This is a question I am regularly asked by my friends and colleagues when I mention that I do open water swimming, so maybe I should answer it.

 

I decided to enter the Great swims in December 2010, my sister who is a very good swimmer had competed in 2008 without a wet suit and had entered in 2009 but there had been Blue Green Algae problems which meant the swims where cancelled and when she said she was going to do the Great North Swim in 2010 I decided that I should enter and try to finish close enough to her to claim a moral victory.  Helen is an ex European champion at 14km open water I swam sprints at Hull and District.

 

So in January 2010 with a fresh hangover and a rather cavalier session on the Internet signing up for all five swims I found the local swimming pool and started training.  My first swim was a Monday which is lane swimming at Thame pool, I arrived with some serious worries how good would the other swimmers be, could I still do any proper swimming and how did the lane swimming etiquette work in the south?

 

Just before I talk about actual swimming a quick primer on swimming terms, swimmers talk about doing sets of a distance normally a multiple of 100 which is four lengths in a 25m pool and we swim off a time i.e. 2:30 which means you set off at 0 on your first swim and when you have finished the distance you get the remainder of the time to rest, finally we have a percentage this is the amount of effort you put into the swim.

 

So 4x100 off 2:30 @ 90% means swim four lengths hard and get your rest out of the two and a half minutes allocated for each 100m.

 

I found a lane that was going at my pace and set off on a set of 100m @80% to get an idea of my fitness and ability and it turned out that my fitness level was about 0 and my stroke had turned into something horrible.  I remember getting to my ninth set and feeling like my head was going to explode and my arms were going to fall off.

 

Somehow I made myself keep going and by the end of April I was doing nearly 2.5k in an hour in sets of 400m I had to make sure I got the full hour in the pool or I would get annoyingly close and then the pool closed.

 

After Easter the pool at the school I work at opened so I could swim there whenever I wanted which allowed me to increase the amount of swimming I did without any excuses about petrol and opening times and I tried to get in the pool five times a week and do some different things like T Shirt training (swimming in a t shirt for the extra drag) I can't say I managed 5 times a week every week but I did up my pool time.

 

I took the first Monday of April off work and went to London to buy a wetsuit, the trains and underground tried their hardest to stop me but I go in to town and up to Bike and Run in East Finchley and tried on several wet suits which to be honest isn't much fun but I got some good advice, a wet suit and some wet suit glue which has come in very handy this year.

 

Then the first big day arrived 15th May and the Great Salford Swim.  This was the easiest swim to find although the parking was expensive, the changing areas where also the best of the year with lots of room a proper floor and good heating.  So here I stand in a wet suit I have only swam in once, in my first open water event and the first time I have completed in swimming since the 1998 Student long course nationals in Leeds.  The weather was unpleasant all day with cold temps and incessant drizzle but at least it made the 14 degree water seem warmer.  I was in the last wave of the day at 4:30 so I had had a chance to see how everything worked and where to swim etc.

 

The Salford Quays swim is the most interesting of the series going round one dock through a canal and round a second dock, unfortunately I set off too fast and had problems with my wet suit neck grabbing at my throat or at least that is what it felt like and I ended up doing nearly half the swim breaststroke but I finished in a time of 35:17 so I was happy with that and the lessons I had learnt.

 

Over the next 3 weeks I worked on swimming with something grabbing my neck and pacing myself so on the 11th June when I arrived at Alton Water for the Great East Swim I was quietly confident.  The weather was much warmer and dryer, so I had a better look round the event village which was very nice but didn't have much connection to swimming. Remembering the problems I pacing myself in Salford I started further back in the pack as everyone is timed individually there is no advantage in starting at the front, the Alton Water course was an oval in the centre of the reservoir so as I set off into the middle of the lake overtaking people on the left and right everything was great but as I rounded the 400m buoy the pack had thinned out and I started to get lost!

 

I now know that when I swim I tend to drift to the left and as I correct I tend to over correct and head off to the right so I ended up doing about 10 strokes front crawl then two breaststroke to get myself back on course.  I finished about 10th in my wave in a time of 31:10 which was much better than Salford but I had hoped to come in under 30 mins as I could by now do a mile in about 26 mins in the pool.

 

The next weekend 18th June I went to Windermere with Helen her husband and friends to swim at Britain's largest open water swimming event, unfortunately Helen had an injury and could not swim.  We arrived in Bowness two hours before my swim to get the ferry up the lake and a 15 min walk to the event village which was all a bit cramped and the changing areas were tiny.  I had a much better swim starting at the back and finishing in 30:37 which I would have improved on if I had not got lost at about 1000m.

 

Between Windermere and London on the 2nd July I nailed my training with some distance work, sprint work and a proper taper which is where you lessen your training before an event and I felt very confident going to London on the Friday night.  In London I met my friend Steph Troake and some of her friends who were also swimming on the next day, I think I scared them when we discussed our target times and I said under 30 mins while they were all aiming for about one hour.

 

The following morning dawned clear and hot with a water temp of 16 degrees and an air temp in the high 20's.  After some problems meeting up and getting all our kit together the five of us where ready and waiting for the starter, again I set off from the back with only 2 people behind me and worked my way through the field.  

 

The water in the Royal Victoria Dock is very dark and I could not see the swimmers I was catching up so I was forced to do more head up swimming than I would have liked but the dark water gets very warm and at the halfway mark I was starting to wish I had a shorty wetsuit.  As the event is in a dock I had no problems with veering off course and I even managed a sprint finish to get a time of 29:39.  I also got sun burnt across my shoulders waiting for everyone else to finish but everyone did a time under 1 hour 10 mins and we were all happy with our performances.

 

The next event was the Great Scottish Swim on the 24th September however between the 22nd of July and the 4th September I went to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to work at ZOO venues as the General Manager which does not leave a lot of time for swimming between the early mornings, late nights, take away food and some drinking.  

 

The Great Scottish swim was going to be a 2km swim down Strathclyde Loch but at the beginning of the week with the water temp at 12 degrees the organisers shortened the event to one mile and with all the fitness I had lost over the summer I was not disappointed.  

 

Getting to Glasgow from Buckinghamshire is quite a trek and I deputised my parents to help.  I left work at 3:30 on Friday answering lots of questions about why I carrying a wet suit and being asked the very question that started this blog, I got to Tadcaster at about 6:00 where I met my parents at one of their friends' houses and we set off for Scotland and at about 10:00 we got to Moffat where we stayed the night in a Cottage behind a Hotel.

 

When we had all looked round the cottage we collapsed in front of the TV and watched all the Rugby highlights and build up possible and then went to bed.  The following morning was an early start to watch more Rugby and then to the Hotel for a disappointing "Full Scottish" breakfast which was sadly missing haggis and tattie scone, but we hit the road with breakfast inside us.

 

Strathclyde Country Park is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in south east Scotland and it was no let down when set up for a large event even providing indoor toilets which is always a winner.  I had entered a wave straight after the elite swimmers so I would miss catching people from earlier waves in the last third of the swim which I had always found to be good for my motivation, I am not sure how good it is for a fun swimmer to be nearly finished and have 20 or 30 club level swimmers pound past them.

 

Before the swim I had a quick acclimatisation dip and the water was freezing, you could hear 300 people thinking "what am I doing" and "Bugger me it's cold" but when I got out and the TV presenter asked me what I thought of the water I just smiled and said "it's fresh, should make for a fast time".  It was worse because the weather was beautiful with a very hot sun making it uncomfortable to stand around in a wet suit.    

 

Again I set off at the back of the pack and worked my way forward getting used to the cold water as I went.  I had the worst problems with getting off course I have ever had at one point on the third 400 I over took one swimmer 3 times and then veered off course because my goggles where fogging up and I was trying not to do any breaststroke I had to be pointed back on course twice by the safety boats as I going off at a tangent but I finished in 32:01 which was just outside my target of under 32 but as I got so lost I probably swam an extra 100m.

 

When I finished I could not find my parents and I had to look for them for about 5 mins before I found them starting to worry about where I had got to, mum claims that because everyone was wearing a wet suit and the same coloured hat she had to look for swimmers with beards but then she realised that with the water being so cold over half the swimmers had neoprene hats which have chin straps so she could not tell who had a beard and who was wearing a hat, Dad said she should get her eyes tested.

 

At the end of the swimming calendar I am starting to get ready for next year when I hope to go under 25 mins so I am at the pool at least twice a week and am actually seriously contemplating joining the local swimming club so I can do some morning training, either the swimming bug has bitten me again or I need a padded room.

 

Reading back through this I realise that I have not answered the question and I don't think I can I have always enjoyed swimming and I much prefer length bashing to almost every other form of exercise I can think of, so why not dive in the big scary looking lake and swim in circles?  

Why would you want to swim a mile in freezing dirty water?