Update 2022-11-22: Unfortunately our swim ended up as a DQ due to the a failed changeover at 04:52. According to the observer log, Ingrid missed the deadline and entered the water at 04:55, making my 1st shift overrun by 3 minutes. As a result the swim was declared invalid by the CS&PF committee. We hope to try again in 2023. All times in this article are in British Summer Time (UTC+1). Photo credit to my crew Paul Cribb unless otherwise…
Today, I attempted to do my second marathon swim race this year but unfortunately I didn’t end up well. I pulled myself out just 3.5 km from the finish due to extreme leg pain. This blog article is only about the race itself. My marvellous train journeys will be described in another article coming later. Motivation The race of swimming the whole length of Windermere, at 16.5 km, is one of the longer distance marathon swimming races in the UK,…
I completed my longest swim to date – 21.5 km! My longest swim distance has now exceeded my longest run distance (half marathon). I participated in the 11th edition of Vidösternsimmet, held on 2022-08-13. I completed the full distance race, 21.5 km from Osudden to Sundet, in 10:07:22. This was my 5th long distance swim (at least 10 km, or a Scandinavian mile) I have done in my life since 2019. Preface I signed up for this race early February…
I did my first ASA open water swimming championship on 10/7 in Norwich. It was the starting point for me to become a competitive open water swimmer. The race was the East Region Open Water Swimming Championships. However, it was also the London Region Open Water Swimming Championships and an open age-group competition. The distances on order were, in race order, 3 km, 1 km, 2 km and 5 km, and it was possible to do both 3 and 5,…
I participated in the BLDSA Champion of Champions (Dover) on 18 June. This was my first swim race in the year but it didn’t went well. The race format was 3 races on the day, 5, 3 then 1 miles, with each mile consisting of 2 x a 800 m triangular loop, i.e. 10 laps for 5 miles, 6 laps for 3 miles, and 2 laps for 1 mile. The full result is available on the BLDSA website. 5 miles…
It’s one week since my disaster and I still can’t make my mind out of it. Everything was very wrong. It was the worst moment in my life. I really shouldn’t have tried it at all before I am completely ready. I totally underestimated the difficulty of Channel swimming, thinking it’s not much different to swim 14-16 km along the coast. Let me start with my motivation. The primary reasons I signed up to do the Channel were: as a…
All photos courtesy of my crew Deborah Vine unless specified. It has already been a few months since I made my final training update on my Channel swim, and I have now made the attempt. Here’s is the report of it. My booked tide was 12-17 September 2021. As I am a slow swimmer, the pilot had agreed that he wouldn’t take me out on a spring tide. Although the weather was good on 12 September, it was still spring…
The hostel I booked was near Victoria train station, thinking that it would offer fast travel to Tooting Bec Lido which is right beside the railway line between London Victoria and Brighton. However it turned out that the fastest way to travel there was to take the tube on the Victoria Line then Northern Line to Tooting Bec, and then transfer to a bus there rather than using a National Rail train. As off-peak travel starts at 09:30, I waited…
I went to London and Dover on a 4-day trip 10 August to 13 August this year, which was my first extended trip after I moved to the UK. I originally hoped to have a few international trips including to Poland, Germany and Sweden, but the border situation did not allow me to do that. As the United Kingdom is not an interesting country for me I didn’t travel domestically until this trip. (I’m mainly interested in countries with recent…
As the last season of COVID restrictions took away the opportunity for me to do any pool training in Hong Kong, apart from the month of November, I was so stressed that it affected my well-being and I had to visit a psychologist. The measures I took to manage it including suspending training, limiting my time thinking and working about it, etc. I once considered giving up but I judged my situation was not as bad as to the point…