Brrrrrrr!!

The weather has officially turned evil. All week fine weather. Thursday...it turns cold. Saturday, Sunday are freezing. Actually freezing with frost on the ground. And the forecast is saying that it will get warmer midweek but it will be cold again next weekend. That shouldn't be allowed!!

Saturday was a really beautiful day in Sandycove. The sky was blue and the sun was shining. And it was about 4 degrees C. A lovely day to sit in the car and look out at the sea, but not such a nice day to get into the water. I had been dreading the swim since Thursday when I heard that the weather was going to be so cold for the weekend. And getting up to frost on the ground Saturday morning didn't help matters! But I had arranged to meet Niall down there, plus I knew that if I didn't go down I'd have to face the pool which is full of parents and children on a Saturday afternoon-not such a fun time to be trying to get a decent session in! So off I went, with my car heater to keep me nice and warm and banish all cold thoughts on the way down!

I arrived in Sandycove to find Ger there, one of the Sandycove regulars. Niall arrived and measured the water temperature with his lab thermometer-it read at 9 degrees C, a degree colder than last weekend...it was to be expected though with the few cold days weather. We decided that we'd better get ready quickly before we talked ourselves out of it! So in we went...it was so, so cold...my feet and hands were numb just about immediately and it took a long time for me to get my breathing right...I was breathing every second stroke until I got to the first corner, normally I get into the rhythm of breathing every third stroke after about 30 or 40 strokes. And I thought the headache would never go away! But by the time I had rounded the first corner I started to get used to it, I kept my stroke rate high to keep warm and soon caught up with the two lads, who had left a couple of minutes before me.

The plan had been to swim two laps, or an hour if there was noone around to swim the second lap with. However, when I felt the cold as I got in I decided that an hour was out of the question. Mainly because I'm terrified of getting hypothermic. I don't mind the shivering or the numbness, or even the pain in my hands and feet when they get really cold. What I'm afraid of is the mental state that goes along with hypothermia-the confusion, the drowsiness-and the possibility of not realising that you are indeed hypothermic. It's a very dangerous state to be in if you're in open water. And the two lads were getting out after the lap, so I was going to be on my own after 30 minutes. So I decided that swimming back to the first corner again, then to the red house and back to the slip would be enough-it brought the swim up to 40minutes, which is about 2km...enough for 9 degree water I think!

I could get used to people handing me cups of tea when I get out of the water-yesterday it was Mike Harris, who recently had his knee replaced and was down to catch up with the goings-on of Sandycove-he misses the swimming but has to wait another few weeks yet before he can get in. It was good to see him and even better when he handed me hot tea!! So I drank that down, got a jumper on me and headed back to Actons. Unfortunately the hot tub wasn't working-apparently it was too cold outside for it to work properly!! So I had to make do with the steamroom-even that didn't get me warm fully though, I think because I was just so cold going in there. It took a few hours for me to really begin to feel warm again. But I guess that's to be expected when you swim in the sea for 40 minutes on a day when most people won't leave the house without a hat, scarf and gloves on!!!

Today was just as cold as yesterday. I was the only one mad enough to go down and swim today, so I took my mother and my dog, Fallon, along for the spin to make sure that I didn't freeze! Tides were at bad times this weekend-high tide today was around 6:30am and 7pm so the only times to swim were either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Early in the morning is not really an inviting option when there's still frost on the ground so 3:45pm it was. Unfortunately that meant that the sun had already gone down over the hills around Sandycove by the time I was getting in, so no bit of warmth even from that. So even though the water temperature was the same as yesterday, it felt much colder.

Having no company meant that I had to stay inside the island-whatever about the middle of summer, there was no way I was going around on my own on a cold winter's day! So I got in and swam up and down parallel to the island for a while. After 30minutes I decided I'd had enough-my hands were swelling up and quite sore and the sun was well and truly behind the hill at that stage so it was getting colder by the minute! And I knew that my poor mother was walking up and down the hill with Fallon, probably feeling the cold as much as I was!!!

Getting out was a challenge-the tide was still quite low, and my hands were very sore and more swollen than they've ever been getting out of the water I think. But I managed to crawl up the slip to the nice cosy towel that my mother had waiting for me! It was so nice to have the car warm when I got into it, normally I have to put up with those few minutes of cold air while I'm waiting for the heater to warm up! And to have someone drive me into Kinsale so I could keep my hands near the heater for the whole way in...I was spoilt! I don't know if it was that warming up or the fact that I stayed in for a shorter time, but I recovered much faster today than I did yesterday. I only spent about 10minutes in the steamroom today, but I was all warmed up by the time I was leaving Actons. It was nice not to feel cold for the evening!

All in all it was a good weekend's swimming...I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but I think that it was enough given the temperatures. I never thought I'd say it but I'm actually looking forward to getting back in the pool tomorrow, the extra 20degrees will be much appreciated! I'm sure that will only last a few minutes before I'm giving out about the heat again though :)

100 laps and counting...

Today was my 100-lap milestone in Sandycove, and what a day for it! It was cold (air was 6deg C), windy and raining-and very tempting not to get in at all! But Eilís had told me to try to get 2 laps in both days this weekend and there was no way that I was going to go up to her tomorrow and tell her that I didn't get in today because it was raining!!!

There were 8 of us down to swim, a good turnout for such an awful day. We all got dressed and ready to head in...and just as we were ready it started to lash rain...not a good start to the swim! I think that I got in today faster than I ever have before-mainly because I was hoping that it would be warmer in the water than it was standing on the slip (I was wrong about that one!). The water temperature was 10 or 11deg but felt colder-it took a while for me to get my breath, and I had a headache for the first few minutes. We had a lot of help from the wind and current out to the first corner and down to the second, where we regrouped. Finbarr was my only hope for a second lap, and he decided that instead of doing that he'd swim back towards the last guy in the group and make sure that he was ok and then just finish out the single lap. So I said that I'd join him and then do a triangle inside the island to make up the time to an hour. So back we went-we didn't have far to go though, he had nearly gotten to the corner at that stage. So we checked that he was ok and then went back in our original direction again.

By the time we had reached the front of the island I was getting pretty cold, so I had more or less decided that I'd swim to the first corner and then head back to the slip-that would be about 40mins in the water which I was figuring was good enough given the conditions. Finbarr had other ideas though. He decided that since we hadn't gone back very far at the second corner that he'd do the second lap...which I had written off in my mind at this stage!!! But I figured that my arms were still moving and not too numb...so I had no excuse not to go again! So we did...and by the time we got to the second corner again I was regretting not having gotten out...it was REALLY cold at this stage-much more so than yesterday, when we had done two laps and I had felt ok the whole time. Today I just wanted to be out of there. And the only way to do that was to put the head down and keep swimming. I started counting strokes to distract myself-I figured it was about 300 strokes from the second to the third corner, another 300 to the red house and then maybe another 200 to the slip. So I did the first 300, turned the corner...and once I could see the slip I basically kept my arms moving as fast as they would go to get me there! And then we got out to the welcoming sight of Niall MacCarthy with tea and chocolate...thanks Niall :) And of course then we headed to the hot tub in Actons to warm up...it does make it all worth it to sit in 38degree comfort...and it's so nice to not be cold for the rest of the evening too!

So all in all a good weekend's swimming-4 laps-59mins yesterday, 1hr 3mins today, in about 10deg C. And now that I've done my 100 laps I figure that I could take the rest of the year out of the cold sea...I'm not sure that Eilís will be agreeing with that one though!!

I'm still alive!

I know, I know...I haven't posted in ages. I've been spending less and less time online lately (anyone who knows me well knows that this is very strange for me!), I just don't have the time for it-any time I sit down at the computer I feel guilty if I'm not working on the PhD! It's a good thing though I'd suppose-I've gotten very good at being organised and managing my time, I never was very good at that. Now I have to be just to fit everything in!

So...updates on what I've been doing since I last posted. The biggest one I think is that I'm now training under my coach, Eilís Burns, who has trained 8 solo English Channel swimmers (all of whom successfully completed the swim) and is one of the top swimming coaches in Ireland. It took a lot of pressure off me to have her on board because now I just do what she tells me to do, I don't have to be trying to figure out if I'm training enough or too much or if I'm doing the right types of sessions-not that I ever knew what the right sessions were anyway really! Of course now I have the added pressure of not breaking her perfect record but I'll be trying pretty hard not to do that anyway-I'm not doing all this training to not make it across!

So that brings me to the worst part of having her on board-my diet. I have NEVER been a healthy eater. It's not like I ate take-out seven nights a week or anything, but I really like my chocolate and sweet things and junk food. Not any more. Meals are healthy, snacks are healthy, I'm eating more fruit for breakfast now than I did all day before this (which wouldn't be hard since I used to eat practically no fruit!) and I've actually started eating vegetables. Maybe all of this is normal to some of you, but I REALLY miss my junk food! I know that it's doing me good though, I'm feeling really good at the moment and I have tons more energy than I ever did before. But I'm so looking forward to Christmas when I have every intention of eating chocolate for a week solid!!!

Training itself is going really well, I'm swimming 5 or 6 days a week now with 1 or 2 of those sessions being in the sea. And yes, the sea is REALLY cold now, it's down to 9 or 10degrees C (depending on whose watch you look at!) and it's not really comfortable to be swimming in it any more. But I'm still managing a lap both days most weekends for now. The biggest problem is that the days are getting so much shorter so it's getting harder to find good swim times. We usually swim at high tide since that's when it's safest to swim at Sandycove. But when high tide is at 7am it's really hard to make yourself get up for a sea swim! I actually had one morning a few weeks ago when I had to defrost the car to go down for a swim-that's never a good sign! But I haven't been seriously hypothermic yet and the body does warm back up-it might take a few days but eventually you feel your toes again!!

I also have some news on the non-training side of things...I'm in the process of setting up a website so that I can put up a bit more info about things that are going on. I figure that if I write about it on here it might spur me on to get it finished and published-I've been working on it for quite a while now and I just need to finish it off and put it out there!!

So that's probably about it for updates for now I think...hopefully I should have some news on my charity in the next week or so (for all of you out there who are just dying to give me money!) so I'll post about that when it's sorted. Until then....

Sherkin to Baltimore

Last Sunday we had our last organised swim of the year...it was the Sherkin to Baltimore swim organised by Liz Buckley. I had never been to Baltimore before so it was all new to me-this whole swimming thing is doing wonders for my geography knowledge!

I headed down with my sister Sarah (who I had volunteered to help with timekeeping!) and we managed to only get lost once on the way (even with a gps telling me where to go that's a good record for me!!)! There was talk of a few people swimming out and back to the island so I was hoping to get there in time to join them (and the lazy part of me was hoping that I wouldn't!!). So we got down there for about 2pm, with the boat leaving for the island at 3pm. I went and registered and found Imelda and Ossi, who were leaving about 15minutes later to swim out, giving us plenty of time to cover the 2km distance before the others got out there. So I figured that since I was there in time, I really had no excuse not to do the extra distance!

I went and got myself ready and grabbed a towel to put in the kayak in case we were waiting around for a long time at the other side (the others were wearing wetsuits so it wasn't such a problem for them). And we set off. It was such a nice swim out-I love swimming with Imelda and Ossi because they swim just fast enough to push me and keep me on my toes (although when Imelda's in a wetsuit she could leave me for dead if she wanted to!). We weren't in a rush so we had a chance to look around and just enjoy the swim. We could feel the tide pushing against us-a good sign for when we were going to be coming back!

We got out to Sherkin in about 40mins, just as the boats carrying everyone else were starting to arrive. I thought that since everyone was arriving we'd be heading off again soon, so I didn't bother getting my towel from the kayak-unfortunately though the kayakers needed to be briefed and that took a while, so by the time we were ready to start off I was shivering like mad-I was dying to get back in there to warm up again! I was in the second group of people to start, thankfully there was only 90secs between the starts though.

The start was absolute mayhem-there were 52 people swimming altogether, with most of them in my group. And most of them were triathletes who are used to high-contact swimming races! I wanted to sprint a little at the start to warm myself up, but I soon found out that if I did, I'd just keep getting kicked in the face...so after a few of those kicks I figured I'd just hang back and let them off-I was in no rush to get in in first place!! I warmed up pretty quickly once I got going anyway.

It was a totally different swim on the way back-there was no looking around and admiring the scenery this time around! I found some people ahead of me to follow and just tried to stay behind them for the way across-I know how bad my own navigation skills are!!

I came across a swimmer who was stopped at one point and I stopped to check if he was ok-it turns out he was only fixing his goggles, but he seemed really surprised that I stopped to check on him-I don't understand that-why would anyone keep going if they suspect that someone is in trouble? By his reaction I guess he wouldn't have stopped if it had been the other way round. Some people take these races WAY too seriously!!!

I managed to pick my way around the boats near the end-that's always the part I hate most-at almost every slipway there are always boats parked and I'm always afraid I'll go head first into one of them! But thankfully I didn't this time and I managed to make my way to the slip to finish the swim. The second half of the swim took 35mins so a little faster but we had some tidal assistance I think so it may just have been that.

As usual I headed straight off to get changed after and get myself warm before joining everyone in the pub for drinks and then pizza. It was a nice end to a really fun swim. I was glad that I'd done the swim both ways, it made it feel like the journey was worth it-a 2hr journey is a long way to travel for a 2km swim!! But for 4km it's not so bad. A big thank-you to Imelda and Ossi for swimming out with me and to Derek for kayaking for it-without a kayaker we couldn't have done it.

It was the perfect end to a great swim season-let's hope that I'll manage to fit in some of the swims next year around my other training! From now on it's the pool during the week and Sandycove just at weekends...training starts for real now!

Blackrock to Cobh 2008

Last Sunday I had my last long race of the season...a 12.5km (flow assisted and tide assisted!) river swim from Blackrock (my home town!) to Cobh island. I was very excited about the swim when I first signed up for it a couple of months back, I was really looking forward to swimming past all of the local landmarks that I had seen from a rowing boat many times in the past! But as the day grew closer I looked forward to it less-I remembered how much I don't really enjoy swimming in fresh water (it's much more murky and less pleasant than the sea) and how much nicer it would be to be down in Sandycove doing three or four laps instead as we've often done on a Sunday morning recently. And then the night before it was rainy and windy as I went to sleep, it sounded like it was going to be a horrible night-not very promising for the day ahead!

But it turned out quite the opposite-it seems that the storm blew itself out overnight and I woke up to a lovely bright, sunny morning, which made me more optimistic about the swim! I headed down to Blackrock village where there was already a good group of people gathered. The big question on everyone's lips-how cold was the water? I was just hoping that it was about the same as Sandycove at around 13 or 14 degrees, anything much lower than that and I knew that I'd be uncomfortable for such a long swim. But we were assured that it had been measured at 14, both in Blackrock and in Cobh, so no need to worry!

All of us listen attentively to the safety briefing!

We had our safety briefing which included a description of the course-which totally went over my head because my geography is so bad! But I just hoped that my kayaker had a better idea than me-I didn't intend to do any navigating at all besides trying to stay in the flow as much as possible to make it easier!

My mother looks frozen as she waits for us to head off!

The start was handicapped (faster people start later to kinda give everyone an equal chance of getting in first) with four starts, each 10 minutes apart. I was in the second group to start, so once the first group headed off I headed off to get myself ready. Then there was the big decision-do I want to jump in or wade in? We had been advised to jump because of the possibility of glass on the slip but I decided that I'd take my chances with the glass and give myself a couple of minutes to get used to the water while we were waiting to start!

A crowded start

The 10-minute mark came quickly and we headed off-I think ours was the biggest group, there were 9 or 10 people all starting at once, so between all of us, the kayakers and the boats scattered around the place, the first few minutes were mayhem! But we soon spread out, found our kayakers and headed off at our own pace. I was pleased to find that the water wasn't as murky as I had thought it was going to be-it was actually quite pleasant, like the sea on one of the not-so-clear days. I didn't want it to be too clear since I didn't really want to see what was under me!

As we swam down towards the castle, I fell into pace with Jen Hurley, who's training for the 19km Rottnest Channel swim in February. It's always nice to have someone to swim with, it makes it easier to keep the pace up and I'm sure that it's nicer for the kayakers to have someone to chat to too! We passed by Blackrock Castle and headed down towards Loughmahon. By the time we were in line with MahonPoint shopping centre, 45mins had gone by and it was time for my first feed stop. I was having warm High5-the same drink that I'd had on the Inishbofin swim, but this time it wasn't going down so well-I was gagging on it and it didn't go down well. I need to find a replacement, but I knew that anyway-High5 has electrolytes in it and when used for a long period of time these can cause an electrolyte imbalance in the body which will cause sickness, apparently it's better to use a pure carbohydrate drink and just take electrolytes every few hours-so it's time for me to go and order some Maxim I think.

So after the first feed stop I was basically lost-my geography is useless, I knew the Blackrock/Mahon area because I've lived there all my life, but once we passed Rochestown I had no idea what was coming next! So I just trusted that my kayaker would know where we were going and I figured that the river would eventually take us to Cobh anyway!

It turned out that the next town we were coming to was Passage. As we got into Passage the river got narrower so the flow got much stronger and made swimming much easier. Unfortunately it made navigation that much harder because we were moving faster and the kayak was being pushed by the flow-plus the fact that there were a whole load of small boats in the way-I thought I was definitely going to crash into a few of them! Thankfully I didn't, although I did hear afterwards of a couple of people who did! I stopped for my second feed at that stage, and as I was stopped I was still drifting down past the boats-it was a great feeling to be still making progress and not having to put any effort in!

My next big adventure was passing the Rushbrooke ferry-there's a ferry that brings cars from the Passage side of the river across to the Cobh side and back, and our big warning that morning was "do NOT race the ferry-you will not beat it!"...so basically, we were to keep out of its way! So I spent about half an hour watching for the ferry (as I said, my geography is useless!). And then I saw it-taking off from the other side and heading towards us. At the same time one of our safety boats passed us going upstream and didn't seem worried about where we were, and my kayaker was still going forwards, so I kept swimming. But I could see it coming closer and it seemed to be coming straight for us and I was really getting quite worried that I was going to end up under it at this stage! So...very stupidly...I stopped to shout at my kayaker to make sure that we were actually going to make it-not realising that the place that I stopped was the very place that the ferry was heading for! He was very calm and told me that yes, we were fine and to just keep on swimming. So I put my head down and swam as fast as I could until I saw the ferry swing back towards Passage and I could see then that we were well out of its path. Big lesson there though-don't stop in the path of a big huge boat that could potentially kill you! And another big lesson-trust your kayaker...that's a hard one for me because I like to know exactly where I am and exactly where I'm aiming for. I don't like following someone without being totally sure that I'm going in the right direction. But I just need to get used to the fact that they can see a lot further ahead than I can from the water!

After all that drama and a big apology from me to my kayaker for being so silly, we continued on down the river towards Monkstown. At this stage the river opened back up and we needed to cross the channel to head towards Cobh. This was a more difficult task than we imagined as, just as we were getting to the point where we were supposed to cross, the river suddenly got busy and we had a number of large fishing trawlers heading out of the harbour. Since I didn't really feel like racing any more ships(!), we waited until they had gone, and then, with perfect timing, one of the safety boats appeared and told us that there was nothing due for a while so we could head across.

At this stage I could see Cobh harbour in the distance, but I'd been warned by a few people that did the swim last year that it was further away than it looked! I had my last feed and decided to stop trying to figure out where the end was and to just keep swimming and following my kayaker. We passed a stony beach and I could see some people looking at us-I thought that it was just some people out for a walk curiously looking at these people swimming past, but it turned out that it was my grandparents who had come down to see us as we finished! So I stopped for a couple of minutes, and then continued on only to see Ossi a few minutes later shouting encouragement! Having people on the bank like that always gives such a boost, it was great :) So then I figured I'd better start putting a bit more effort in since I was nearly done anyway...so I upped the pace a bit and soon the tugs that we were swimming towards were in sight...and so were the long line of seaweed-covered steps that we had to climb up!!

There was a great crowd at the finish-the good weather on a Sunday afternoon made sure of that! I hurried to get dressed before I got cold-it was such a nice day though that I warmed up quickly. We hung around and watched the rest of the swimmers finish (there weren't too many after me though!) and then headed for yummy soup and sandwiches to replenish any calories that we may have burned along the way (a very important task!)!!!

Tadhg is trying to get every bit of warmth from his cup of tea!

It was a really enjoyable swim-I was so glad afterwards that I did it...the water wasn't at all horrible the way I'd dreaded (much better than the Lee Swim even) and it was such a beautiful day for it. And of course I got to see some of the gang that I'd met from other swims over the summer, and a couple of new faces too which is always good!

The (approximate!) swim course

364 Days To Go

I just thought I'd mark the fact that my tides start a year from today (September 11-16th, 2009)! I can't believe that this time next year there will be 4 of us from Cork sitting in the Varne Ridge caravan park waiting for call from our pilots, hoping that the weather will allow all of us to swim. It's going to be a hectic year trying to get all of the training but I'm enjoying it so far. So let's hope I feel the same way through the winter with those long pool sessions!

Inishbofin Swim

I know it's a long time since I've updated...I've had a lot of stuff going on recently-more than anything I've been trying to get plenty of time in the sea before it gets any colder than it has already and before college starts up again for real! So here goes about Inishbofin....

I traveled up on the Friday on my own unfortunately-I couldn't carpool with the others since I was going to be heading to the airport to head to Dover on the way home on Sunday. So I got up in the evening to find that everyone else was already there and had had a quick swim-the water looked lovely and calm at that stage and we were just hoping that it would hold for Saturday so that we'd be able to swim to the island. We went for dinner that evening which was lovely, there was a big group of us including Ned, Niall, Julieann (who's also signed up to swim the Channel next summer), Eddie (who had just swum the Channel and was full of useful advice!) and his wife Nora, Graeme (who swam the Channel last year) and a few others who were sitting too far down the table for me to remember! It was a lovely dinner-I think Ned totally confused the waitress by asking for just a big bowl of plain pasta for the table-I'm sure that they don't get that as an everyday request!

When we left to head back to the B&B afterwards the weather had changed for the worse. It was drizzling rain and the wind had started to come up. Through the night I could hear the wind howling through the window, which was not a good sign for the swim! We got up to a dry morning the following morning, and it seemed to be much calmer than the night before. We had breakfast (which consisted of huge bowls of porridge along with cereal and eggs and much encouraging from Ned to eat it all-I thought I'd never be able to get up after all the food!), got ourselves ready to go and headed down to meet Martin Cullen who had traveled over from the island that morning.

Unfortunately he had bad news for us. He had decided that, for safety reasons, it would be too risky to swim from Cleggan to Inishbofin. So it was decided that we would head out on the ferry and do four two-mile laps of Inishbofin harbour-the same distance but much safer. When the ferry was leaving Cleggan all seemed very calm-until we got outside the shelter of the land and then the ferry started lurching from side to side more and more and we realised why exactly Martin had made his decision! It was very rough out there and it would just have been too dangerous for both swimmers and kayakers.

When we got to Bofin, we were paired up with our kayakers, there were a couple more swimmers than kayakers so I was sharing a kayaker, Ann-Marie, with Sharon, who trains with Martin in Cavan. We were briefed on the course, which was basically a wide square from the slip out towards the mouth of the harbour, across and back down towards the slip. We then went and got ourselves ready to swim.

Starting out-I'm on the right with the orange cap-Ned and Julieann are off in front already!

13 of us began the swim around 12 noon. The first few minutes were mainly concerned with keeping together with Sharon and trying to find Ann-Marie but once the crowd had thinned out (in other words, the fast people had left us!!) we got into a rhythm. It was nice swimming up towards the harbour, we swam up past an old fort towards a white tower at the edge of the harbour which made it easy to see where we were aiming for!

(As an aside...the two photos below were both taken during the swim-notice the difference in the weather-talk about 4 seasons in one day-we had 4 seasons in 4 hours!!!)

The lovely views as we swam towards the mouth of the harbour

It was much rougher as we swam across the mouth of the harbour, it made it hard to see the buoy that we were swimming towards...thankfully Ann-Marie could see it! Swimming down towards the slip it got much calmer again and before we knew it we had a lap done and we were able to have a nice hot drink-I was starving even though I had thought I'd never be hungry again after that breakfast!!!

Rough water near the mouth of Inishbofin harbour

Sharon's plan was to do two laps, so when we came in after the second lap she was undecided as to whether or not to go again. Up until then I had not felt cold at all, but in the time we were waiting around while everyone was encouraging her to go again, I cooled down a lot and by the time she had decided to go for one more I was quite cold. I really needed to speed up to get warm again or this was going to be my final lap too. While most people tend to start off quickly and get slower, I tend to start off slowly and then build up...I don't know if that's me warming up or just speeding up as I get closer to the finish because I know then that I can get out of the water sooner! So when we were half way around and another kayaker showed up (some people doing 3 laps had finished at that stage) to keep Ann-Marie company, I decided to take that as an opportunity to up my speed a little and warm myself up. So unfortunately for Ann-Marie she was on her own with me again and the other kayaker stayed with Sharon as she finished out her final lap.

At this stage I wasn't sure how many people were still left swimming and if I was the last one doing 4 laps or not. So I figured I'd try to catch up with Niall, who I knew was maybe a quarter of a mile ahead of me-if I don't have something to aim for then I just get lazy! So I sped up to Niall and caught up with him close to the mouth of the harbour on our last lap. And I figured then I might as well keep going as fast as I could to get to the end-at this stage the weather was turning horrible and, while I didn't mind (or even notice) the rain, my poor kayaker (a different girl who had taken over from Ann-Marie at this stage) was getting soaked! I feel sorry for the people taking care of us at swimming events-they have the boring job of traveling around slowly (whether it's by boat or by kayak), in this case in circles, and then when the weather turns bad they're much more badly off than we are in the water! So I ended up doing that lap in about 55 minutes (the first lap had taken 1hr 10mins in comparison!)...I "sprinted" (my sprinting isn't very fast-especially when I've already swam 7 and a half miles!) between the old pier and the new pier at the end, thinking that it might take about 100 strokes-it took over 300-bad estimation! But while I was tired at the end, I still felt like I could have done more, so I guess that's a good sign.

As I came up the slip, Sharon came to meet me drinking a hot whiskey-I was glad to see that she had finished comfortably and was "sensibly" warming herself up! I got into the waiting ambulance-the local ambulance driver was very kindly spending his day transporting us to the community centre where we had showers and food waiting, so that was great! I had my shower, drank hot tea, had yummy cookies and chatted to the others who were all nicely warmed up at that stage.

That evening we had a lovely dinner in the Dolphin Restaurant and then there was a presentation with a prize for everyone who took part, which I thought was really nice. Julieann had finished first in a time of 2hrs 58mins in what was her longest sea swim to date, which was an amazing achievement. And Ned came in soon after at 3hrs 7mins. I completed the 8 miles in 4hrs 23mins which I was happy with. 9 of us in total completed the 4 laps, and 4 people did 3 laps. And we mustn't forget Eddie, who did a lap to "loosen out" after his Channel swim 3 weeks previously! For most of us it was our longest sea swim to date. The night of chatting afterwards did some good too-we have at least one swimmer, Breccene Ennis, who has since announced plans to do a Channel swim in 2010, another person to join us Channel aspirants!

All in all it was a fabulous swim-it was disappointing that we couldn't swim from the mainland but swimming is always weather-dependent and we were lucky in this case to have a safe alternative where we could do the equivalent distance. I met some great people, and I'm sure that I'll be seeing some of them in the coming year as I train.

I want to say a huge thank you to Martin Cullen, who organised the who swim so well, to Graeme who harassed us to keep swimming after each lap, to all of the boat crew and kayakers who made the swim possible, to the ambulance driver who gave up his day to drive us around and to anyone else who helped with organisation. I'm looking forward to next year's swim already!