Save the Date!

Saturday 28 August is going to be our big fundraising night at Paddington RSL. Kick off is at 7pm, with trivia, entertainment and dancing until the early (ish) hours.

Put the date in your diaries and more details to follow soon.

Training update

Last Saturday was a four hour swim at Balmoral - down to 16.3 degrees when I got in at 7am, and the air temperature was just 8 degrees. A chilly start. The water felt fine, which I hope means that the acclimatisation is starting to have an effect. I only started to feel the cold once I stopped moving and on getting out of the water every 45 minutes for a feed.

The water was beautifully clear, with so many fish to keep us company, and spotting rays resting in the sand on the bottom helped pass the time.

Katya is obviously getting a taste for the colder water, managing over 1.5 hours to keep me company, and complaining this morning that the pool felt too warm! And Anna provides such entertainment value as her vaguely hypothermic delirium kicks in and she thinks it's at least 20 degrees. Thanks, Anna for 2.5 hours worth of company.

A killer set from Chad last night had me creaking in the pool this morning, and only a short 3.4 km swim as my shoulder flared up and I decided to rest it rather than aggravate it further. Part of me is really looking forward to when I can go back to just doing 3.4 km in a day...

A much better swim

This Saturday's swim at Balmoral was such a different experience from the previous week. It still took me an hour or so to settle down but once I did, I had a beautiful swim. The water was about 17 degrees, clear and flat. I saw a shovelnose ray lying on the sand, and I'm pretty sure I saw a small shark swim under me at one point, but it was only a little 3ft one. There's something quite distinctive about that tail movement when you see it that just makes your heart skip a beat...

The swim was just under three hours. Thanks to Anna & Duncan for the company.

Falling off the horse

I had such a bad swim - mentally - last Saturday that it really shook my confidence. I could have chosen to focus on the positive (ie. that even though it took me a long time to get in the water and start swimming, I did stick it out for 2 hours and 20 minutes) but when you're that tired, it just seems much worse.

But I always believe that (as cliched as it is) life is not so much about falling off the horse as making sure you get straight back on again. Which was why I was down at Clovelly this evening, alone on the beach in the dark and the cold, determined to get in and swim. The weather bureau's predicted 'dangerous surf conditions' were certainly looking ominous from the beach, as the waves crashed over the rock wall and churned up Clovelly.

It wasn't a long swim in what felt like a washing machine but it was a swim nonetheless - well outside of my comfort zone, and that's what counts.

The water was as filthy as ever I've known it in Sydney so it's a couple of echinacea tablets for dessert.

First colder swim

I had an unpleasant swim yesterday morning. I planned a three hour swim at Balmoral, as the water temperature in the harbour drops sooner than the temperature in the ocean. As the ocean is still a balmy 21 degrees, it's not helping my cold water preparation time.

I hadn't quite been prepared for how cool the water would feel, particularly after the torrential rain we've been having this last month. It was 17.5 degrees which was quite a drop from the 21 only a week ago. Consequently, the three hour swim didn't go quite as planned and it took me well over an hour to settle in. With the help of Anna, Katya, Duncan and Margie, however, who all kept me company, I managed to stick it out for 2 hours 20 mins, although I had had a big week in the pool and mentally was very tired.

Now I have to readjust the focus to be less on the distance and kilometres, and more on building up time in the colder water. Now it starts to get tough.

First longer training swim

Sunday 16 May

Well this was the first longer swim of the year. The plan was to swim from Watsons Bay in Sydney Harbour, out to the Heads and down the coastline to Bondi, a distance of 10km. I aimed to set off at 5.15am, to have another practice at swimming next to a boat in the dark, and also to make it to Bondi in time to meet the annual organised 10km South Head Roughwater Swim. We would then turn around and head back to Watsons Bay.

However, the weather had different plans. The day before there was a three metre southerly swell and I decided it would be too difficult (not to mention not much fun) for my support crew to battle in to that for at least four hours.

I made the decision not to go ahead with the two-way. I contemplated just doing the one-way from Bondi to Watsons Bay but wondered whether it would actually go ahead given the surf that would no doubt be crashing into Bondi.

I still wanted to have a longer swim so I met my paddlers, Anna and Margie, at Double Bay at 6.30am, with John on the support boat, and we set off on a four hour harbour swim. Conditions were pretty good - the water was clear (as clear as the harbour gets anyway) and very warm. We had a headwind for a couple of hours so it wasn't an easy swim, but a good way to loosen up for the longer swims to come this year.

Thanks very much to Margie and Anna for forgoing their Sunday morning lie-in and their support paddling, and to John for looking happy as anything up on the stern of the newly fixed boat.

PS. The South Head Roughwater did indeed go ahead after all - the surf wasn't too bad at Bondi and swimmers and paddlers made it out safely. And ironically enough, it wasn't the southerly swell pushing the swimmers north that was an issue, it was the strong current heading in the opposite direction that caused many swimmers to take much longer than anticipated. Well done to all who attempted it, and those who made it.