6:45am on a Friday, jet lagged, sleep deprived and sick of the sound of my own name after spending a week in London with a bunch of ...'excitable' teenagers, poor Tom was the only motivating force to get my sorry, sleepy arse out of bed for this 800 meter swim event. This seemed like such a great idea at the time I signed up... WEEKS AGO... But after a fun but slightly torturous week with the 'little darlings,' (who apparently don't even need to sleep), plunging myself into cold ocean water with hundreds of other endurance idiots was feeling less and less like a good idea.
While Tom was sweet-talking me out of bed, offering me breakfast and talking about driving me down and coming to watch, I was nodding and smiling agreeably while frantically thinking of reasons for him NOT to come, because I had The Fear.
As a middle - to - back of the pack athlete, The Fear Of Coming Last is very, very real! I wasn't emotionally ready for Tom to see me stumbling out of the water, covered in God knows what ocean crap and wearing a bright green swim cap, scrambling up the sand over the finish line LAST. Like, literally last. I mean every single other person has got out of the water, dried, gone home and are chilling with a cup of tea having already mowed their lawn kind of last. So I blurted out something about him going back to sleep and enjoying a weekend lie in and joining me later at Wild Wadi, wolfed down my Weetabix at record speed and ran out the door before he could argue.
After arriving at Wild Wadi and registering myself as a participant, I picked up my timing chip and swim cap (a fetching shimmery cobalt blue, this time), then shuffled nervously with the rest of the idiots here calling this 'fun' towards the race village, dropped my gear, struggled into my cap and goggles and headed for the water. Approximately 4 minutes of 'oh my goodness gracious me this is really rather chilly' later, I'd managed to force myself into the surprisingly un-blue waters of the Gulf for a couple of hundred meters of warm up while admiring the view of the iconic Burj Al Arab but still not convinced I was right in the head for actually paying money to put myself through this nonsense.
I joined my fellow idiots to listen to some woman I've never heard of giving me a 'safety briefing' ("Don't drown, you nutters, but if you feel you might, wave frantically for help") and a 'course briefing' ("swim to that buoy, then that one, then that one you can't quite see, but if you go to that one, which looks exactly like all the others, you've gone too far").
The strange woman finished her spiel, and I plodded clumsily towards the start line, still having absolutely no idea where I was supposed to swim and reassuring myself that, if I did come 'everyone else has already gone home and started dismantling their garden sheds' last, then at least I'd see where everyone else went and can roughly follow the same route out and back to sweet, dry land. We were given an announcement about a delayed start as there were still mile swimmers in the water. I'm not sure what was the stronger emotion at this point - being glad that it wasn't just me who was going to be a slow poke, or a mild concern that my back was heading towards being medium rare. (Personally I'm more of a medium-well sort of girl, but my skin has always been more 'English Rose!')
However long it was later, the start gun sounded, unannounced, causing all 358 half-mile swimmers to go 'Huh? What? Eh?!' before crashing at speed into the Gulf in a mass of flailing arms and legs. Some poor guy on my right, who was clearly as panicked about the sudden start as I was, smacked me right in the belly as he ran, arms and legs cartwheeling, into the sea. I suspect my own method of entry looked something like this...
I settled into what I hope at least vaguely resembled a freestyle stroke and found my rhythm as people spread out through the water and stopped kicking and scratching each other, and things seemed to be going pretty well all things considered... Until I felt a little brush on my ankle which rapidly turned into a burning sensation roughly equivalent to the fires of Pompeii shooting up through my ankle and calf faster than I could say 'wobbly little sea bastard.' I turned to assess the damage and watched the jellyfish float off innocently into the distance.
Muttering angrily to myself I made an adjustment to my timing chip to cover the sting and ease the pain, then tried to reassume my freestyle-type-thing that had been serving me so well until "Attack Of The Wobbly Sea Bastard." After a while I realised that Identical Buoy #3 of 5 (ish) wasn't getting any closer. I thought it was just me so I kept swimming, feeling more and more like I was in one of those dodgy dreams with the never ending corridors.
I switched to a real stroke for power to get out of the nasty surface current that had me so stuck, but even with my powerful breast stroke I felt like I was swimming through liquid cement! I broke free of the current then sprinted for shore, attempted to stand up too soon and sank, swam a little more then scrambled unceremoniously up the sand bank and sprinted across the finish in a frantic burst of effort to get it over with! I picked up my medal, drank more water than I ever thought possible (salt water is a bit gross, to say the least) and then rested, feeling rather flabbergasted but delighted not to be last out of the water this time!
I'd do it again tomorrow... Preferably without the surface currents and wobbly sea bastards!
While Tom was sweet-talking me out of bed, offering me breakfast and talking about driving me down and coming to watch, I was nodding and smiling agreeably while frantically thinking of reasons for him NOT to come, because I had The Fear.
As a middle - to - back of the pack athlete, The Fear Of Coming Last is very, very real! I wasn't emotionally ready for Tom to see me stumbling out of the water, covered in God knows what ocean crap and wearing a bright green swim cap, scrambling up the sand over the finish line LAST. Like, literally last. I mean every single other person has got out of the water, dried, gone home and are chilling with a cup of tea having already mowed their lawn kind of last. So I blurted out something about him going back to sleep and enjoying a weekend lie in and joining me later at Wild Wadi, wolfed down my Weetabix at record speed and ran out the door before he could argue.
After arriving at Wild Wadi and registering myself as a participant, I picked up my timing chip and swim cap (a fetching shimmery cobalt blue, this time), then shuffled nervously with the rest of the idiots here calling this 'fun' towards the race village, dropped my gear, struggled into my cap and goggles and headed for the water. Approximately 4 minutes of 'oh my goodness gracious me this is really rather chilly' later, I'd managed to force myself into the surprisingly un-blue waters of the Gulf for a couple of hundred meters of warm up while admiring the view of the iconic Burj Al Arab but still not convinced I was right in the head for actually paying money to put myself through this nonsense.
I joined my fellow idiots to listen to some woman I've never heard of giving me a 'safety briefing' ("Don't drown, you nutters, but if you feel you might, wave frantically for help") and a 'course briefing' ("swim to that buoy, then that one, then that one you can't quite see, but if you go to that one, which looks exactly like all the others, you've gone too far").
The strange woman finished her spiel, and I plodded clumsily towards the start line, still having absolutely no idea where I was supposed to swim and reassuring myself that, if I did come 'everyone else has already gone home and started dismantling their garden sheds' last, then at least I'd see where everyone else went and can roughly follow the same route out and back to sweet, dry land. We were given an announcement about a delayed start as there were still mile swimmers in the water. I'm not sure what was the stronger emotion at this point - being glad that it wasn't just me who was going to be a slow poke, or a mild concern that my back was heading towards being medium rare. (Personally I'm more of a medium-well sort of girl, but my skin has always been more 'English Rose!')
However long it was later, the start gun sounded, unannounced, causing all 358 half-mile swimmers to go 'Huh? What? Eh?!' before crashing at speed into the Gulf in a mass of flailing arms and legs. Some poor guy on my right, who was clearly as panicked about the sudden start as I was, smacked me right in the belly as he ran, arms and legs cartwheeling, into the sea. I suspect my own method of entry looked something like this...
I settled into what I hope at least vaguely resembled a freestyle stroke and found my rhythm as people spread out through the water and stopped kicking and scratching each other, and things seemed to be going pretty well all things considered... Until I felt a little brush on my ankle which rapidly turned into a burning sensation roughly equivalent to the fires of Pompeii shooting up through my ankle and calf faster than I could say 'wobbly little sea bastard.' I turned to assess the damage and watched the jellyfish float off innocently into the distance.
Muttering angrily to myself I made an adjustment to my timing chip to cover the sting and ease the pain, then tried to reassume my freestyle-type-thing that had been serving me so well until "Attack Of The Wobbly Sea Bastard." After a while I realised that Identical Buoy #3 of 5 (ish) wasn't getting any closer. I thought it was just me so I kept swimming, feeling more and more like I was in one of those dodgy dreams with the never ending corridors.
I switched to a real stroke for power to get out of the nasty surface current that had me so stuck, but even with my powerful breast stroke I felt like I was swimming through liquid cement! I broke free of the current then sprinted for shore, attempted to stand up too soon and sank, swam a little more then scrambled unceremoniously up the sand bank and sprinted across the finish in a frantic burst of effort to get it over with! I picked up my medal, drank more water than I ever thought possible (salt water is a bit gross, to say the least) and then rested, feeling rather flabbergasted but delighted not to be last out of the water this time!
I'd do it again tomorrow... Preferably without the surface currents and wobbly sea bastards!
A summary in pictures...
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