Long Course Weekend – Great Wales Swim

The Great Wales Swim was the event I was most dreading. Apart from one 3km swim in a lake, which involved plenty of breaststroke, I had never swum 2km or more before. Now I was staring at 3.8km, and not just that. It was in a sea, with around 1600 other swimmers, and with schools of jellyfish.

I had tried to play it down beforehand. The one advantage of this event is that it’s two laps. That meant if it was all going badly I could abandon after the first lap. Having said that, I’m not sure what that would have done for the confidence levels.

So, at around 7pm on Friday 3rd July, I ran (well walked slowly to be honest) into the sea to start this adventure.

Overall, I have to be really happy with how it went. I guess I can summarise in the following points:

1) I made it. The Outlaw swim in a lake will be much easier than swimming in the sea, so I know I can do that. I also managed front crawl nearly all the way around.

2) The time was slow. I finished in 1hr 33mins. I guess I had a figure around 1.25 in my head, but definitely sub 1.30. I think I also came in the bottom 25% of the two lap swimmers. I am where I am though, and I shouldn’t be comparing myself to other swimmers. The time is important to me, but I am only competing against myself.

3) Jellyfish. I had heard talk about jellyfish, but I was expecting to see and touch so many. On the second lap, I ended up closing my eyes for some stretches to try and stop it getting to me.

4) Cramp. I didn’t fully cramp, but I had three spasms during the swim. I think this was caused by a hard 2 hour bike ride I had done the night before. I’m not going to let this worry me.

5) Wetsuit Rubbing. This was the only negative really, excluding the time. I was in quite a bit of pain on the first lap with the wetsuit rubbing my neck. I was even tempted to bail to stop further damage. In the end I just battled on, but have been suffering since.