There's a thing about triathlons, they involve some swimming. Now hitherto, I've been of the opinion that I'm a pretty strong swimmer. In fairness, there's very little recent evidence for this, but it's grounded in my swimming history. Basically when I was a kid, I was really skinny, and used to get so cold during swimming lessons, that I'd turn blue. Eventually mum decided that enough was enough. When I'd got my 50m swimming badge, she stopped my lessons. So while my brother and sisters went on with swimming lessons, I watched with mum. She was happy that I could get myself out of trouble, and that was the main thing. When I got older, I was a bit less of a waif, and one day mum suggested that I take up swimming again, so I joined an "adults swimming class" which was great; and the teachers quickly realised that as I was about 15 and had some actual chance of learning something, they made sure I learned. There were two teachers, and about 18 people in the class. They divided the teachers so that I got one, and the other 17 got the other. I've always been in favour of equal division of wealth. I got taught racing breast stroke, and crawl, properly, and eventually they asked me if I was interested in joining the life saving class that was an hour later. So I did that too. So basically, by the time I left school, I was pretty cocky about my swimming ability.
Well, I realise that was a while ago, true enough. I've always enjoyed it though, and have kept up pretty regular swimming into adulthood. It's funny how it goes if you don't go for 6 months or so, and you have to build it up again. Still, I've tried to keep it up because it's useful cross-training for the old running in any case. So, as I say, pretty confident.
Anyway, first off, I signed up with PacTrack for a mini-series triathlon. That's 8 lengths of a 50m pool, 400m swim, then a 10km cycle ride and then a 3 mile run. I mean, I should be able to do that, right? I told the organiser guy, confidently, that I was an average swimmer, and got put in the middle lane. I swear, I was the last out, by a good 3 minutes, and furthermore, I have reason to believe, based on my style and time the following week, that I might have actually panicked, lost count and got out of the water on 6 lengths. Don't tell anyone though. That basically means that the fastest swimmer there was probably at least 3 times faster than me.
Then someone says "Have you done much open water swimming then?". I don't remember who it was.
I thought the Lido would be good enough, but I realised I was going to need to get the gear. I needed a trisuit, and I needed a wet suit. I have a wet suit already, but it's for diving, and it's 7mm. Plus a 7mm shortie. But there's rules. There's always rules. A wet suit for a tri is only allowed to be 5mm. In any case, there's no way I could swim in the diving suit, it's too thick to allow real shoulder movement.
I did some extensive wetsuit research, picked a winner, I thought, in the Sailfish, and emailed the company to ask for a discount. I figured there's often a discount, and I'd just ask. My old man once had a colleague who told me that he never went into a shop without asking for at least a 5% discount, and he usually got it. It's lessons like this in life that you should never forget, and i never did, although I don't always follow suite, this seemed to be a good time to try. It worked - they offered me 5% off, which I accepted.
Anyway, I found out that there was an open water swim, going about 2km each Thursday night down the Nene, and I decided to give it a go, as various friends rave about the gorgeousness of the river. First off, I beg to differ. The water stinks, and on my inaugural swim, visibility was pretty close to zero. The swimmers, who were mainly from Pactrak, were... fast. That's it really, they were fast. I found that I was terrified and disgusted in equal measure. The very notion of putting my face in that water was very difficult indeed, but seeing the speed with which my fellow swimmers took off, I realised there was nothing for it. But then I was hit with another issue. With my face in the water, the goggles weren't very useful - there was nothing to see. It was like being blind. I rapidly found the edge, but not because I was trying to get out... I just swam into it. My companions gave me some pointers on lifting my head out of the water every 3 or so stroke, to sight forward. This was something I still haven't got, despite repeated practice. I find a combination of terror, inability to see where I'm going, and perhaps the wetsuit, mean that I rapidly give up the crawl, and disintegrate into breast stroke. And the way that breaks your stride (as it were) immensely slows you down. Effectively, I'm almost coming to a complete stop every three strokes. It doesn't help with speed.
I also found out that there's an open water swim session on Sundays at Rutland Water, which I found a bit easier because the visibility was much better, although it was colder, and a lot darker (and deeper), so the visibility effectively didn't help much. I realised exactly how much I rely on the lines along the bottom of the pool, but I had other issues with this swim. I got whacked on the back of a head by a swimmer who actually swam over me (boys!). It really hurt. I had another moment where I realised that cartoons aren't entirely fictional when they draw stars around the head of the character that's been clonked.
My new friends were very helpful, and on week two, still bringing up the rear, I confessed that I was 3 weeks away from a half iron man, and that was essentially my second time in open water. They looked at each other, and said "She's our kind of crazy".
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