Swimming to Latvia

The 2012 cold water swimming championships areto be held from January 20-22 in Latvia. The SLSC will of course field a team although I won't be going myself. Latvia is about 1400 miles away, so in the build up to the event we are going to try and swim there. The idea is that we tot up all our lengths and widths in a book kept in the cafe hoping that we make the distance in time. there will be double points for swimming butterfly and on special days like Christmas and New Year. It'll be fun to see how it goes, 1400 miles is quite a long way. 24, 640 lengths or about 305 lengths a day. About eighty people a day swim so if they average four lengths everyday we'll do it but the water will be getting much colder before then.

The good news was that despite the rain and cloud the water was warmer again today, well above 12ºC. Johnathan was swimming when I got in but lack of light made for a bit of a blurry picture. The water was quite full, not sure if people were keen to get to Latvia or just making the most of the water temperature? I had a good swim and soon reached eighteen lengths, at that point Ian set off in his wetsuit. I couldn't resist giving chase but I couldn't catch up with him over a length. On the return leg I tumble turned and raced off but Ian kept pace with me the whole time. I decided to do two more to make it twenty two and dropped the pace a bit for the final lengths, It was fun racing someone so fast.

Nick hasn't been swimming far recently but I got this picture of him following the line across a width, I like the angle of the image even if it's also a bit blurry too.
I've now reached full circle with Quick Dip and can look back at last years archives for comparison. We also had a mild patch at the beginning of November last year with the water about 11ºC, the difference being I only swam twelve lengths! Twenty two in all a personal best for November.