One day one photo - 7: Swim Serpentine

I have decided to take the plunge, literally! Earlier on this summer I took part in the Great London Swim in Royal Victoria docks. It was a well organised event, and I quite enjoyed the experience. There was a choice of distances and I opted to do 800m (half a mile), as that was a distance I knew I'd be able to get through without too much difficulty. My main issue would be how long I would take. In the end I took around 22 minutes, and I wasn't last - a big improvement on what I did at the Crystal Palace triathlon, where I took almost half an hour to do 750m and I had the slowest swim split out of all 1,000 competitors in the race!

After that I decided to do more open water swimming events. So the Swim Serpentine at Hyde Park, London was the next on my list. (I had hoped to do the Great Scottish Swim in Loch Lomond, but I was actually in France at that time.) I would have like to have done the 800m category at Swim Serpentine, but I was a bit late getting my entry in, so I am doing the one-mile option. It's going to be a challenge. I swam 1200m last Wednesday at the open water swim session in Victoria Docks a few days ago.



It was in the early evening and initially the sun was shining and I felt good. But later on, the sun went down and I had difficulty sighting the buoys in the water. There weren't many people left swimming as many had finished and gone home, so I had no reference. Then I got quite cold, it became windy and I could feel myself being tossed around in the wind. My lungs were just rasping as I was breathing and although I made a lot of effort to stay calm, I was subconsciously panicking. In the end I found my way back to the start/finish gantry, and a life-guard in a boat was there to help with the sighting in the semi-darkness. It was only after I got out of the water that I was aware of how difficult I had found the experience. In fact I was quite chesty when I got out and had to use my asthma inhaler - the first time I've had to do so in a long time.

I like to think that the conditions in the Serpentine will be a lot more clement - at least it will be daylight! I will also wear an extra hat and gilet just to protect against the cold.

Some may say I'm mad for doing this, but I just love the challenge - and hey, the Serpentine is just around the corner from where I work. It would be rude not to do it!

Biking, running and swimming too!

My blog is about cycling, but some of you may know that I also run - something I have done since childhood. I am a member of the Serpentine Running Club, and also run second claim for South London Harriers. Earlier this year I did a 10k race around London, and hope to get out and do a few more running events (as well as the informal Park runs).

Many people don't know that I even swim, albeit not massively well!

My sporting story goes like this - I got into cycling when I realised I needed to know how to ride a bike to get through a triathlon, back when I was doing them in the early noughties.

Once I had a taste of cycling through multi-sports I got lured away by all that the two-wheeled sport has to offer, and now I do more cycling than anything else.

I found the training for the three disciplines of a triathlon difficult to juggle with a normal life. I don;t know how people do it. In fact the people that I have met who do well in age group triathlons just don't live a normal life. Call me boring, but maybe I like just doing normal!

So regular triathloning went out of the window about 12 years ago, and as much as I like watching the exploits of the Brownlee brothers and Non Stanford, I don't really miss doing it myself! However, I still do get a wobble and do one or two cheap, local triathlons a year.

What I do like enjoy though is doing the individual disciplines one at a time. So I do cycling races (which you, dear reader, may already know about), I take part in running races, and now I've discovered swimming races in the open water.

There is something quite refreshing about swimming in the open water. I am not a particularly strong swimmer. In fact I was regularly one of the last  people out of the pool in a triathlon!

But putting on a wetsuit and being in the open air just feels fun. I am not confident enough to just swim anywhere, like the folks from the Outdoor Swimming Society, so I go to one of the various organised sessions and races that take place around London and the home counties - or wherever I happen to be.

There are lots of places to go to. Recently I was at Shepperton, in South-West London, and on a trip to Cheshire I went to Boundary Park, near Joddrell Bank. In all cases the atmosphere was nice and relaxed with changing area, cafe/lounge area, music, and because there were a lot of regulars it was a good place to meet people. I hope to get to other venues in London - West Reservoir in Stoke Newington, Hampstead Ponds, Divers Cove near Redhill, Surrey. I have swum in the Serpentine in Hyde Park as part of an Aquathlon, but hope to go there at a more leisurely pace.

A couple of weeks ago I did the Great London Swim at Royal Victoria docks. I swam 800m and it was fun, if a little salty! The great thing about these swims is the level is so varied, and has ordinary people, not just hard core triathletes, so my result didn't look that bad! I took more than 20 minutes to complete the distance, but I still finished mid-pack! In a triathlon I would have been one of the slowest swimmers!

So that has given me the motivation to carry on with open water swimming events. I hope to do the Great Scottish Swim in Loch Lomond at the end of August, and then Swim Serpentine in September.

And of course I will carry on cycling and running too.