More Congratulations

And I almost forgot....congratulations to the second Channel Swimmer of the summer from Cork....Eddie Irwin completed his swim on July 31st in 13hrs 47 mins. His swim was originally supposed to be in September but he was offered the slot at the end of July and went for it...good choice...now he has two months less of training! Well done Eddie!

A Proper Update...

The one time I'm half way through a big long post and Firefox goes and crashes and loses it and Blogger hasn't autosaved it....ick! Golden rule...save often! So here goes again...

I've been swimming lots since I came back from Madrid. Mostly all in Sandycove, in differing temperatures...it got nice for a while but has been feeling cold again the past week or so, my watch is telling me that it's back down at about 14degrees C now...I'm sure that I'll be wishing for that temperature when winter sets in, but for now I'd prefer it to go back to 16 or so!

I've had a few swimming firsts in the past few weeks. One of these was my first time swimming in the Lee Swim, which I have already posted about. Another first was a jellyfish sting...I knew it was gonna happen sometime, I've been dreading it for so long! A couple of weeks ago I was coming to the end of a lap with Tadhg and we stopped to chat for a minute about something and while we were chatting I got stung on the arm...that set me swimming again pretty fast...anything to get out of there!! It wasn't so bad though...so much so that by the time I'd gotten to the slip the pain was more or less gone. I've had one pretty bad sting since, it was on the inside of my forearm and it left me with long red marks, I assume from the tentacles. I was swimming for an hour after and by the time I got out it was still sore. In fact, about 5 minutes before the end of that swim I got stung again on my ear and between my knees (by the same jellyfish!) and by the time I'd gotten to the slip those stings were gone but the earlier one still hurt like hell. I guess it depends on the type of jellyfish or maybe the length of contact time. I've also gotten stung across my face, which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either. It would be a hell of a lot worse without goggles I'd imagine!! So now I'm trying to convince myself that stings really aren't so bad and I need to get over my jellyfish fear...maybe I'll have gotten over it by next summer!!

We've had a couple more swimming events in the past few weeks. Two weeks ago we had a swim out in Gougane Barra, it was by far the most scenic 2km I've ever swum...it's really gorgeous there. I'd actually never been there before...another first for me...even though it's so close-shame on me! It's where the River Lee begins and where Saint Finbarr is said to have founded a monastery back in the 6th century. I can see why he would have wanted to live there anyway...it's so pretty! Here are a couple of photos that I've found online to show just how nice a place it is (I forgot my own camera that day!)....

After the swim we went back to Tadhg's relative's house for yummy dinner and a few hours of chatting before facing the road home...it was a nice end to a really fun day...thanks to Tadhg for the organisation and hospitality :)

Last weekend was the weekend of the Kinsale regatta, and the regatta committee organises a race-a lap of Sandycove. Since I was heading down for a swim anyway I figured I might as well take part! It was handicapped (slowest swimmers start first to give everyone a chance) and I was in the middle group to go, which is probably right...I'm faster than some swimmers down there but I'm slower than a lot of others too!! I swam it in 31:06 altogether and was the 10th person finished overall and the 3rd woman. Which meant that I got another medal :) I'm starting to like these medals...I know that the only reason that I'm winning any is because there are so few woman open water swimmers out there in comparison to the men...but the medals are still pretty!!

So now my next event is coming up this weekend-I'm swimming from Galway to Inishbofin...8 miles long...out in the Atlantic Ocean...off the west coast of Ireland. It's gonna be tough. But I can't wait! I've been training for it the past while...I did a 3 hour swim a few weeks back (the one where I got the horrible sting!) and that went well...thanks to Tadhg and Paul for swimming with me on that one...it was a dull and dreary evening and it was quite rough out there so I really appreciated the company :) I wasn't too cold or too sore after, which was good. Then this weekend just gone Niall, one of the other people doing the Bofin swim, was saying that he'd like to do a long swim on Sunday. So I said that I'd head down and swim with him-he was planning to do 6 laps in about 4 hours...I wasn't sure that I was going to do that much but I figured I'd swim as long as I felt comfortable and not push it too much with the swim itself coming up so soon. It was quite cold that afternoon...made a little more comfortable by the fact that the sun was shining but still enough to cause brain freeze for the first few minutes! We stopped after two laps to have some drinks (Niall had brought a "picnic" box over to the island...there's a little cove that people use to store a box with energy drinks and whatever else rather than having to head back in to the slip...very useful!)...and again after the 4th lap. At that stage I was still feeling good...cold but not enough to want to stop. And the hot drink really helped with that too! So we did the 5th lap and then made the decision to go for the final 6th lap...I'm not sure if it was a sensible decision on my part or not since I actually spent some of the lap shivering as I was swimming, but it felt good afterwards to have done it. It took us 3hrs 57mins to do the 6 laps (about 9km) so Niall's estimate was spot on! I recovered really quickly once I got warm clothes on and had a warm drink...I had stopped shivering before I even left Sandycove. So that was good! I'm pretty convinced that I'm ready for Bofin now...I'm sure that I'll question myself once I actually start swimming away from land towards something that I can't see tho! But it will be a good challenge, a good experience. And hopefully good fun too! Now let's start crossing our fingers that the weather allows it to go ahead :)

And my last update (I think) is that I'm heading to Dover on Sunday to crew for Joni Storer on his channel attempt next week. So I'm spending a week in Dover, and I'll get to put faces to some of the names that I've been hearing for so long! Mark has the same tide window so it will be great to see himself and Kelly again. And on top of all of that I'll hopefully get to do lots of swimming! I'm going to be Joni's support swimmer, so I'll not only be seeing the whole process as a crew member, I'll also be in the water with him if he needs me to give a bit of a push at any stage...the whole think will be a really good experience for me I think.

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Galway so it's probably time to be getting to bed now...I've an exciting week ahead :) I'll update when I'm back from Dover and life is back to normal...

You Did What?!

So I've been back in Cork for a while now and I'm back to Sandycove training most days and loving it! And a couple of weeks ago I had my first Lee Swim. For those of you who don't know...the River Lee is the river that Cork is built on. The Lee Swim is a 2,000 metre swim through the city that was first held in 1914. Bad water quality (due to the raw sewage that was being pumped directly into the river!) stopped the swim for a nu

mber of years, but the swim was resurrected in 2005 after a huge cleanup of the river. Most people in the city are not fully convinced that the river really is clean and give you very funny looks when you talk about swimming in it, but the swim is now in its 4th year and noone has grown any extra limbs after swimming in it so far-or lost any for that matter-so it can't be that bad!!

The swim course

This year was the first year since the swim restarted that I've been in Cork for it...so naturally I signed up. The day began with registration where we got our bag of freebies...including a bottle of coke which I figured would kill anything bad that I swallowed on the swim anyway! Then after a safety briefing at the finish, we all walked to the start. On the way we had some interesting entertainment...

There was a big seal in the river (in all my years living in Cork I've never seen a seal in the river-it figures that the one day I do is the day that I'm swimming in there!!). The seal had just caught a salmon that looked like it was a foot and a half or so long. And, as we watched, it tore the salmon to shreds. In minutes. I was just hoping that if he was still hungry he'd go for the fast people in the first group of swimmers and not me back in the sixth group lol!

When we got to the start we got ourselves ready to go and had another short safety briefing and then it was time for the fast people to head off. We were in groups depending on the time we had put in for ourselves-I had no idea how long it would take me...normally 1,600 metres is about 30 minutes for me in a pool so for 2,000 metres in open water I figured 45 minutes would be a comfortable time. So I was in the 6th group of people to start (with 30 people per group).

We watched the fastest people head off down the river with the seal swimming around the front few people! The organisers were great and we weren't waiting long before we were called to get to the start. I expected when we dived in that the water would smell horrible...we've thought of the river as dirty for so long that it's hard to believe that it's not! But it really didn't smell bad at all...it was very murky-you could only see an inch or so in front of your face-but that was probably a good thing, I didn't really want to be able to see to the bottom anyway! It was nice and warm too, about 16degrees C I think, so it didn't feel cold at all :)

I wasted no time getting in to the water...I'm causing the splash that's circled in red!

It was really nice swimming through the city-on every bridge there were lots of people watching. It's great to have lots of support when doing an event like that-although I'm sure that lots of those people were just curious as to what was going on! It was a gorgeous day for it too, as you can see from the pictures...

Enjoying my swim!

It still looks strange
to see so many people
in the river-especially
when I'm one of them!

We had been warned to save some energy for when we had to turn around and swim 300metres upriver at the end. I swam down to the turning point at the Port of Cork comfortably, and expected a bit more of a push when I turned but I must say that I didn't really feel it at all. I guess because the tide was coming in it would have countered some of the flow from the river.

I finished with people from the 4th and 5th groups to start, so I had obviously overestimated how long it would take me-it took just over 34mins, much less than the 45 that I had estimated! I found out later that I came 2nd in my age group-out of only 8 tho!

All done!

It was a really fun day and night after....a big thank-you to all of the organisers who did a really great job! I'm looking forward to next year already :)

Congratulations!

On Sunday, July 13th, Finbarr Hedderman became the first Irish person to cross the English Channel this summer, in a time of 13hours 21minutes-an amazingly fast time! All of those long days in Sandycove really paid off. Well done Finbarr!

Greetings from Madrid

I know, I know....it's been a long long time since I've posted! I'm in Madrid and have been for almost a month now. Not that that's any excuse I know, but it does mean that I've done less swimming and especially less open-water swimming so I haven't been in any rush to put stuff up here!!

I've been really enjoying it here, the weather is beautiful, the people are great and I'm getting lots of work done while still enjoying myself. And the celebrations after Spain won the European Cup for the first time in 44 years were just amazing! The only downside to being here is that my swimming has suffered big time.

I joined the university pool here where I'm working, it's an outdoor, 50metre pool. I haven't taken any of my own photos of it so the ones from the university website will have to do!

<- The dive pool

The 50m swimming pool ->

The week that I arrived here was the first week that it was open for the season, and it was perfect for swimming at that stage. Approximately 17 degrees C (62.6 degrees F) and absolutely empty-the weather here wasn't great at that stage and 17 degrees is considered to be ice-cold for most people here! So I was alone in the pool for most of my workouts with someone joining me for a couple of hundred metres every so often and the lifeguards giving me very funny looks for staying in for an hour at that temperature...of course it was nice and warm for me after being in the sea at home so much before coming here!

However, things have changed since then. The weather has gotten much, much better since then (we're up to 40 degrees C-104 degreesF-some days) and as a result the pool temperature has risen to about 24 degrees C (75 degrees F). So lots of people are training in the pool now, and even more are using it to cool down while sunbathing-and there are no lanes to distinguish between the two. So swimming there now is like swimming through an obstacle course and it's impossible to do a full length without having to dodge at least two or three people if not ten! So it's very hard to train there now, and that's probably one of the better pools for training-at least this one only has college students and no children! It's nice there for about the first 30 minutes after it opens and the last 15 minutes before it closes so I've been trying to do my workouts at those times. I'm looking forward to getting back into the Irish sea though, however cold it may be there right now!

And speaking of the sea...we went to the beach a couple of weekends ago-to a town called Oliva near Valencia. It was gorgeous, perfect Spanish beach minus all of the big hotels and tourists...we stayed at a campsite just behind the sand dunes, it was perfect.

Oliva Beach

The water temperature was incredibly warm, around 24degrees C on my watch which I really wasn't expecting from the sea in June (even in Spain)! I did a 45 minute swim on the Sunday, it was very nice....warm, calm, not so many people. But jellyfish instead...and I was told that the jellyfish that were around have a very painful sting so I was none too happy swimming close to them. I did notice that they were swimming fairly deep whenever I saw them so I tried to stay out deep also so that they would be well below me! It worked well, I didn't have any come too close to me. Overall, it was a nice swim, I didn't want to stay in too long though because it was close to 40degrees C (104degrees F) in the sun and I didn't want to end up burning badly.

So that's been the extent of my swimming for the past month. I'm home at the end of this week so I'll need to really step up the pace then to get ready for my big swim in August! I've got some other swimming news to write about but I think that will have to wait til later...if I wait til I've finished writing everything this will never get posted...I'm on holidays for the next few days so I'll try to fit in some time to write some more and post it when I get home....adiós for now!

Just keep swimming...

It's been an interesting week's swimming....

I woke up last Sunday to find that I couldn't move my left arm and shoulder, and I had to get up and go teach lots of 4-year-olds how to swim! The morning was hell, I spent the whole time trying to keep my shoulder as still as possible, which is not an easy task when you've got six kids hanging out of you! The warm water did help a little tho, and I stretched it out a little in the pool when the classes were over. When I got home I rubbed plenty of tiger balm into it and rested it for the rest of the day. That really helped to loosen it out and reduce the pain and by the time I was heading to bed that night I was feeling much better. I had arranged for a swim Monday morning with Finbarr (who's swimming the Channel in July) so I was hoping that I'd wake up pain-free!

When I woke up Monday it was sore again but nowhere near as bad as the morning before. I put on more tiger balm and got ready to head down for the swim anyway-I figured that I'd see how it was after a few strokes and decide then if I was going to head around the island or not. Finbarr was out for a short break when I got down there so I got ready and we headed in. I wasn't sure if it was the cold numbing it or just that it needed to be stretched out-but my shoulder felt ok when I started swimming so I decided to head around-Finbarr was on his last lap of the day anyway (at the end of a 6-hour swim!) so he was at a nice slow pace for me. I managed the lap with no problems, I was actually much more comfortable than I thought I'd be. I got out happy that I hadn't made a bad decision by carrying on swimming after I felt pain on Saturday.

On Tuesday I was back to the pool for my Sunday's Well Masters swimming session, it had been a while since I was there so it was nice to see everyone again. Swimming in the pool was doing my head in tho after being in the sea so much recently...I don't know how I'm going to make myself get back into the pool routine next week when I'm in Madrid! It was a good session though, we did some timed frontcrawl sets which I always enjoy.

Then on Wednesday it was back to the sea with Finbarr...it was a lovely calm morning which was a big change from the few previous swims! I found it quite cold though, colder than it was for a few weeks. My watch was showing 56 degrees F which is about 13.5 degrees C so I guess leaving about a degree for body temperature the water was probably at about 12.5, at the lower end of Saturday's range. I think too the fact that it was early in the morning my body just didn't want to be in cold water so that probably played a big part! I was the first time in a long time though that I had an "ice-cream headache" when I dived in first. We did a double lap and the cold wasn't so bad after a while...I definitely appreciated the tea that Mike Harris had waiting when I got out though! Finbarr didn't seem to feel the cold at all...he had done another full lap by the time I was leaving and was starting to go around for another as different people came to join him.

On Thursday it was back to SW again, there were only two of us in the lane so that's always nice, I like not having to speed up and slow down the way you have to when there's a big group. We did some timed 200s which were fine and then later on some sprints, which are always tough! I really was never built for sprinting! It was a fun workout though.

I talked to Finbarr Thursday night and he said that he was planning to head to Oysterhaven the following morning (a little closer than Sandycove) for a 2-hour swim and if I wanted to come along there would be a boat with us so I could get out before then if I needed to. So I decided to go...thankfully I have a nice new sat nav which could tell me where to go, otherwise I'd probably still be trying to find the place now...I don't know my way around most of West Cork that well!! So we met there at 10am on Friday morning, it was a cloudy morning, not too cold, but with lots of fog, especially as I got closer to the coast. We were supposed to be swimming from the red circle marked on the picture below out to the big "island" (it's really just an extra-big rock!), which is known as Big Sovereign (Little Sovereign is the smaller one off to the right), which is about 2.5km out according to my measurements on Google Maps. However, we couldn't see past the corner in the headland due to the fog! Thankfully we had a boat with us so we (hopefully) couldn't get too lost. We decided that if we got out to the mouth and we still couldn't see the island, we'd take a left and head the shorter distance towards the smaller island instead.

"The Sovereigns"

We got in and started heading in the right direction, and thankfully we found that when we got out a bit we could see the island. I let Finbarr do the navigating and I just followed him...if it was me navigating we could have ended up back at Sandycove!!! I got a rather unpleasant surprise as we headed out further from the land...there were jellyfish swimming under us! There weren't many of them and they were small and they were down a decent amount I think...I didn't exactly stop to check! But they freaked me out anyway...every time I saw one I sped up dramatically...normally I just use my legs for balance when I'm swimming but when a jellyfish passed under me I'd kick like my life depended on it! Maybe it's a good training technique to make me swim faster lol! I guess my big fear is not knowing what a sting feels like...maybe once I've been stung once I won't be so freaked out by them after that!

We got out close to the island and the guy driving the boat (whose name I never found out...oops!) took some photos...there were a couple of seals in the water closer to the island and he wanted to try to get them in the photos with us. Unfortunately I couldn't see the seals apart from a couple of times when I got the right vantage point over the waves...he had an advantage being up on the boat! I do need to get my hands on those photos tho, I think there might be some cool ones in there.

We turned around and headed back in to land with Finbarr making sure that we didn't miss the opening to get back in! The whole swim (about 5km) took about 1 hour and 45 minutes, with the water temperature about 57 degrees F (14 C) so probably 13 degrees C in reality...to me it felt much warmer than Wednesday in Sandycove...I guess a lot really does depend on what you're body temperature is like and how you're feeling at the time. It was a great swim, it was interesting to swim right out from the land rather than staying close like in Sandycove...it's a bit scarier this way but more fun too I think. I just need to get rid of those jellyfish!

Saturday and Sunday were gorgeous days here, I headed down for the organised swims both afternoons, making sure to put on plenty of suncream! On Saturday I did a single lap, the water temperature was lovely, nice enough to laze around in and do a little breaststroke or relaxed frontcrawl without getting cold. My watch read at 60 F (15.5 C) so it was probably around 14.5 C, the warmest we've seen so far this year. On Sunday myself and Sylvain headed down and managed to get a puncture just entering Kinsale...thankfully he was there because I'd never have managed to get the nuts open myself! I do know how to change a puncture, but every time I've had one I never have the strength to open them. Thankfully Sylvain managed ok tho while I busied myself swapping out the spare from under the car! When we got there we headed around for a double...again nice water temperature, much more fluctuation than Saturday-the cold spots were colder but the warm spots were warmer...I saw variations from 58-62 F (14.5-16.5) on my watch at different stages going around...so it wasn't just my imagination!

Yesterday I didn't get a chance to get near the sea...with it being a bank holiday I knew that it would take a long time to get through Kinsale and even longer to get home since everyone would be traveling back from West Cork in the evening. So since I had a ton of research work to do I figured I couldn't really spend so much time driving there and back...although I really wanted to be down there, the weather was gorgeous!

Instead I headed down this evening, it's been another lovely day today so I headed straight down from work, the swim was at 6pm. It was a great evening for a swim, with the sun shining down and not a cloud to be seen. The water was back at 57 F so about 13 C after adjusting and it was lovely and clear-I'm not sure why it's so unbelievably clear some days and not at all on others. I used to think that it just depended on how calm or rough it was, but it was rougher today than it has been all weekend but much clearer. The wind was in a strange direction too, it was pushing the water back against us as we were heading back towards the slip, it was kinda fun fighting with it tho! I was starving after missing my dinner so I only did the one lap and headed home for a nice big feed!!

There's another swim tomorrow evening and again Thursday...I've got an appointment to give platelets in the morning tho and sometimes I don't feel great for the rest of the day after that so I'll have to see how it goes as to whether I'll head down or not. And then on Friday I travel to Dublin to fly out to Spain on Saturday for a month...I'm doing research at the university in Madrid for a while. It will be nice to be in Spain but it means no open water swimming the whole time there :(

But at least I've got the whole summer ahead of me when I get back...and the water should be even warmer by then :)

Sandycove Champion of Champions 2008

Yesterday, Sandycove was host to the much-anticipated Champion of Champions race...5 laps, then out and back in for 3 laps, then out and back in for a final lap. I think that it would be easier mentally to just do the 9 laps at once, it's hard to make yourself get back in after being out and warmed up. But then 9 laps without a rest would be tougher physically I guess. Regardless, it was a huge challenge...one which I'm definitely not prepared for yet! My plan was to do 2 laps out of the initial 5 and then enjoy watching everyone else completing the challenge for the day and help out wherever I could.

I traveled down with Sylvain, who was hoping to complete the day. It was a lovely morning, sun shining and not too cold...no wind in Cork but then it's always a different story down west! We arrived at Sandycove around 8am to find Ned's wife Ann parking the huge horse trailer in front of the wall...not exactly an everyday sight!

Our dining room for the day!

We got a nice parking spot just across from the slip (good idea to be early!) and waited for Ned to be ready for our briefing. He began with a welcome and some introductions, the most notable of which being Kevin Murphy, "King of the Channel". Some of the group had previously completed relay and/or solo EC crossings, and many others were signed up for an attempt this year or next. It was great to be part of such a distinguished group of swimmers! He went on to talk about the initial 5 laps and wished us luck for the day ahead.

We all then headed back to the cars and got ready to get in...

Ready and waiting!

At about 9:15 the first swim of the day began at high tide. Conditions seemed relatively calm and the water wasn't too cold (the temperature range for the day was 12.5-14.5degreesC - 54.5-58degrees F). We all headed out for the first corner, where everything changed rather quickly...rough water hit us and we were thrown around like rag-dolls! It felt like a (very big) washing machine!

It was like that for the whole of the outside of the island...when I turned my head left towards the island to breathe all I could see was the waves crashing on the rocks and most of the time when I turned my head right all I was getting was a wall of water in my face. So I stuck with breathing to the left most of the time, it's my preferred side anyway! Looking at those waves breaking was kinda freaking me out though, I kept having mental images of me being thrown up onto the rocks by one of them...so as a results I was doing a VERY wide lap of the island, I was probably swimming a couple of hundred metres more than I needed to but I wasn't going for a time or anything and I felt much safer out there!

Our Giant Washing Machine!

Once we rounded the second corner things calmed down a lot and by the time I was around the front of the island I'd almost forgotten how rough it had been! So I swam around again and had the not-so-nice experience of Ned lapping me, he was on his third lap and I was only on my second when he passed me at the third corner!! A couple of others must have too judging by times afterwards. But I was happy to just be completing my first double, it didn't bother me that it was a very slow one! I headed back into the slip and got warmed up and dressed and then waited for the others to start coming in. Soup and sandwiches arrived, provided by the RNLI. The soup was great for warming everyone up!

People soon started arriving in...and the general feeling was "I'm not getting back in there"!! It had been a tough morning and the thought of getting back in for 3 laps and then again for a final lap was a horrible one. But by the time 2pm came most people were ready to get back in...it's amazing how much the mind buries over time...we forget how painful something was the first time around and then go do it again! I'd suppose it can be a good thing...I'd probably never have gotten back in the sea again if my mind had remembered how cold it was that first day!!

The original rules for the day didn't allow anyone to get in for the second session if they hadn't completed the first 5 laps. However, when it came to it, people were going ahead anyway since many people had missed some of the earlier laps due to the horrible conditions. So after much coaxing from Sarah and Kelly (who had lots of experience after coaxing Mark to get back in!) I decided to get back in too for a lap. It's so hard to get back in after just warming up and getting comfortable, and it was made even harder by the fact that conditions were still horrible (although we were assured that things had calmed down a little on the outside...I think that was just to make sure that any of us got back in at all tho!!). But most people got ready and headed in...at this stage the tide was at its lowest so we had to walk out to get to deep water and then we ended up walking around some of the rocks as we headed out to the first corner. I was happy that I'd been down there with Mark the day before at low tide, it really helped with knowing what to expect and I wasn't quite so freaked out swimming through the seaweed this time around!

We decided that walking out to the island would be easier than swimming!

Things were just as horrible when we rounded the corner, but I managed the lap and even decided to do a second. My left shoulder was hurting quite a bit-I'm never sure whether to keep going or to stop when I'm in pain like that, I'm afraid of doing damage but then again I know that I need to learn to swim through a certain amount of pain...there will be plenty of pain to go through on the day that I swim the Channel! In the end it decided for itself though, after I finished the second lap and was contemplating doing the third I was talking to Finbarr and Imelda...and when I went to swim again it seized up-I could move it but definitely not enough to get around again. I'm not sure if it was the rough conditions or the cold or the fact that I'd swam more than I have had before in my life or just a mixture of all of these factors...but I headed for the slip anyway, very happy with the amount that I had done...it was twice the number of laps that I had planned to do and I did more laps on that one day than I'd done in total up until then in tough conditions so I think that was a pretty good achievement!

I got warmed up for the second and final time that day and put on my many layers of clothes (helped by Sarah-thank you! It's horrible to not be able to dress yourself properly...but with the shoulder having given up there was no way I was getting my layers on without help!!). And from then I on was just sitting back and watching others do the hard work for the rest of the day!

Conditions apparently started improving a little for the last lap of the day...the wind had died down a bit. Some people headed out early so that they could get back to watch Munster in the Heineken Cup rugby final (which, incidentally, we won!) and the last few got in at 5pm. I have great respect for anyone who got in for that final lap, there was nothing going to make me get back in there again at that stage!

The day ended with many happy, some disappointed but everyone truly exhausted. It was a great day overall...the weather was good (besides that wind!) and the people were great. Only 4 people completed the day without wetsuits and 8 with wetsuits out of a total of 35 people (the results can be seen here). This year was more of a learning experience for me than anything else, and a chance to meet lots of people whose names I have only heard in passing up until now! I planned to do 2 laps, I ended up doing 4. Next year I'll be hoping to do all 9 tho!

And last but definitely not least...thanks to Sarah who gave up most of her day to come down and be my volunteer for the day...and to Kelly and Ann and everyone else who helped out and made it a great day for us swimmers! :)