Sea Swimming Blog #30

Day 69 Sea Swimming.

#30 of the blog.

I woke up about 7:30am looked out the window and was surprised to see the sun shining amongst a few clouds.

I’d had a beer and a pretty large wine last night so thought I needed to go for a run (by and large I’ve been staying off the alcohol since New Year). I got my stuff on and hit the railway walk for my regular 10k… then midway through got caught in a pretty horrendous downpour of hail.

Later in the day I met up with Jason and Sam at Anne Port at 3pm to go for the daily dip… the weather had been a bit crazy all day so I was hoping for a rainbow but were met by fairly grey conditions.

I had arrived a little early and by chance met some of the famous Mermaids - a group of sea swimmers who are well known in the local sea swimming community.

‘Ahh, it’s the blogger’ one of them said - a bit of infamy of my own it appears - thanks in large part I’m sure to the recent features in the Jersey Evening Post.

We had a chat and I took a few photos of them before Jason and Sam arrived. We got changed and then headed down the slip… firstly swimming out to the rocks on the left, then swimming across the bay all the way to the rocks on the right hand side then back in.

The water was pretty much flat and was beautifully clear… but no doubt cold. I find it has an energy sapping quality to it… whilst I’ve been doing some weights to try and increase body mass and my arms were a little stiff today, the cold seems to accelerate this feeling. Having read up on this (just this second!) it seems that as well as increased work load, the cold can increase the amount of lactic acid in muscles so this is something I’ll have to think about with my training and overcome on the Channel swim.

I got out and partly changed as Jason’s wife had just arrived with her friends to have a swim and wanted a few photos… and this is when hail part II started.

Fair play to the girls, it did not put them off and I managed to get a few shots before my fingers nearly froze off… I think next time I arrange to take sea swimming pics I’ll do my swim afterwards rather than before hand!

“There is no such thing as bad weather…

just soft people”

- Bill Bowerman