Sunday 19 June 2022

Christmas come early...






'Santa's little helper' and I enjoying a post-swim hot chocolate
in the baking heat at the lake... 


Today's swim could most definitely probably be a strong contender by the Guinness book of Records as ‘the world record of slowest swims ever to have happened,' and included mostly heads up breaststroke with the odd front crawl stroke so the swim could be tracked via GPS, should it choose to actually be working (after all, if it's not on Garmin, questions are naturally asked as to whether it happened at all...). 




Garmin's official confirmation that the pace of our swim was, without doubt, 'slow...'

The reason for the stately pace was down to the 'good catch up and relaxing chat whilst we take in some nature' my good friend Karen (you may remember the GB triathlete I met swimming several years ago. She lapped me on one of her recovery swims following a leg fracture and we've been friends since...) and I decided to have - anyhow, it turned out to be not so relaxing after all as it was interruped several times by potential fish frights that were in fact actually a twig, a leaf, an arm and a bit of old rope, but to be fair - the blue nylon rope was kind of lake snake shaped, so we could be forgiven for our jumpiness...as well as this we had to hunt for the missing earbud that Karen had taken out so she could hear (don't know why she needed to do this - I am not known to be quiet, in fact, in my younger years was often fondly referred to as Foghorn Leghorn...) which was found in the front of her swim cap -  exactly where she put it for safe keeping. Unfortunately, once found, the ear bud proved to be too much for the swim cap, which after several readjustments tore and spent the ramained of the swim tucked down the front of her costume for safe keeping! On the grounds of safety, we decided to ditch the swim in favour of hot chocolate and some energy restorative cake that we really didn't deserve, but not before I stubbed my toe on my own leg getting out in an attempt to avoid a fellow swimmer also getting out, but in a more elegent, and safe, way...

What happened next could only be described as ‘Christmas come early’ as it turned out that Karen had arrived completely unprepared for after our swim, resulting in her frantically looking for something in her car to fling on for post-swim cake fest, and frankly (IMO) coming up trumps when she found her (she says “only,” but I’m sceptical) Christmas jumper, which she discovered under several unmentionable other ‘not so seasonal ‘items.’ 

After much merriment from me and some pretty strong resistance and arguing from Karen that she would look like - and I quote directly here - “a complete b*ll e*d” and “a laughing stock,” I reminded her that despite the weeks soaring temperatures, she would get cold without it, and finally, after what could only be described as a short standoff, after which she realised under no circumstances was I lending her any of my gazillion, non- festive, spare clothes, when she had a perfectly usable jumper of her own, she finally conceded that as I would not budge, she had no choice but to put it on before we headed back to the cafe and obviously, as there was no way I was letting her get away without photographic evidence, the shoreline for a photo shoot...

Finally, I think it’s fair to say that not everyone can pull off a Christmas elf jumper, and especially not in the height of summer during a heatwave, and therefore, to give you a visual representation of this morning, I have included a photo of my gorgeous friend in said Christmas jumper, sadly also not pulling it off… but instead providing me (and pretty much all on the shoreline) the best of laughs and being the best sport, and one of the very reasons I love the open water swimming commuity so much.




Thanks for reading, and one final thing- before I am lynched for writing about Karen - I ran it past her first to check she wasn’t traumatised by the whole Chrismas jumper experience and didn’t mind me writing my account. She’s fine, and has assured me that the only thing she was upset about was that she managed to break her favourite swim cap, and that rather than wallowing in embarrassment, she was spending the afternoon throwing “more appropriate post-swim knitwear” in the back of her car having learnt a very valuable lesson, and researching whether it was a good time to sell second-hand Christmas jumpers on E-Bay!