On a July morning at 3:30, Adam Grimm, covered from the neck down in Vaseline and wearing just a speedo, goggles and a swim cap, stepped into the water. The Vaseline was to protect him from the frigid waters that he would be spending the next 12 hours in as he swam from the southern shore of England to the north of France. During Grimm’s swim, he would face not only the cold temperature but also container ships, jellyfish, exhaustion and self-doubt.

However, he had already been through much worse before the swim even began.

Grimm, senior in horticulture and German, has always had an affinity for the water.

“By 4 years old, I was able to swim 25 yards,” Grimm said.

His talent propelled him into competitive swimming, beginning when he was between 5 and 6 years old. Grimm continued to swim competitively until he was 17, but by that time something had changed.

“When it came down to it, I was terrified of people finding out,” Grimm said in regards to his sexuality, which he’d been hiding for years.

At 14, Grimm said he knew he was a little different than most others his age and began to acknowledge the fact that he was gay. While his family and friends were receptive, Grimm said he was terrified that those who were not as close to him might find out.

While realizing his sexual preference, Grimm also began to display signs of depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, more commonly referred to as OCD. It was also at that time that Grimm began smoking.

“I was a heavy smoker, probably about [one-and-a-half] packs a day,” Grimm said.

For 10 years, from 14 to 24, Grimm said he was on a self-defeating path. Between his illnesses and hiding his sexuality, Grimm said he was battling with himself day in and day out.

Until he made the bet.

In 2006, one of Grimm’s personal friends bet him that he couldn’t quit smoking by Sept. 15. Putting his chips in, he accepted. When September rolled around, an orange glow could still be seen at the end of Grimm’s mouth on a daily basis, smoke rolling off of it. His friends wouldn’t have it though, and one of them chewed him out so royally that something clicked.

“I threw my cigarette down, put it out, and I was just done,” Grimm said.

Just like that, cold turkey, Grimm quit. It was then that things began to change. Grimm began to get on top of his depression and OCD, and by the time he was 26 years old, he had trained enough physically that he was doing triathlons.

The triathlons were rewarding but also reminded Grimm just how good of a swimmer he really was. When the three years of running and cycling began wearing down his body, Grimm decided to switch his focus to swimming.

As Grimm began swimming longer distances, his friends began to take notice.

“‘It’s quite impressive to get in the water and do nine miles,’ they’d say,” Grimm recalled.

It’s especially impressive considering each mile of swimming for Grimm equates to about three miles of running in terms of the effort and energy he has to expend.

In 2011 another suggestion, this time proposed by a family friend, got Grimm thinking once again about challenging himself more than ever before. The task? Swim the English Channel, a 21.7-mile stretch between England and France.

From 2011 to 2012, Grimm pondered the idea and eventually decided to pursue it that year. He trained for three years.

“I couldn’t find a place to train,” Grimm said in regard to his struggles when he began his training.

Once Grimm got in touch with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, the task of finding a place to do long, open-water swims was a nonissue. The DNR helped Grimm set up long swims at Big Creek State Park, which helped him to get acclimated to the distance he’d be swimming when attempting the channel. To confront the temperature issue, Grimm did 45-degree dips in Peterson Pit, which is located just north of Ames.

Brandon Carpenter, graduate student in horticulture and Grimm’s manager, helped Grimm prepare for the swim. Grimm said he couldn’t do the swim, let alone get close to it, without him.

At 3:30 a.m. on July 24, after just two hours of sleep because of a scheduling mishap, and wearing a speedo, goggles and swim cap due to regulations surrounding the swim, Grimm began the challenge which he’d been preparing for three years.

As he swam out of Samphire Hoe Country Park, located in Kent, England, Grimm followed a dinghy to a larger fishing vessel that would lead him onward to France.

Before Grimm had even made it out to the fishing boat, he said he’d run into a problem. Grimm’s goggles had been smeared with Vaseline, and when he tried to clean them off in the water, he ended up getting more of it inside the goggle lenses.

“I could just see the light of the fishing boat,” Grimm said, adding that he could barely see it in the morning darkness.

Vaseline wasn’t the only challenge Grimm encountered during the swim. He said the three biggest challenges he knew he’d have to face going in were the length of the swim, the frigid water temperatures and the psychological toil that comes with a swim like that of the English Channel.

Three hours in, Grimm hit the wall.

“My pace dropped, my morale dropped,” Grimm said.

Luckily for Grimm, the three-hour mark was also when he received his first energy gel, which he said was packed with caffeine and sugars to give his body a boost.

Another challenge Grimm faced that he knew about — but didn’t have any control over — were the jellyfish. Grimm began getting stung early on and said that in total he received an estimated 18 stings. The worst one came at the seven-hour mark when one hit him square in the face, tentacles first.

“I didn’t know if it was going to affect my breathing,” Grimm said, adding that the pain was horribly severe for the first five minutes but subsided dramatically 15 minutes after the sting.

After hours of swimming, including a point where he swam in a circle to avoid a ship that couldn’t stop for him, Grimm was just two miles from the French shore. By this time though, he was up against Mother Nature.

“The last few hours I was swimming back into the tides,” Grimm said.

With his pace dropping, and his rations running low, Grimm began to think that he couldn’t make it, but Carpenter knew he could. When Grimm called out to Carpenter with his woes, Carpenter had a rather aloof response.

“He just pretended he didn’t hear me,” Grimm said with a chuckle.

That unwillingness by his friend to let him give up helped Grimm move forward; it pushed him. And in a relatively short time, he had an epiphany.

“Two-hundred and fifty meters out, I knew I was going to finish,” Grimm said, adding that by that time he realized that the trees on the cliffs of the French shore were actually people watching.

After touching the French shore, nearly 12.5 hours after he started, Grimm turned around and went back to the dinghy that was waiting to take him back to the fishing boat.

“Finishing the swim was a giant boost in self-confidence,” Grimm said.

From the depths of despair to a personal champion, Grimm made a complete turnaround in his life. The English Channel isn’t the capstone of his pursuits. Next summer, Grimm plans to attend the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, a 28.5-mile monster. He also is investigating swimming a 500-to-1,000 meter sprint just outside of St. Petersburg, Russia, in temperatures far lower than what he experienced in the channel.

For Grimm, finishing wasn’t just about tackling an obstacle.

“The channel was really coming to terms with my own life,” Grimm said in regard to the struggles of his past.

While his specific case is unique, Grimms hardships aren’t, and he believes people truly can overcome many of the obstacles that life deals them.

“Everybody has their challenges, but it doesn’t mean you can’t succeed in the areas you want to succeed in,” Grimm said.

Sometimes the hardships are what lead one to their greatest success.