The End of another Epic year
As 2015 draws to and end and Christmas and new year looms on the horizon to engulf us with Fun, family, food and frolics, it is a good time to reflect on the trials and tribulations that the year has had for us. It has been an interesting year with many of the above.
All in all I can say it has been a trying year but, with adversity comes growth and there has been a fair amount of that on many fronts, I won’t bore you with the negative.let’s start at the beginning, or rather a little bit further back into 2014. The pod of hippos grew and another two joined the Hippo Highway. Now we are three. Zimhippo, Slimhippo and Harryhippo. I have no idea what possessed the Slimhippo to agree to kayaking 42 miles in Arizona but she did. One small issue, she has not kayaked much – if at all – before.
Roll on a crash course in kayaking, thanks to the very kind neighbour who lent us her kayaks to carry out said crash course. It saw the Slimhippo brave the depths of Winter in the UK kayaking down the Rivers in 3 degree water often fighting against a very lazy wind (So lazy, it goes straight through you. Not around you). Not satisfied with spending hours on – or in – the river, freezing her backside off, she then decided that she needed to perfect the art of falling out of the kayak and getting back in – in January???? So off to the coast she went to willingly fall into water near on zero degrees celcius to practice this artform. And people call me Nuts!!!
The year then progressed and it was all hands on deck to plan a trip to Arizona. This is where Slimhippo really shone. I am not one to plan things in my life, Spontaneity and procrastination being my usual Modis operandi. Slimhippo basically took over all of this leaving me to plan one thing, the car hire. Even that, for me, was a big challenge and would not have been accomplished without the constant persuasion/duress from the Slimhippo. Another notable addition – that turned out to be my signature from the moment they made their appearance in a pub in Surrey – was my new improved drag shorts for swim training. Crocheted shorts!!!!
That is when I learnt never to challenge Vets. They have become a bit of a fixture in the open water Fraternity with most now knowing who is in Said shorts. Like my bright orange swimming costumes that stand out in a sea of black wetsuits, these shorts stand out when in ANY crowd in London
All in all, Arizona, Grand Canyon, Sedona, Philedelphia was a howling success. Howling being the operative word on the biggest swim day. To find out all about it please peruse this website for my daily blogs of the trip.
The Normal Grind
Then it was back to life as we know it. Work, play and recreation. We now had the whole summer ahead of us and took a few trips to Dover to assist in swimming events and also to meet up with nutcases from around the globe who share my passion and luckily got to get on board a tallship that just happened to be floating around Dover harbour.
Work for me being pretty uneventful and The Slimhippo jetting off around the globe following her Kitty passion to conventions in kitty care. About the middle of the year, she was offered a job in a cat only clinic and followed her passion becoming a permanent feature at the only Cat only clinic in London. It has had its challenges but she is still there. She has kept her hand in with the mutts as well by doing one day a week at her old place.
Even though I did not have many swims lined up, I kept up my swimming with my focus switching from endurance to try and chase my long and arduous task of improving my speed. Something that has eluded me for a LLLOONNGG while. I entered into shorter distance races and toward the end of the season, I managed to improve enough to swim an entire 3km race matching a friend and demon swimmer stroke for stroke until the last 100m when – I would like to say Etiquette took over and I let the lady go first – that is my story and I am sticking to it. Another event that I swam was a 10km at Bray lake where I finished 5th overall and was the first Non wetsuit by a country mile. Clocking a personal best over that distance.
As you can see, Swimming seems to take up a lot of my life nowadays and it is not because I am half decent at it or I love itchy skin from the chlorine, or I love immersing myself in water- cold or warm, for hours on end, the main reason I keep it up is that I have met some amazing people over this journey who have gone onto become friends and made my journey truly awesome. I would like to mention them all by name but, the list is pretty comprehensive and now traverses oceans and continents.
This brings me onto a final swim that the Hippos went and did, this time in Italy, on the south coast around an island. This swim took both me and Slimhippo way out of our comfort zones for different reasons. For me it was swimming in races over 1.8 and 6kms with 500 other swimmers. Not something I relish and not something I would call long distance swimming. More like World Wrestling Meets Open water drowning. It was still fun and we managed to meet up with other swimmers from around the globe and the lovely ladies from Sterling EQho came to Italy to bring a touch of South Africa to Spotorno.
For the slimhippo, it was probably her first time swimming in open water with me and also without a wetsuit. At first it was breath-taking for her – literally – but the fish and scenery below soon came to the rescue and she settled down into swimming along the coast watching the fish below us. I tried my best to find some jellyfish to sting her – although we did find some, not even they could bring themselves to sting her, The preferred my blubber to the leaness of the slimhippo. Next time Audra, we will try harder. You cannot call yourself an openwater swimmer until you have suffered from Hypothermia and jellyfish stings. Hypothermia you have sussed now.
All in all it has been an eventful year, made so by so many people who have gone out of their way to make it so, including my sponsors who help with my adventures and put this website together for me. My family who still believe in me and the friends that have followed us through this roller coaster ride that has been 2015. All one can hope for is health and wellbeing enough so that we can make the next year as rewarding and funfilled as the one just past.
Wishing all of you a fun, Family filled and festive break. For us, the rollercoaster continues with a trip down to the motherland. Probably our first trip this year which does not involve either work, swimming or kayaking. Leaving on the 26th to meet up with the slimhippo family in Durban South Africa and celebrate with a wedding coinciding with new year. I am sure it will be an awesome bash but I look forward to catching up with as many of you as possible in the years to come. Till then Have a ball
Love and best wishes for 2016
“The pod of Hippos”