I surprise myself at times
Firstly, let me offer a big APOLOGY to all who followed my swims in SCAR. Since then my postings have been a bit sporadic – actually non-existent. There is a good reason for that. As my two major swims this year have been at the beginning – and one yet to come, I have not been doing a hell of a lot that is noteworthy for me to commit to a blog. Over the last couple of weeks, that has changed a bit and I now have a few things to write about. Most of the summer months have been spent following many of my friends on trackers around the world doing their amazing swims with me wishing I could be part of them, but I had my day RIGHT at the beginning of the season and will do again at some point. The list of amazing swims is by far too long to mention all by name and time but let me assure you, there have been some amazing swims out there and I doff my hat to all you amazing people.
In the interim I have been tiding myself over doing some baby swims and general training, or lack thereof, but recently I found a 10km swim that looked interesting so signed up for it knowing full well that I was totally unprepared to do that sort of swim justice. I could get through it but it would have been at glacial speed – or so I thought. So with 10 days to the event I decided to sign up and try and train for it. One training swim done, the weekend ahead held a trip to Dover where I believed I would get a bit of a swim in. Belief is a funny thing; especially when I have not been to Dover for a while, this, coinciding with the Dover Regatta, and meeting up with some great friends new and old, did not bode well for my training aspirations, especially when a certain Roger Finch and Facebook stalker extraordinaire Tracy Clark are involved
Well, as you can imagine, I did not get to see much of the water, unless it had an amber tinge to it and it was accompanied by various forms of carbohydrate and protein intake – not ones commonly associated with Long distance training.
After an awesome weekend catching up with the bunch it was back to London. Now with a 10 km only 5 days away and not a lot of training to my name, Monday I was unable to train, Tuesday working late was involved so that left only Wednesday for training as I was partaking in a 3km Race on Thursday and Friday was out as well. Oh well, If you have read my blog, I find myself in this situation on a pretty regular basis. I did a nice 3km on Wednesday and then Thursday was a race. I was a bit perplexed how they would fit it in with a usual starting time of 7.30Pm and dusk at about 8 pm. It so turns out that the start was 7 pm with anyone doing the 3km only being allowed if they can do it in under an hour. It was a small field of about 12 3km swimmers until My Nemesis in the water and all round Top lady – Vicky Milller arrived as we were about to start. So the stage was set for a good race.
We were off; one person took off quite quickly – they were only doing 1500m followed very closely by Vicky and Myself. I briefly got the edge on Vicky – albeit short lived at about the 15oom mark but apart from that her and I swam side by side matching each other stroke for stroke until about 2900m mark where she sprinted and I just did not have the legs or youthfulness to chase her down. So in the 3km race, Vicky won and I came in 8 seconds later to have two skin swimmers win the 3km mens and womans race. It was a great way to finish off the Shepperton Open water swim series. I could not have lost to a nicer swimmer.
10km at bray lakes
So Saturday morning arrives and as the start of this race is 6.30am —-Let me say that again 6.30am!!! Who on Earth starts a race at that time. Well, I woke a 3.30am due to nerves and various other anomalies. I managed to get some food into me as I was probably not going to feed during this 10km race so it was pretty important to get something inside of me, even if my stomach and body were still fast asleep. I then left the house at 4.45am to drive up to Bray lakes. It was odd not having my whole support team with me but in amongst the haze and darkness, I discovered that Harry had somehow made it into my car with a good luck card from The other Hippo. At least I would have some support.
I drove through the rain thinking – “You stupid git, temperature on my car reading 6 degrees celsius, who on earth is silly enough to be doing a swim in these conditions sans wetsuit?” The answer was sitting behind the steering wheel muttering to himself big time under his breath. By the time I arrived, the rain had subsided, it was still dark and I managed to get lost on the way there so was cursing much better.
Race Briefing was done at sunrise, we could hardly see the buoys but figured out the course. It was a bit of an odd course for the 10km with the route being 2 x 2km laps then 6 x 1km laps. It actually worked out pretty well. The water was a bit chillier than I had expected but there were a few other nutcases without wetsuits.
We were off, 3 wetsuiters went off and then there was me and two other wetsuiters. With the first lap being 2 km and I was in a 10km race, I just kept telling myself, “Swim your own race, Swim your own race” over and over. I was not going to be dragged into a sprint at this stage. After getting a bit lost and having to travel a bit further to one of the buoys that I nearly missed out, I got back to the start and looked down at my watch, 26 min 47 secs ——for 2km. I thought that is pretty impressive. I can easily do those time in a short course pool but it has – till right now – been an elusive pipe dream in open water. I thought oh well just keep doing what you doing and again we went another 2km time now 57min 36. Now I was getting very weirded out because I was ahead of schedule by about 2 and a half minutes. Oh well, just keep going.
We now entered into the 1 km laps. Thank God I had been timing myself. I lost count after about 2 but my times were still ahead of schedule and it was down to this that I managed to do the right distance. After about 6km, I overtook one guy who I had been with from the start and then another swimmer in a wetsuit who had been on my tail for the last 3km overtook me. For the next 4 km my times were extremely consistent lapping just under 14 mins/km. On about 7km lap, the one guys that had overtaken me stopped for a feed so I got ahead of him again. Now I had him on my tail.
As I had chosen not to feed on this 10km, I did not stop at all. This decision may have been my downfall to a degree. I was ahead of this guy and then at about 8.2km, something that has not happened to me for about 6 years happened, I got Cramp in my left calf muscle. I had to stop and sort that out before I could carry on. Sadly Mr wetsuit who was on my tail was now ahead of me. My stop had put paid to my time per lap and I was now over 15 min. I then got to the final lap and was still on to do a sub 2 hour 30 min 10 km. That time is something that has eluded me since I got into this sport 8 years ago. The fastest 10 km I have done is 2 hours 38 min. My surprise to be lapping at this pace was something I had not experienced.
Not wanting to jinx it, I slowed down just a bit with about 500m to go, I got another bout of Cramp which I had to stop and sort out; this was was a bit more severe so my stop was a bit longer. At this point, I lost another place. Eventually I was able to carry on but any form of sprint finish was now out with my legs dragging behind me with one foot at right angle to my leg to prevent the cramp recurring. If I pointed my foot at all, I would immediately feel the cramp coming on.
I finally rounded the last bouy and swam and walked the last 150m to the finish due to the shallowness. I finally stepped over the line in a personal best for me of 2 hours 29 min and 27 seconds. A whole 9 minutes faster than my previous best. No one was more surprised than myself. With the amount of training I had managed to do, I was expecting a time closer to 2.45.
The final results were 7th out of 33 starters, 2nd in the veteran Category and 1st in the non wetsuit category.
An interesting experience
Now, there is a lot of reference to my lack of training for a lot of my swims and I would like to share my thoughts and theories on this.
THESE HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS WHATSOEVER
I am often asked how long it takes to train for these swims. Since I entered this game 8 years ago, I have always been acutely aware of how little I train in comparison to others who are doing similar swims. For the channel, my average weekly swimming was 15 – 20km whilst others were doing closer to 50 km a week. For me, this trend has not changed. I am still baffled by how much training people do. Apart from my first swim, when I did 3 back to back 7 hour and 6 hour swims on Saturday and Sunday. Basically, I followed exactly what Freda told me to do and about 15km a week.
My first swim was a success and all my subsequent ultra distance swims have been. The difference is the swims in the last 3 years have been done with my standard 15 – 20km per week minus the big 6 and 7 hour training swims. The difference is nowadays, I prefer a method discussed with me by the oldest man to swim the channel – Otto Thaning. He also does not do big distance training but he advocates shorter REGULAR swims. I find this much easier to fit into my lifestyle. I can do 1 – 1.5 hour (3 – 5Km) swims most days but to find the time to do a 7 hour swim is frankly VERY time-consuming and Boring.
I know I can do the distance, I know how my body will react and generally when it will start playing games with me – thanks to the 7 hour swims and the multitude of 8 – 12 hour swims I have done in competition. I would rather arrive at the start of a big swim in good shape rather than be carrying an injury from training. I would sum it up like this. take your car. You may get 400 miles to a tank of fuel, this does not change. You now have two choices, drive until the tank is empty and then put £60 of fuel in it OR, put in £5 a day, Your car does not care, it will always be able to do the same distance on a tank of fuel, how you fill it up is immaterial.
I do not claim this method will work for everyone but I know a fair amount of people who now use this style rather than push the big distance, I leave those until I need to do them, I see no point in doing loads of BIG swims in training UNLESS you are just getting into this game. You have to do the time to realise where your limits are and also how your body will react.
Feeding
Again, this is somewhere that I do not go by any information apart from what I know works for me. There are not many people who I know will undertake a 10 km without any feeding plan. I suppose it depends whether you talking to triathletes or Endurance swimmers. This does tie into the speed it will take me to do a swim of that distance. When I was learning how to feed on long swims, my first feed was always at the 2 hour mark. then hourly after that. My 10 km is between 2.30 – 2.45. This is the reason I do not feed as it is only 30 min to the end of the race. As you can see from the blog above, that might have been the reason that I started getting cramps when I have never had them. The culmination of not eating correctly before a race and NOT feeding during. Again, no scientific basis just my own experience. For what it is worth. It might be useful to someone out there.
Role on Italy
Now, next stop Italy for the Swim the Island race in just over a month. I think I will try to keep up the training as I have been invited as an Elite swimmer. Weird as I have never ever considered myself fast enough to be in an elite group, getting faster is one thing that has eluded me for a long time. It seems some people think I have a bit of speed in me yet.
I am looking forward to again meeting old and new people from this wonderful world I am a part of. Big difference here is, instead of 40 – 100 people on the start line, there will e more like 700. Could be an interesting start but fun all the same
Happy swimming and if not, just enjoy life