew were on the final length back to England, Thomas was hit with the not-so-invigorating reality of swimming in nature: how quickly tides can turn. The tide in the English Channel had shifted earlier than anticipated, causing Thomas to fall off course and swim even farther than planned.

After a grueling fourth lap, Thomas found solid land, crawling onto shore at Shakespeare Beach.

Now, Thomas is writing a book, called The After Drop, a memoir about her life and her journey through cancer and world-record swimming.

“I’ve wanted to write a book since I was in high school, if I’m being honest, but it wasn’t until after the English Channel when people were telling me I have to write a book about my story,” Thomas said. “I think when you add in the swimming and the cancer journey, it's kind of a powerful story. I think the things I’ve been through resonate with a lot of people. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to share my story in my own words.”

The name of her book is particularly special for Thomas. An after drop is a technical term for when after cold water swimming all the blood, which was condensed in your core to keep your organs warm, rushes back to your extremities once you are out of the water, causing you to shake.

“I was swimming this spring and thought that would be a good representation of my life,” Thomas said. “You go in, you’re swimming, you’re doing all of these hard things, you come out, you think you’re fine, and then life sometimes punches you in the gut and you’re shivering and shaking. But it’s a sign of growth, because every time you’re in cold water, you’re getting better and better and can go longer and farther in colder temperatures. It’s kind of a mirror for life: you do hard things, you hurt from it, then you grow.”

The After Drop is coming from CG Sports Publishing in 2023.