Next Saturday (August 30th) I’ll be swimming Windermere.
I got a bit nervous about it all yesterday, especially when a couple of family members scared me by suggesting that it was actually today! It’s not today, it’s next week… I hope.
I’m swimming it as part of the BLDSA event and it’s the second time I’ve swum it – having successfully completed in 2012 in a time of 7 hours 42 minutes and 36 seconds.
For those of you that don’t know, Windermere (not lake Windermere as the ‘mere’ bit means lake) is 10 1/2 miles long and is England’s longest lake. There’ll probably be about 25 of us that all set off together – and hopefully 25 of us that finish the swim. Last time I swam it I was last finisher by a long way, the penultimate swimmer was 50 minutes ahead of me. So I’m not expecting to win (or medal or podium to use a horrible verb that we seem to have adopted since the Olympics), but I do want to finish. I’m hoping to complete the swim in less than 7 hours, but like so much of open water swimming a lot will depend on the weather.
1000kmstowindermere 
How far do you have to swim…..not 10 1/2 miles? Whatever the distance, 7 hours in the water sounds a lot!! Good luck.
Yeah. I’m doing the full 10.5 miles.