First off, those of you who are reading this blog regularly will have noticed a rather long gap between my last post and this one. We have had some terrible family news and needless to say my thoughts have been elsewhere.
The water is getting much colder now. I'm still braving it without the wetsuit but it is very cold. The last few weekends have been about 9 - 10 degrees C, today it had dropped to 8.9. It certainly wakes you up when you dip your toe in the water. The cold is dangerous, it causes you to swim slower, you're more likely to suffer muscle cramps and hypothermia is a real worry.
Due to the cold, my distance has decreased dramatically. I'm now only getting 2 -3km swims done in open water which means that I'm going to have to start upping the distance in the pool.
I did, however, have a reminder recently of how dangerous water can be, not just from hypothermia or from the speed that water can move at. Swimming against the flow of the river the other weekend was quite tough, it was like having a very long endless pool. We'd swum about 700m to where the river started to bend and after a few minutes of swimming and not getting anywhere we turned around. The flow was ridiculously strong and, quite frankly, weaker swimmers would have struggled a lot sooner.
Oh, I almost forgot about the danger part of the blog: I got slapped in the face by a fish! I think it was challenging me to a duel...
Just remember, it can be dangerous to swim in rivers, even if you are a good swimmer make sure you swim safely... and try and stay out of any fish fights.
The water is getting much colder now. I'm still braving it without the wetsuit but it is very cold. The last few weekends have been about 9 - 10 degrees C, today it had dropped to 8.9. It certainly wakes you up when you dip your toe in the water. The cold is dangerous, it causes you to swim slower, you're more likely to suffer muscle cramps and hypothermia is a real worry.
Due to the cold, my distance has decreased dramatically. I'm now only getting 2 -3km swims done in open water which means that I'm going to have to start upping the distance in the pool.
I did, however, have a reminder recently of how dangerous water can be, not just from hypothermia or from the speed that water can move at. Swimming against the flow of the river the other weekend was quite tough, it was like having a very long endless pool. We'd swum about 700m to where the river started to bend and after a few minutes of swimming and not getting anywhere we turned around. The flow was ridiculously strong and, quite frankly, weaker swimmers would have struggled a lot sooner.
Oh, I almost forgot about the danger part of the blog: I got slapped in the face by a fish! I think it was challenging me to a duel...
Just remember, it can be dangerous to swim in rivers, even if you are a good swimmer make sure you swim safely... and try and stay out of any fish fights.