There never seems to be a shortage of inspirational swimmers. For me these include the ones who can be seen everyday in their local pools and who are dedicated to just showing up. Other inspiring swimmers include the people dedicated to ensuring that there are affordable and welcoming swimming facilities for all who want to swim. It takes a lot to keep a swimming site viable. People such as the pool manager, the lifeguards, the clean water campaigners aren’t often in the headlines. It is usually the swimmers tackling challenging distances, completing amazing feats of endurance or winning Olympic medals who get the most coverage. One of the more recent has been Sam Farrow from Wigan who set a record for the fastest swim across Lake Geneva which was an incredible 45.2 miles in just over 22 hours. Oh, and she’s a mom with two children and a career.
Seeing feats such as these have made me curious about open water swimming events and while there is no way that I could ever even dream about these distances, I entered a couple of modest open water challenges as a way to dip a toe into a new type of swimming for me. The first was the Yorkshire Long Course Weekend held in the Yorkshire Dales this September. The event was incredibly well organised and staffed by amazingly friendly and helpful people and the swimming was just a small part of a much bigger sporting schedule. https://www.lcwyorkshire.com/
Given that the length I signed up for was just 1.2 miles, I thought what could be too difficult. How wrong I was. On the day, the wind on the ominously named Grimwith Reservoir was super strong and was creating a regular pattern of large waves across the water. As I waited to start, conversations with a few other swimmers who were equally nervous provided some helpful reassurance. The whistle then went and we were off.
My friend watching the swim said there were a number of swimmers who immediately realised it was just too rough and a few others were collected in boats half way out on the course. After trying to crawl and downing what felt like gallons of Yorkshire water, I shifted to largely breast stroke against the wind and crawl the way back. I swam into people and people swam into me. I swam off course and had to track back and struggled mightily. But, I made it. It was a rough introduction to open water events, but strangely satisfying when it was all over.
