It was quite a surprise to see this photo of me on the Swim Serpentine weekly newsletter. It's actually a photo the organisers took of me just after I finished my one-mile swim at Swim Serpentine about two or three years ago. I was really buzzing from the enjoyment of the event, and the fact that I had had a good swim over one mile. It's not always the case. Sometimes the water is choppy, or you bump into other competitors. Sometimes I get tense in the water, particularly if I can't see the buoys and I lose sight of where I'm going. But this was a good swim, with lots of buoys to help with sighting, loads of crowd support in Hyde Park and on the Serpentine Bridge, and even swans for company!
The photo is also a reminder to train, and the fact that the event is just a couple of weeks away. I have signed up for the two-mile event, which is a stretch target, though I have done lots of swimming this year. Swimming was the first organised sports we could do when lock-down measures were eased. However, it hasn't always been easy for me to fit in the time to swim two miles. A mixture of my busy schedule, and some venues only allowing you to swim for an hour has meant that it's quite hard to go the full distance.
The good thing is that when I aired this issue on the Open Water Swimming Facebook group I had lots of replies from people naming venues where it is possible to swim for longer than an hour - including one of my local open-water swimming venues at the Royal Victoria Docks. So now, I just need to take myself to those venues. Not long to go until the big day - 18th September.
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