I’m Back…

… sort of!

A lot has changed since my last couple of posts last year. Things have improved with my health (physical and mental), things have improved professionally and things have improved A LOT personally.

As part of that improvement, I had my first open water swim of the year last week. Then my second and my third.

None of the swims were very far, but the very fact I did them, felt comfortable in the water and even enjoyed them, felt like a big step forward.

I was on holiday with my fiancee (yes, that is the big personal change!) and our kids in the Lake District last week and we were so lucky with the weather that Derwentwater looked positively inviting to swim in. Within about 2 hours of arriving we went down to the lake and into the water.

At first I splashed around with the kids for a bit. Then I swam a few strokes and it felt good. So I swam a few more. It still felt good. I decided to swim to the island, but it was feeling so good that I decided to swim all the way round it. It wasn’t far, but it’s a lot further than I’ve been for a long, long time.

Derwentwater – and *my* island circled!

We enjoyed that swim so much, that we made special plans to get in a swim again on two other days. It was lovely!

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The Season has Started

The open water swimming season has started for me – and started with a bit of a bang.

Last Sunday I did a 6-hour lake swim – organised by 100% Swimming. Next Sunday it will be the first BLDSA swim of the year as I’m organising the Colwick Park swim.

The 6-hour swim was something that I’d signed up for ages ok. Back in a time when I thought that I’d be able to get several lake swims in ahead of the swim and it would be a great training swim. Back before we had that horrible cold weather (can we even remember that now we’re having a mini heatwave). In the end, with winter dragging on through into April I managed a very short dip at 9 degrees in Sale with Cathy and a couple of ouchy swims in 12 degrees water at Activities Away.

In the end the weather turned in time to warm the lake up to 14 degrees in time for our swim and so swim we did.

I realised afterwards that I hadn’t swum continuously for longer than an hour at this year and that this was only my fifth ever swim of 6 hours or longer. But at the time I just swam around the half mile course swimming from feed to feed (and huge thanks to my swim buddy Hayley who was in charge of the feeds) until the 6 hours was up.

It was great to turn my winter swimming in the pool into a good open water swim. I’ve done quite a lot of pool work and a lot of gym work over the last few months. I’m still conscious of my bad back – and it is something that hasn’t been ‘fixed’, but is being ‘managed’, but not causing any real problems at the moment – so a lot of gym work has been done to stretch and strengthen the areas that need to be stretchier or stronger.

While in the pool I have been doing ‘sprint’ sets. Of course the term sprint is relative when my swim goals are 10.5 miles, so a sprint set for me has been a timed 1km or 2km swim in the pool. But I have noticed improvements and am feeling good about my swimming at the moment. It was good to test that out in open water.

Then next Sunday (20th May) will be the Colwick Park swim and the start to the BLDSA swimming season.

I am organising this swim again (but for the last year) and there will be a 1km swim – that people can turn up and enter on the day – a 3km swim and a 5km swim. As well as organising it I’m going to swim the 3km event, so that will be nice to ‘race’ in open water after the long training six hour swim.

The season has started. I wonder what it will hold for me.

Lac Leman

Lac Leman (or lake Geneva as we know it in English) is a real bucket list swim for marathon swimmers. At 70km long it is a similar distance to a two-way English Channel swim and has been swum by only a very select group of swimmers.

That’s why, this summer, I was delighted…

… to be invited to visit some friends who live near the lake.

I didn’t bloody swim it, of course I didn’t – I’m nowhere near a good enough swimmer to do that. I did have a nice dip this morning though.

As for the weekend, I had a lovely time. A really relaxing weekend with friends, mountains, a lake, wine and LOTS of cheese.

Maybe one day I’ll be back with more serious swimming intentions…

51kms in Windermere

I started this blog as a way to motivate me to swim one length of Windermere – which I did in 2012.

On Sunday I swam my third length of the lake, so a total of 51kms swum in that lake alone.

Sunday’s swim was cold and it took longer than I had hoped / intended. But it was also completed, so there is that I suppose. It didn’t have the “Oh my god I can’t believe I’m doing this” excitement of the first swim. Nor did it have the “Oh my god I can’t believe I’m doing this” despair of the second time I swam it. This time I just swam it (albeit slower and colder then I would have liked).

I suppose that is a level of success in itself. I can swim a length of Windermere in water temperature that may have reached the dizzy heights of 14.5 degrees and at the end I can shrug my shoulders and be a bit disappointed with my time (7hours 45minutes). It doesn’t really feel like success, but if I was forced to look on the bright side…

Anyway, it’s done and the season is done for this year. Let’s see what next year brings…

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The Windermere swim was the second of my swims raising money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association. If you’re able to spare a few pennies I’d be really grateful if you could donate on Just Giving. I’ll leave the page open for a couple more weeks, but then close it down by Sunday 8th October.

Last Training Swim

On Monday I’m off down to Kent to wait for my channel relay, so this morning’s swim was my last training swim ahead of that.

I did a series of drills (to keep my stroke in good order) and then a gentle 1km to total 2,850m.

However, the best bit about today’s swim was the chat with the other swimmers and letting them know about next week’s channel relay. Having done a relay before (and lots of other open water swimming) next week’s swim, while exciting, doesn’t seem that big a deal. But to the pool swimmers it’s a big challenge and they were excited and very supportive of me. It was lovely to chat to them and to see it through other people’s eyes.

Having said all of that, I am excited and I am looking forward to it. I am aware and respectful of the challenge ahead, but I’m also confident in my training and fitness.

If you’d like to sponsor me for the swim, please go here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/patrick-smith-swim

Ullswater done, Derwentwater done

Yesterday I swam the 7 mile length of Ullswater with the BLDSA.

It was chilly, windy and all in all a bloody tough swim. It split into three very distinct sections for me.

Part 1 – horrible, cold and really not much fun. I knew I wouldn’t finish and would be getting out “soon” (it was never now, but always “soon”). I took my first feed after an hour and then every 45 minutes from then and the second feed seemed to be an age away. I really didn’t enjoy this section of the swim.

Part 2 – it started soon after he second feed and was probably timed with the sun coming out a bit, but I suddenly felt ‘in the zone’ and really enjoyed it. From being desperate for my second feed to happen I pushed the third one back five minutes as I did t want to break my rhythm. For about two hours I actually enjoyed myself and was swimming well.

Part 3 – was when the shoulders began to ache and the cold got into me a little bit. At this point the end couldn’t come soon enough.

But the end arrived. I touched the buoy and turned round to thank my kayaker. Then burst out laughing.

A wave had caught her against a jetty (that she had positioned herself against so I wouldn’t swim into it) and flipped the kayak over. So she joined me for a swim for the last 50m. I rescued the paddle, hence this photo.

So in summary a cold swim (13.8 degrees), a long swim (7 miles), a tough swim, but almost an enjoyable one.

Today was Derwentwater and a little easier. The water was fractionally warmer (14.3 degrees), the weather was calmer and nicer and it was shorter (5.25 miles). But the main thing that made it easier for me was that I was kayaking and not swimming.

That said I was kayaking for an amazing swimmer and a very fast one. She covered the 5.25 mile course in a little over 2 1/4 hours and swam brilliantly throughout.

As a kayaker it was my job to be there as safety support if needed (I wasn’t), but also guide the route and feed when needed. The speed she swam at meant that I was kept pretty busy with both of those.

She was the first swimmer home, so I’m going to take some credit for that (I’m not really, but it was amazing to watch a proper swimmer).

A good weekend so far.

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Update – I also swam 6km in Coniston on Monday – you know, just for fun!

Please support…

I’m not a great one for using my swims for fundraising. I’m gonna do the swim anyway, so it doesn’t always feel right to ask people to donate to something I enjoy. 

This time is different though. I’m raising money for the MNDA through JustGiving. Here’s what I wrote there:

Someone very, very important to me lost someone very, very important to her to this shi**y disease, so I wanted to do something.

What I’m actually going to do is swim a channel relay (swimming from England to France as part of team) – twice.

The first is a four-person relay which will hopefully take place at the end of August. In it we will swim for an hour each and I expect to get 3 or 4 swims (so four hours of swimming).

The second is a two-person relay at the end of September. For this one we will swim for two hours at a time and again I expect to swim 4 times, however this will mean eight hours of swimming.

If you think that this is something that is worth a few pennies then please donate. Thank you.

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If you would like to donate, please go to my JustGiving page to do so – http://www.justgiving.com/Patrick-Smith-swim

Collecting pebbles in Salford

There’s a tradition that if you complete a channel swim you collect a pebble from the beach in France as a memento. This weekend I completed my Aspire Channel Challenge by swimming 1,000 metres at USwim in Salford, so I collected my ‘French’ pebbles in Salford.

Obviously, there’s still time to sponsor me: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/patrick-smith-2016-aspire-channel-swim

I Has Cold Swimmed

After having had a back bad I’ve had to miss the entire open water swimming season this year. However, my back is slowly starting to get better.

A month ago today I posted that I had swum for the first time in months, well now I can say that yesterday I swam outside for the first time this year. Unfortunately I’ve missed the BLDSA season by a day – but I’m just delighted to get back into the water.

It happened at the final BLDSA event of the year at Lynn Regis. A few people camp over following the swim and although I didn’t swim in the event itself, my son and I joined in with the camping. Some of the campers then get up and go for a quick dip in the water on the Sunday morning. I’d taken my kit along, but wasn’t desperate to join in, until my son said he wanted to get into the water. I wasn’t sure he’d actually swim – I thought he’d paddle for a bit and get out – but he jumped in and had a quick swim (proud dad moment), so I jumped in after him.

Although I didn’t swim far I stayed in after he got out and spent probably around 20 minutes swimbling – it was great.

Come and swim Coniston

I’m organising a swim in Coniston Water in the Lake District and I’d like to invite you to come along and swim it.

It’s through the BLDSA, so you need to be a member of the organisation – you can enter easily online here: http://bldsa.org.uk/portfolio/bldsa-annual-dinner-agm/. However, membership not only allows you to swim in any other BLDSA event this year, it also supports a voluntary organisation that is dedicated to providing safe and fun events for open water swimmers.

The swim itself is a 5.25mile skins swim that starts at the southern end of the lake and ends when the lake ends at the northern end of the lake. And it’s beautiful. Coniston is one of the nicest lakes to swim in and I promise you’ll love it.

As we are so focussed on you being safe and enjoying your swim we insist on a 1-2-1 kayak to swimmer ratio, so you’ll need to have a kayaker to support you. However, if you’re stuck with that we might be able to find you someone who can help, or if you a body but no boat kayaks can be hired at the lake – just let me know.

So, sign up here – http://www.entrycentral.com/event/100339 – and be quick as entries close tomorrow.

The view back down the lake from the finish.

The beach at the Bluebird Cafe