More photos to be added later. On 13 January, I did my craziest thing in my life: flying from the UK to Austria to swim a 250 m race and back in the UK within 24 hours. Motivation I want to get started in ice swimming, but unfortunately the UK doesn’t have enough opportunities for me to do that. There was only 1 race under IISA in the whole winter in December, the national championships, which was sold out in…
I did the race Cold Half the third time as a solo this year on 4 February. I completed the race in 5:14:26 in 2020 and 4:53:47 in 2021. However, I skipped the 2023 edition because pandemic-related travel restrictions were still in place in Hong Kong, and I had emigrated to the UK already. My intention was to go back to Hong Kong and race every year. Training Unfortunately, I didn’t have much training before this race. I now have…
I visited the Netherlands between 2023-12-14 and 2023-12-17, which was my first overseas trip from the UK without flying. I personally don’t like flying on airlines compared to other forms of public transport, mainly because it is a hassle to go to airports which are usually far away from the city centre, the strict airline security, the limited ability to carry luggage, and the need to book early as there is a strict limit on how many people a plane…
It has been a month since I swam across the English Channel from England to France. It was a magical feeling when I walked onto the shore at Le Petit Blanc Nez after entering the sea at Shakespeare Beach 18 hours and 21 minutes before, but the journey was incredibly tough, and it was nowhere near perfection. I made many irrecoverable mistakes during my preparation resulting in 2 years of time and opportunity cost lost, which would be valued at…
This article focuses solely on my journey to my second attempt of the English Channel. I will publish an article later for an overview of my whole journey from the point I started thinking about doing this in 2018. As mentioned before, after failing my Channel swim attempt in 2021, I had no intention to retry the swim in the near future. However, I made my second attempt on 2023-09-07 and got a provisional success in 18 hours, 21 minutes….
Today I raced again in a regional open water championships under Swim England rules, my second year to do so. Now I have joined South London Swimming Club so I raced for a London club in the London regional competition for a national qualifying place. The top 3 in each age group in the national distance (5 km for 19+) are qualified into the nationals. I wanted to do this race because I would like to see if I could…
The open water race season has started and my first event is BLDSA Champion of Champions. This event is 3 races, 5 miles, 3 miles and 1 mile, held successively on the same day, with the ranking determined by the total time. The race course was a triangular loop of 800 m length, i.e. 10 laps, 6 laps and 2 laps for the 3 races respectively. 5 miles The water temperature was reported as 15.3°C by the organiser. It was…
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…