Williamstown OW challenge 2016

There were a wide selection of swim distances on offer at Williamstown today. Given I was in the water for so long I didn’t even realise some people were there until I saw the photos later – Anthony Purcell and Peter O’Neill being two good examples. I was one of the first three Belugas in the water at 8 o’clock and the last one to leave, a number of hours later.

Highlights from the day:
10km
– three Belugas completed (more below)
5km
– 2nd place for Janet Moloney (60-69)
2.5km
-1st place for Owen Leggett (18-29)

– a top 10 finish for Diane
Bloom

1.2km – 2nd place finishes for Sue Cox (40-49) and Anthony Purcell (50-59)
– a truckload of top 10 finishes

– and welcome back to Alexandra Caterino at her first swim after the birth of her son, Mattias, in October.

Bigcongrats to everyone who swam on the day.

Like I say, I didn’t see a lot of people because I swam my first 10km event. It was 4 laps of a 2.5km course off Williamstown Surf Lifesaving Club (WSLC). I’m feeling a little bit happy about it as this distance had been on my Swim To-do List for a while but I needed to find the right event to give it a crack. I can honestly say to date, it was my hardest swim and my longest swim, both in time and distance.
With me were my co-conspirators, Anthony Ferguson and Peter Keogh. They were using this to qualify for the Rottnest Island swim over in Perth next February and both nailed it, about 20 and 35 minutes quicker than me respectively; I know I’m not the quickest Beluga and I was happy just to finish it. In the preceding months we talked amongst ourselves, discussed training plans together with possible food and drink options for the race. We’d frequently see each other at the Baths on non-squad days, typically logging another 3-5km freestyle set. Training in the last six weeks included a number of Sunday morning beach swims off WSLC for open water practice, typical sets included 5km between the poles or the long swim out to Jawbone.

Williamstown is a normally a good beach provided the wind isn’t blowing anything southerly but today was predominantly a south-westerly that moved round to the south as the day wore on. It was blowy and choppy, what started out as average conditions then deteriorated throughout the day. After all our training you don’t get to pick your day and this was the one we got.

The hard part was getting out off the beach and down the back straight. On lap two I had a fun moment when I headed out to sea from the beach and was momentarily surrounded by a new race of green cap swimmers taking off. Frankly, I was a little annoyed (what are all these people doing here??). After the first two buoys along the back they all turned back into shore (sensible some might say?) while I kept going parallel to the coast down to the far end – my inner grumpy old man thought it was a relief to have the water to myself again. Waves were sometimes high and in some cases sighting buoys was a complete and utter bastard. There were a few instances where I stopped, floated, and looked over the top of two or three waves to get a clear lock on the next buoy. This was not the day to be doing any extra mileage if it could be avoided.

So it sounds like I’m whining a lot but I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Did I enjoy the experience? Hell yes! Was it challenging? Most definitely! Would I do it again? Shit yeah!

We were required to wear a hi-vis vest – safety first. It was probably a good thing to make swimmers easier to spot in the waves. Regrettably, I didn’t take sufficient precautions, it rubbed like buggery, and I’ve got the rash to prove it. In fact the three of us got some battlescars from the fashion-forward vests. I had a bit of body glide on but clearly not enough… That said, I might rethink my approach to the safety vest. I had never worn one before and I was worried about drag but maybe next time I’ll go the up a size and use bucketloads of Vaseline, body glide or sorbolene, or any combination of all three.

What my first 10km experience has shown me is I really enjoy and appreciate longer distance swimming, both the training and the actual event – even though for this swim in hindsight I underestimated the training and the mental effort required but I know for next time. What I found I like is in longer distances there’s the time and space, even in less than perfect conditions, to get in ‘the zone’, and to find ‘flow’, that people talk so much about. While I have found myself in a great rhythm in shorter distances like 2.5 and 5km, in a 10km I found it to be different again, and it felt really good to finish it.

Many thanks to Anthony Ferguson for compiling the results.