A couple of weekends ago I dragged my wife down to Bray Lake for the Aspire night swimming event to take a couple of photos, unfortunately neither of us remembered to grab a decent camera. So these ones were taken using the trusty iPhone camera.
It was quite an interesting evening. I'd originally planned it to be a gentle swim so that I could get a feel for swimming in the dark. As soon as I signed in I had a suspicion that there were two different groups of people taking part: the ones who wanted to swim gently around the lake and the ones who wanted to make it a bit of a race.
After activating my glow stick and attaching it to my goggles I decided that I should do my usual trick for the mass start. Get to the front and the side and make sure to keep out of the way of the turbulent thrashing waters of 100+ swimmers.
I'm sure that being at the back would have made it a relaxing swim but that's not my style; I'm competitive. Always have been, always will be.
The air horn sounded and I went for it, it was carnage around me. No one could see where they were going (the buoys had the same glow sticks as the swimmers and were 200 odd meters away), people were swimming everywhere and it was great fun. One chap got so turned around he was going at right angles to the rest of us.
It was a really clear night and while there was the odd eerie glow from the odd swimmer in the nearby vicinity when you breathed you generally saw nothing but stars. On one side of the lake you could see glow sticks bobbing around on the water and on the other nothing but darkness.
I've done some special swims since I started open water swimming last year but this was one of my favourites.