A few years ago I was reading a book in which there were various descriptions of the mad physical endurance events that the Victorians used to entertain themselves with. Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, ignominiously faded to a side show swimming in a tank on a stage with other 'competiters' to see who could outlast one another - last man standing (or swimming). I remember reading, amongst these stories, about an athlete who vowed to run 1 mile an hour for 100 hours. There was huge public and press interest, and the man eventually did run a mile an hour for 100 hours, finishing in a sorry state but triumphant. At the time I read it the story of the runner fascinated me. At face value, running a mile an hour does not seem very hard. But add up the hours, the sleep deprivation, the mind numbing boredom of it all... it sounded pretty tough to me. Tough and pedantic. And something about the symmetry, the repetition - that little metronomic athlete appealed to me very much. It stayed with me...
Until at the beginning of this year Cam, a swimmer in my swimming club, forwarded an email to our group about a swim being organised in Guildford Lido at the end of April 2011. 'Swim a mile an hour for 24 hours' it challenged! Nobody in our group thought it a very good idea (and who can blame them) but I was hooked straight away. I'd stumbled across a watery version of my Victorian man's 100 mile challenge...
I signed up.
The idea is that participants swim one mile per hour, on the hour for twenty four hours in a pool. Most people I tell that I am doing this swim say 'How can you possibly stay awake for 24 hours?!' which seems the most banal question to ask. Yes, but it's 24 miles of swimming - and whichever way you look at it - that's quite a number of miles.
So... there aren't waves, and it won't be cold. There are no tides to fight. But it will be mind numbingly boring, and it won't be quite as buoyant as in the sea. And there won't be any great scenery. There won't be ferries. There won't be blooming jellyfish or tides. There will be counting and pool tiles and other swimmers with to jostle and overtake or be overtaken by. Chlorine. And there will be 24 miles. That's quite a lot.
I figured that this swim will be good 'early season' training. Get my arse into gear for open water training later on in the year (and a lake Zurich 2 person relay). And boy has it been. I'm very very nervous. Training is going OK but that is another story.
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