Swimbling challenge

Swimbling

Another day another ......... really stupid bloody challenge I have set myself. These challenges are to raise money for Macmillan for the excellent help they provided for my late Cousin John (Loki) and his wonderful family. If you would like to donate, please visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/doddi-deca

To help prepare for my deca ironman in June a good friend of mine who is taking on his own deca ironman this year, James Page, thought it would be a good idea to test ourselves on a long swim. Another friend of ours joining the challenge fun bus is Mark Yates, he is already no stranger to the deca (for the long read https://theinspire30challenge.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/mark_ugly_10_deca.pdf)

Three Amigos

The swim for me is the hardest of the disciplines in triathlon, mainly because I hate swimming :/ and secondly it is really difficult to train for such long distances. Most pools only provide 2 hours of lane swimming at most in my area.

This challenge is to swim 1 mile every hour on the hour for 24 hours, the maths is simple that even I can do that, 24 miles. The quicker you complete each mile the longer the break you have before starting your next mile. The challenge starts on Saturday 20th April and finished the following morning.

This challenge is all about preparing myself for the deca ironman. I am hoping to learn a lot about my body when swimming for such a long time. The most important being how to take on nutrition and also how to get/stay warm once my body temperature drops. I have genuinely just shivered whilst typing this out.

The swim is happening in an open air 50m pool. That doesn't sound too bad you think, until I learnt that the temperature is only 16oC!

For a while I have been thinking, I have this! It's just swimming. As it closer the panic of what I am attempting is kicking in.

To summarise

1. I hate swimming
2. I hate the cold
3. I hate swimming in a pool the most
4. I have never had to take on nutrition whilst swimming

Most of all I have to stay mentally strong and remember why I am doing this