Double swimming race weekend

Two more swimming races in the bag this weekend, although if I’m honest one was more of a “challenge” or fun race since there were no timing chips or prizes on offer!  And both on my own, without the Team bit of Team Mermaid as Mr W was away on a study school.

Back to Box End lake at Bedford on Saturday for the 3^rd of 4 1500m races.  Much better conditions than last time (well, pouring rain, but very little wind) which enabled me to put a PB in the bag (albeit only by 4 seconds) and break 22 minutes for the distance (albeit by only 1 second – my time was 21:59).  Am sure if Mr W had been cheering me on, if the lake had been less weedy, and I hadn’t got into a tangle with a pair of swimmers, I could have done even better!  Because one of my usual rivals was absent, I even bagged third place, though there didn’t seem to be a prize this time.

On Sunday, it was another fairly early start to head down to Bournemouth, this time for the Pier to Pier swim!  I’ve never done such a big swim before – there were 1400 starters!  We organised ourselves into faster swimmers at the front and recreational at the back (and there were a lot of them, identifiable by surf wetsuits rather than swimming specific ones), I waited fairly near the front for the run in (another unusual aspect for me…).  I’m not very good at wading through waves, so it was down and swimming as soon as I was knee deep, which meant that a huge amount of sand disappeared into my wetsuit.  It was an odd swim, mainly as I don’t usually do sea swims, so I have nothing to compare it against.  Swimming a long stretch was hard as it was difficult to anticipate how far into the swim I was; the swell was frustrating as was the salty water.  I pushed through and was fairly pleased to complete the swim in 34:29 (according to my watch), which meant that I was on average about 30s per km slower than the day before.  I think I must have been in the first 20-30 finishers, although difficult to tell without someone standing there and counting!  A tiring day, more because of the driving than the swimming, but glad to have completed the challenge of swimming from Bournemouth Pier to Boscombe Pier!