For me, every open water swim event must incorporate a cake stop, and therefore a recce to locate nearby cake selling shops/cafes beforehand is essential. The Great North Swim is no exception to this rule, and the pre-swim checks reveal there are several on the way and about a thousand in Windermere itself. I think it’s safe to say that Windermere has that aspect of the swim more than covered!
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| My well deserved finishers medal |
Swim buddy has drawn the short straw and is designated driver to the two-hour drive to Windermere. This suits me well as it means that I may be able to have a recovery Nanna nap on the way home if I need it. Shark insisted on picking me up at the crack of dawn; a whole five hours before we were due to swim. She says she needs plenty of time to check my bag, to avoid any potential road closures, to get ahead of any race traffic and the extra time means there is no need to rush the journey that usually takes all of two hours… I am fine with this, once I’d got over the early start, as we had agreed before hand that we would stop along the way for coffee and cake, and I would hate to think that there was a possibility of the café underestimating the amount of fellow swimmers passing through on their was to the swim, and there being none left when we arrived. This would be a very bad thing.
As I put my carefully and neatly packed bag into the car, Shark insists that we do one last and final bag check (emptying it all out again), at which point she notices I have included the furry lined non-croc croc-like shoes that I know she hates passionately. They became an essential part of my kit bag over the winter, and I’ll admit, I have very much warmed to them, despite my initial dislike, and despite the fact that they are still very, very unattractive, and it worries me that someone else may take a shine to them, despite their uncool exterior. Shoe envy is a very real possibility and I was worried that someone may well come along whilst I was swimming and lets just say, permanently borrow them, so in a bid to make them even less attractive than they are already (and they truly are) I decide to take out, possibly the only slightly redeeming positive point of the shoes, the furry lining. Shark thinks that no one will want them and that this will not happen- ever. I think it’s safe to say that from the horrified look on her face, if I'm reading her right, she does not have shoe envy.
I have also packed my wetsuit, with its newly acquired large hole on the shoulder (?). It’s far too late (and possibly too large) to do anything about it now. My only concern it that I may well have a lot of lake passing through it, causing a lot of unnecessary drag, thus slowing me down, or even pulling me under… It needs urgently repairing before it gets worse, and if I survive the swim I shall get someone (probably Leon at SYS) to look at it, and hope he takes pity on me and my non-existent fixing wetsuit skills and offer to mend it in exchange for cake (cake talks more than money in these situations I find), but it’ll have to do for now and as a precaution I instruct Shark to send out a fleet of kayaks to look for me if after two hours I’m not back. She says she’ll think about it, and on the back of this I am not one bit confident that I will be rescued if my wetsuit becomes a ballast tank.
The drive to Windermere takes no time at all, and we decide not to stop for coffee until we are nearly there, just in case there is a sudden rush of traffic and, as fortune had it this became a happy coincidence, as some enormous scones were just being taken out of the oven at our chosen cafe, and as it is important to have some carbohydrates before a long swim, and as we are always up for a challenge, we buy two – to see us on! This is a good omen for the swim, for if we can take on the challenge of eating the mother of all scones and succeed, then the swim will surely be a piece of cake!
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| Enjoying our pre-swim fodder! |
The new venue for the Great North Swim is great, and arriving with eons of time to spare means that we are able to hunt down the post swim food stalls (as if we haven't eaten enough already!), in particular the ClifBar tent, where we were able to pretty much top up our pre-swim nutrition by working our way through all of their samples (I may actually have had several samples of the mint flavoured bars)! Once the food priority is sorted we head to look round the swim village. It’s as well organized as usual, although one piece of feedback would be to possibly make the signs for the showers very large and very obvious for those of us (me and Shark) with middle aged eyes, and feel we are above reading the site map beforehand. Sadly this meant that we went home after our swimming smelling of less than delightful, because we didn’t manage to locate them until after we were dressed. You know when your kids offer to Febreze you when you get home, it must be really bad!
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| Shark and I pre-swim. We look very much worse afterwards, and that's why there isn't a close up post-swim photo on here. You're welcome! |
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| With Liam Hancock and Caitlin McClatchey at Swimzi... Both kind of big in swimming 😂 |
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| Filling the ClifBar camping chair after lots and lots of sampling |
The conditions are perfect, the water is calm and clear and I am able to sight easily and manage to swim only 122m over the 5,000m I am meant to. This is a personal best for me, I am known for going far, far off-piste usually, so I am quite pleased really. I’m eager to get out quickly as I know that the time keeps ticking until you cross the line, which happens to be out of the water. This is not great when you have a history of shoddy exits, and today sadly it turns out to be my most spectacular to date. As is standard I am very disorientated, despite the earplugs, and the exit from the lake is tricky to navigate. Thankfully there are some G.N.S staff to help the swimmers get out. Regrettably I am so unsteady on my feet that the poor man wasn’t strong enough to hold me up, and in my rush to get upright and over the finish line I lose my balance again and I reach out with my other hand to steady myself on anything, or risk face planting the water; unfortunately the 'anything’ turns out to be the other helper’s backside (I just thank goodness, and I suspect he does too, that he wasn't facing the other way!). Still mortified!
After the swim I have arranged to meet Shark back near the start where we have left my beloved furry non-croc crocs (providing someone hasn't taken a shine to them and claim them for their very own) and her flip-flops. We decide that discarding them near the entrance to the swim is a great idea, however this actually turns out to be quite a bit further away from the exit than we remember, meaning that there is a bit of a walk across a pebbly area to retrieve them. Any large pebbles in the lake paled into insignificance against these small yet sharp bad boys (I shall make a note for next year), and therefore to be successfully reunited with my shoes some pretty sleek footwork is required, sadly sleek is not in my repertoire, but somehow I manage some kind of very non-pretty, non-elegant hopping/skipping manoeuvre that (I am told by an amused onlooker) is comedy gold to watch, and whilst I am convinced that Diversity will not be looking to adopt this move, or even add me to their squad/troop (whatever you call them?), it did get me there unscathed.
To save Shark from this unpleasant experience I decide to overrule her instructions, and as I was actually wearing my shoes and carrying hers I kind of thought I would do a good deed and reunite her with her flip-flops at the finish line, however on the way back I am stopped by a very lovely lady that had recently read my book, and wants to talk all things swimming… I am torn as I am concerned that Shark will be looking for me, but then I remember that she did not take my request for a search party as seriously as I would have liked, and as the lady pats the camping chair next to her and wiggles a box of Jaffa Cakes at me, I feel less torn (and as we know I have zero will power as far as Jaffa Cakes are concerned), and so I pull up a camping chair and talk swimming until Shark finds me after searching (barefoot) for the best part of ten minutes.
I feel bad, but there is no point in trying to win Shark round with Jaffa Cakes as she is not a fan, and so once we are changed, in the very spacious changing rooms, I offer to buy Shark some post swim chips to make up for it. She knows I feel bad, and is milking it by also ordering a large coffee and extra sachets of ketchup. She then goes round the swim village, and I find myself offering to also buy her some ClifBars, a Swimzi water bottle and an Outdoor Swimmer hat. I figure that if she was prepared to walk over more or less hot coals (well sharp pebbles) for me for that length of time, then she deserves all of them!
For those of you that enjoy my blogs, my book Open Water Woman Swims Windermere is now available in paperback and electronically on Amazon.
I also have a 'group' page on Facebook and am on Twitter and Instagram, where I post regular shenanigans and such like. If you'd like to join/follow you'd be very welcome. Here are the links. 😊
For those of you that enjoy my blogs, my book Open Water Woman Swims Windermere is now available in paperback and electronically on Amazon.
I also have a 'group' page on Facebook and am on Twitter and Instagram, where I post regular shenanigans and such like. If you'd like to join/follow you'd be very welcome. Here are the links. 😊
