Sure it’s a 19.7km swim from Cottesloe to Rottnest – but that’s only part of the story.

I know Anthony started training under Manny’s instruction about six months ago…building from a base of 15k a week up to 30k+ a week and then a taper and a swim.

I followed a formula developed by a mate from Anglesea who has done the swim many times (10 x solo). 30k a week needs to be managed. You swim it lots of different ways and in different places but it’s a 5k average six times a week. A day of 3k needs to be made up for with a day of 7k.  Two days off a week means you have to make up an extra k on the other days – 5k becomes 6k.

I topped out at 40k a week over the summer. Twice a day because I was on holidays and I could.

It’s a solid grind. So little things really help.

Having a mate to swim with, share the utter insanity made it much easier.

Having a squad to go to and do some distance without having to think and a chance to chat made it easier. A few words of encouragement or understanding make a difference and although the speaker does not realize that in the moment, it helps more than you know and we thank you.

Anthony swam some longer ones than me – a 12k training swim at Brunswick (by yourself) is a lot of laps.  Especially when the water is 30 degrees.

Anthony’s pretty relaxed and easy going but if you want to see him become animated (just for fun really) get him to tell you about the breast stroke swimmer that joined him in the fast lane when he was 11k into the set.

Tim, Ale, Raoul and Anthony joined me and the Anglesea swimmers at various times.  So good to have other people come into your own mad, obsessive bubble. Help you through it by being there and share the experience.  Raoul mapping the swims and telling me that what I thought was 5k was really only 4.2k…which of course requires a longer afternoon swim…. actually I’m not sure that was helpful.

Most middle aged Rotto swimmers aiming to finish, rather than win, follow that sort of a routine.

Other than breast strokers in the fast lane Anthony found the must arduous swim the 7.30 Sunday morning swims at Williamstown. Firstly with Paul and Vito and once it warmed up to 17 degrees I joined them.  Raoul and Richard swam a few times and always brightened the day.

Williamstown water is cold but the Rotto swim is an open water swim so you need to swallow salt water and get used to waves.

Anthony was never put off – “it could be like this on the day of the swim” he’d say.  In the face of his enthusiasm, I was never game to suggest we skip the swim and go straight to the bacon and egg burger with coffee…but I almost always thought it.

When nobody else showed up – on account of rain, wind, cold water, E.coli levels…sanity really, we agreed you were all soft.

Then there is the administrative stuff.

• Complete the entry form and pay in October
• Find a boat and Captain (Mick)
• Find (a) paddler(s),
• Get a qualifying time at a recognized swim (10k and four hours)
• Flights to get there
• Accommodation close to the starting line

I don’t do administration well but Anthony ticked it all off methodically and then he prompted me and I scrambled to get it done.

Once in Perth there’s still stuffing around to do –

• A pre-race briefing in Fremantle conveniently located 12k from the race start
• Mix your drinks; buy your swim food
• Presents for the paddlers
• Catch up with the paddlers and work out where you will meet up and how you will find each other out there in the ruck
• Buy the pink zinc you agreed you’d smear over your body for easy identification
• Pick up Cath from the airport
• Sun screen, Vaseline
• Liaise with boat captain and agree course[1]
• Meet up with your spotters on the boat (Dugong Des and Ann) and discuss hypothermia, when you want what food, when you want to swap, get gear on boat the night before 10k away
• Meet other swimmers to help manage your nerves, ventilate theories of currents and courses
• Worry that you have not organized animal fat to lather yourself in and doubt you have enough insulation of your own (Anthony and I were fine)
• Drink coffee and eat cakes. You’re going to swim 20k, you can eat anything.

Anthony didn’t tell me until a we were back in Melbourne but about a week out from the swim that he received an email from Finland – the captain of his boat was in Helsinki on work and it looked like he wasn’t going to get back in time.  The captain suggested Anthony find another boat. 

Of course Anthony did just that and they met in the Cottesloe pub the night before the swim.  FFS!

First time swimmer, first time paddler, first time captain.  What could go wrong?

The Swim

Perfect conditions forecast – 40 degrees, wind from the east.

Up at 4.00 am.  I slept well until then. Anthony? Fitful at best.

Text message arrives from the organisers confirming that the race is on at 4.15 am.

Eat breakfast. Read the papers, read the good luck texts / emails.  Affix race number tattoos.

Breakfast at 5.00 am (me muesli and yogurt Anthony bacon and eggs) time to go. This is it.  At last.

Walk 500 meters down to the start.

Swimmers, paddlers, dogs, runners, cyclists. A calm madness about the place.

Register and get the ankle timer, like any other race.

Watch Colin Barnett fire the pistol and the first wave head off at 5.45 am. Young Olympians. Can they beat the record today in perfect conditions (4.00.05)? We will not catch these guys – they have a half hour start on us.

At 6.00am Cath and I meet up with Anthony and we have some incoherent conversation.  Reassuring. Couldn’t tell you what was said.

Second wave go and I shake Anthony’s hand and slap his shoulder.  He walks down to start with the third wave.

I head down the beach and walk over to Cooky as he is about to be interviewed and I tell him that he is a media tart.  He tells the crowd he has swum as a solo or relay in 25 or so of the 29 events.

I think to myself ‘stick close to him for the start’.

Away, a blur – I loose Cooky inside the first 200m.

Can’t find my paddler and wait at 500m. No sign. Panic. Over before it’s begun. Looking, shouting…no sign…Expletive.

Anthony found Manny – good they knew what each other looked like and had organised a flag for easy identification.

I swim on to 750m.  Stick my head up. Peter? Chris? We are away.

Cruise to 3 – 4K. Water is flat and warm. Maybe 23 degrees.  Paddler finds the boat.

Have a drink and chat. Tell them I want to stop every 30 – 40 minutes (say 2k) for a drink and food.

Cruise along to something like 9k. Struggling to find rhythm. I’m told we are close to 10k.

I’ve swum 10k often enough, the second ten is the unknown. I’m feeling ok so I decide to stretch out for a bit – closer to the groove.

I stop 30 minutes later and they point out the 10k marker.  We were at 10k and I’ve just picked it up and now you point out the 10k marker?

Not impressed.  What are these people doing?[2]  Where are they taking me? They ask me about currents. Not that I’ve noticed.  “They’ve asked us to keep north, currents running north – south.”

I do not connect the dots.

Anthony told me he too had cruised to 10k whereas I stayed on the rhumb line to the north, Anthony started to drift south with the prevailing currents

I push on for thirty minutes. Stop for a drink.  I’m told I’ve taken another thousand out of it.  In thirty minutes? Really. Where are these people taking me. 3k an hour is what I had imagined. I’m doing 2k an hour? WTF?  What’s the time?

After the race, my mate on the boat, Dugong Des, tells me at this stop I looked terrible and that he thought I was gone.  ‘You didn’t look good – eye’s puffy and lacking energy (but the stops after were unbelievable and all those traces had disappeared’).

Onwards.

I’d been practicing separating my head from my arms.  Think through a fun day and just work through the day in real time.  No shortage of time.  Play a song.  The most useful device was to reinforce my enjoyment of the moment. So much training and here you are doing it, at last. Warm water. Perfect day. Amongst swimmers, challenging yourself. How good is it!

The 30 minute food and drink breaks tick over and I get to 15k. It’s the next 2k notorious for the south-north or north-south current.  Time to dig deep, I’d thought about this point in the swim at training many times.  I don’t notice the current.  It’s just taking forever.

Anthony eats and drinks every 35 to 40 minutes – fruit bars, gels, sports drinks, Gatorade.  From about 12k the current takes hold of him and pushes him south.

The water shallows, golden curls of sea grass brush past.  Don’t think of the chafing.  Forty degree WA sun on your back, for what must be at least 6 or 7 hours, I must be burning.

Those on my boat (at these closing stages) noticed the drift and swirls when they were idling in the water, and struggled to ‘hold the line.’

You’re not allowed hang onto anything – boat or kayak. This requires you to tread water to reposition the caps, apply Vaseline, eat a sweet canned treat of ‘rice cream.’  Not even going to try and put on sun screen.  Everything ends up wet with salt water.  Half a banana and a mouthful of salt water.  Yum.  Its just fuel.

About now I think of a 1970’s album, George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh.  A guy called Billy Preston plays the organ and sings a crazy gospel song ‘that’s the way God planned it’.  I run it through and it gives me a lift. I play it a few times and I’m in good spirits.

I thought it would be a Lou Reed song[3], but not today.

Whilst I’m in technicolour, Anthony says that all he was thinking about was the need to finish, after all the swimming and the domestic indulgence required he just focussed on finishing.  I pressed him on this because I think there must be more going on in his head but he insists all he was focussed on was getting to Rotto.

For Anthony and those down south they now need to come up north and get around Phillip Rock.  A rock outcrop 2k or so from  the end.

Anthony has a video of himself swimming near these Rocks and its here that he does his 50 minute kilometre.  The currents were screaming.

For me (about 1500 or 2 k north of Anthony) the boats thicken. Relay swimmers jumping in and climbing out are all about. They swim up beside me and ‘no you’re not going past’. ‘I’ve been doing this by myself and you and your three mates want to go past me? You are cheating. Are we even in the same event?’. I am righteous.  I keep swimming.

Mostly the relay swimmers go past.

Last stop to refuel.  I’ve just been eating snakes, Gatorade mixed with lots of salt water for the last three or so stops.

I’ve got this.  Like being ten goals up fifteen minutes into the last quarter. Work hard, enjoy it.

I see sting rays.

Paddler peels off.

Billy Preston is rocking.

Meanwhile down south the race officials visit Anthony and Manny on no less than three occasions to see how he is going swimming into the current.  He is making progress and they leave him to swim into Rotto.

The relay swimmers all jump in and swim the last 500 to shore together.  I don’t let them go past easily.

I stand up. Two relay swimmers congratulate me. They are more excited than me. Decent people after all.  I walk toward the ramp. I hear Des and see Cath on the pier.

Punch the sky salute.

People and emotion everywhere.

The clock shows 9.17.  Announcer mangles my name.  I sit on a chair. They bring me water and bananas.  I tell them I’m ok a few times. Skinny people being wrapped up in foil.  Poor buggers.

I collect my solo medal.  Bigger and heavier than the relay medal.  Someone understands.

9 hours – longer than I thought. Adjusted for my wave 8.47.  Longer than I thought.

Meet up with paddlers, spotters and Cath.  You can’t do something like this without support at home.  Good friends that know what you’ve been through.  Nice to share the moment.  I hope it makes sense to them now.

Anthony is clear with me – his moment of elation occurs when his feet hit the sand and he knows he has made it.  The man is focussed.

Reconstruct the day from different angles. Paddlers wrestling with currents just to stay near me.  Swimmers disqualified for boats reversing. But mostly the current. It’s played havoc.  Cooky missed the cut off time at 18k out (somewhere near Phillip Rock). Howdo pulled out at 15k after being seasick from 5k. Heartbreaking.  Another Anglesea mate (Colin) makes it in 10.10.

My skipper reckons we held a pretty true line and I swam something pretty close to 20k.  I think that must be right because those times are all over the place.

Perfect conditions – not.

Winner swims 4.12. Seriously?

It gets pieced together over the next few hours.  Texts, what’s app, grabs of conversation. Delirious, exhausted and elated.

Anthony at 9.47.  Gutsy swim.  His trip south with the current has come close to defeating him. Manny says it’s the hardest thing he has done but has plans to swim it.  Ask Anthony about that 50 minute kilometre.

Not getting your imagined time is disappointing for a fleeting moment. The training and commitment just to get to the start is nine tenths of the achievement.  Getting to the end is exhilarating and satisfying but notwithstanding all the preparation, team execution on the day is ultimately pretty bloody random.  Currents, winds, courses, hydration, energy, motion sickness, stingers, hypothermia….who knows how to best manage the variables and what combination of factors need to align?

We did it and training starts in August.

[1] Dugong Des: Mick’s strategy of keeping 1-200m ahead of you showed his thought for the swimmer and the rowers. The boat would be on coarse, the rowers only had to paddle towards the boat, the swimmer swam to the paddle. Mick also kept ahead to keep the swirl/vortexes from the boat motors away from you, AND keep you away as much as possible from fuel in the water – I believe this was a concern from a number, including the rowers who suffered some nausea from the fuel from other boats.

[2] Dugong Des – I also felt exasperated with the inability to state the distances, given Mick was using a GPS to set his course by. It didn’t give distances? Yeah, a couple of times he gave distances that were wrong. The 10k was one where when we got to the second 10k (the real one) I said to him not to say anything to you as it would confuse you. Mick ignored this and a number of times totally rambled on about stuff when I was trying to find out what you needed ( to eat etc). 

[3]Dugong Des – Always respected you, but a “Lou Reed song”??? You lost a few points there