10 hour sea swim completed !

Mac's boat, Purdy - http://www.sussexseacharters.co.uk/

On Monday my support team and I completed a 10 hour sea swim with a practice escort boat just outside of Chichester harbour. Was again a surprisingly doable but very hard exercise that taught us all a lot about what will and won't work well on the actual day.



From my point of view the first two hours were actually quite good fun and went past pretty quickly. The sun was shining, the 17 degree water felt tropical and my wife along with my good friends Christian and Tom were keeping me really amused from the boat. Stroke rate was almost always a consistent 53spm

In hour 3 I quite suddenly started to get horribly seasick as the chop built up and that lasted for a good couple of hours (took some tablets to help but got rid of it in the end by repeating over and over in my head that I did not feel sick and eventually convinced myself - amazing thing the mind !!). Stroke rate over this time was in the mid forties as the seasickness and the choppy tide/wind combo really slowed me down.

Tania with the feeding contraption and SPM board

After half way things were going well until my should injury started to grind. After a couple of hours though it just seems to disappear after having worked it's way down my shoulder a bit. It's as if something has clicked into place, though I know that is unlikely and am prepared for it to come back during the real swim. Stroke rate was by now back in high forties and edging into the 50 mark.

Final two hours were great but went by quite slowly as I was wishing the time away and doing a LOT of clock watching. Stroke rate was now up at mid fifties and I felt really strong even though I had only been taking on tinned peaches and energy drink for the past 4 hours.

Not a pretty sight

Finally climbed out after 10hr and 7 minutes of swimming before demolishing a cup of tea and a big slice of Ginger cake in record time...which was then given to the fishes in the harbour by me over the back of the boat (think this was my body saying Ouch to the previous 10 hours !)

We all got back to shore and talked through the day over a pint of Guinness. The whole team is feeling positive about the actual event now. We need to bear in mind that the conditions were quite kind to us today so cold/lack of sun and rougher seas could be a challenge but we're all confident in our ability to overcome these.

Bring on September !!!