...So said a cousin of mine as I talked about Martin Strel's mad swim down the Amazon
Well, no, life's not too short for these things.
And so this year I set out to challenge myself in another way.
I've had about 5 months off. Well, when I say 'off', I mean just swimming twice a week, and those swims have been lazy and worry free. It's been great. I've had nights where I've thought 'I'm going to stay up until three o'clock in the morning, just because I can'. I've been carefree. I've been able to watch films with stormy seas without getting the collywobbles. I've been able to sleep without worrying. I've been able to cough without crying with fear. And in January I went to a wedding and pulled something in my pectoral muscle and I just didn't care. It's been lovely.
Five months was enough though and now I'm looking around for something else.
There are many official swims to challenge the long distance swimmer: Round Manhattah Island (the view! the water!), Lake Zurich (beautiful), Cook Straits (between North and South Island in NZ), Catalina Channel (the 9 second roll of the waves of the Pacific), Round Jersey (closer to home), Jersey to France (getting further away), Straits of Gibraltar (short but rough), Sicily to Malta (long! plus the sharks!), Rottnest Channel (2000 swimmers race it), Tampa Bay swim (a hard long sea swim in the US), Lake Ontario (very arduous - cold and very long). They all have their 'merits'.
I don't think they are necessarily for me though. I want to do swims because they are special to me - or haven't been done often or at all. Because they are cold or high or weird. I spend hours gazing at maps and thinking 'ooh, that looks swimmable' - and then measuring the distance and thinking 'oh, maybe not!' 60 miles looks quite short on a world map.
The swim I want to do this year is in Scotland, a 14-16 mile swim in the chilly North Sea.
It hasn't been done before as far as I know.
I have to find a boat willing to come on the adventure with me, a pilot, plot the best route, get a crew, work out the temperatures, the tides. I have to find someone to ratify the swim. I'll have to find the funds. And I'll have to swim it!
And I have to start to train again as well.
It's a big adventure, and certainly life is not too short for that.