Last weekend was the 24 Hour Megaswim at the Olympic Pool at Homebush. The event runs from midday on the Saturday to midday on the Sunday. Teams can have up to 15 swimmers, with only one swimmer per team in the water at any one time.
Sea's the Limit club had two teams participating and the team I was on had 14 swimmers. Each person swam for 15 minutes, and then had 45 minutes rest, then back in for 15 minutes, and so on for a certain number of hours. All our swimmers did at least five hours, and some did a stint on the Saturday before coming back for another session on the Sunday.
The main point of the event was as a fundraiser for MS Australia. Our team managed to raise $1,546.00.
There's a good chance in September that I'll have to get up in the early hours of the morning to get to the marina, probably having been too nervous to get much sleep beforehand, and then have to swim for several hours, so I also wanted to use the weekend as a training session. And so, I wanted to see how I would handle swimming whilst tired and physically running on empty, whilst still being safe in comfortable warm surroundings. And I was definitely running on empty by 6am!
My first swim was 7.45 - 8.00pm and I continued in that timeslot each hour until 8am. I managed 1 km in each 15 minute slot. I thought this pace might start to fade during the night, which I'm sure it did a bit, but by the morning, to my amazement, I seemed to be getting faster. Chad did point out though that I was probably helped by having had two days rest in the lead up because of a shoulder injury. Incredibly, the shoulder held out all through the night.
At 8am, Chad came back, followed by Anna and Millie. Amanda was rostered on again at 10am and Ben, who was due to finish at 10am, continued through until midday. So we had far more swimmers than we really needed and so dropped down to ten minute stints, followed by 200 metre sprints for the last hour.
The team racked up a fantastic 89.5 km over the 24 hours and there were some amazing achievements across both teams. Suzy was there for the whole 24 hours and swam an incredible 10.5 km on no sleep - and smiled all through the night. Katya, when not swimming laps in the event, was over in the public pool pounding out extra laps to notch up 10 km. Rodney & Bev knew the Sea's the Limit Rebels team were short of swimmers and did the unsightly shift of 2am - 8am (and brought pumpkin soup with them!) Others who covered off the night shifts were Mark, Pierre, Jacques, Margie and Ben. Thanks for your efforts. And thank you to Ben & Jo who drove me and my car home so I wouldn't wrap myself round a lamp post in my exhausted and delirious state.
Needless to say, after a long, hot shower, I slept the rest of Sunday, waking only to devour a fantastic roast dinner cooked by John, and then had another nine hours sleep.
It's a great event for MS Australia and a great atmosphere, and I hope very much we can put a team together again for next year. Although I don't think I'll feel any need to queue up to swim 17 hours again.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment