My First Event
Thinking about doing a swimming event? We persuaded our team member Abi Whyte to sign up for her first ever open water challenge and asked her to share her story
Istarted working as a digital journalist for Outdoor Swimmer in August 2022. Prior to this, my experience as an outdoor swimmer was more of the dipping and frolicking kind, and usually within the spring and summer months. Joining a team of swimmers who do it all year round and take part in all sorts of events and challenges was daunting to say the least. The thing is, the more I settled into my role, the more I found the idea of open water events rather tantalising. I started to wonder what the fuss was all about.
THE PERFECT SWIM FOR FIRST TIMERS?
The challenge I’ve signed up for is the Aspire 4-mile swim along the River Arun in Sussex with a group of up to 20 swimmers. It is a tidally assisted swim, which means it should feel much easier than swimming the same distance in a lake or pool. According to Aspire, this makes the River Arun Swim the perfect open water challenge for first timers, ie… ME!
While the fact that it’s a tidallyassisted swim sounds nice (and the swim ends in Arundel, which I’ve always wanted to visit), I’m daunted by the distance and the fact that I’m a slow swimmer (there’s only a 2-hour window for completing the swim). However, the event isn’t until 22 September, so I’ve got time to prepare.
THE START OF TRAINING
With Christmas gorging and laziness out the way, I started my training in January with a onehour session in my local indoor pool. My sole target for this first session was to acclimatise to lane swimming in a public pool, and to see how I’d get on with front crawl. Luckily the pool wasn’t too busy and I ended up having a lane to myself.
To my surprise, my front crawl was… ok! Whenever I’ve tried it outdoors I’ve gotten puffed out and had to stop after a few strokes, but something just seemed to click in the pool. I swam very slowly, using bilateral breathing (breathing every third stroke) and managed to swim continuously in the 25m-pool for an hour. I lost count of the lengths I did, unfortunately.
NEXT FEW WEEKS OF TRAINING
Outdoor Swimmer founder, Simon Griffiths, (who happens to be a swim coach) advised that for the next few weeks I continue swimming slowly with front crawl and get used to pool swimming. Then after a few sessions we’ll start adding some structure to my one-hour sessions and focus on technique and speeding up my stroke. Then, when the lake warms up, I will need to test my front crawl in open water.
Unfortunately, being a working mum and juggling other commitments, I’m only able to commit to one one-hour pool training session a week, but hopefully alongside my regular running and Pilates exercises,
The Aspire 4-mile swim along the River Arun in Sussex is perfect for first-timers
plus my weekly cold-water dips, this should suffice?! We shall have to see…
FALL-BACK OPTION
While I’m aiming to feel confident and competent in front crawl by September, I do have a fall-back option. Last summer, I found a local swim coach (Swim With
Ray) who was hosting a ‘Lakeside to 2.5km’ course. The training was over 10 weeks, once a week, in a nearby lake. After weeks of struggling with front crawl breathing and feeling desperately slow with head-up breaststroke, I decided to give head-down breaststroke a go. For me it felt streamlined and easy, so I stuck with it for the rest of my training and used the stroke for most of my 2.5km swim on the final day. Achieving that 2.5km was a massive confidence booster and reassures me that if I find myself struggling with front crawl, I should still be able to do the swim on breaststroke.
I’d encourage everyone to try an event. Signing up has given me a new sense of purpose in my swimming and I’m excited to see what I can do.
Would you like to join Abi for a 4-mile swim, raising money for Aspire? There are still places left! Find out more: