Our 24 hour swim challenge

so this weekend Justine and I took part in the 2swim4life 24 hour swim challenge... and what a challenge it was!

The aim was to swim a mile, every hour, on the hour for 24 hours... at Guildford Lido

The challenge started at 10am and Justine and I set off at a nice steady pace, me in lane 1 with Colin, Danny, Kim and Cheryl and Justine in lane 2 with 'Her Boys'. The water certainly felt a LOT colder than the 24 degrees we'd been told it would be, which made it hard to keep a steady pace as everything inside was telling us to speed up to try and keep warm! Luckily it was a glorious sunny day, so those first few hours weren't too bad, as we were able to warm up in the half an hour rest we were getting before having to set off again!

We got ourselve into a little routine with the help of our 'Buddies' Emma, Laura and Dani (without them i think we would have lasted about ten minutes.. they were amazing!) we'd swim our 32 lengths (50 m pool) jump out and get dried off and into a dry cozzie and warm clothes.. then back to the tent / picnic blankets to rest up and try eat some food and take on some fluids.. great practise for the Channel swim.

we both found that eating little bits often seemed to work, and i for one didn't struggle with feeling hungry or thirsty at any point... altho i did discover that too much 'go-go juice' makes me windy!!!!

The factor 50 suncream was essential.. and even through that we both have lovely pink faces complete with goggle marks!

Miles 6 and 7 came and went.. and gradually the air temperature started to drop.. this was when we both started to struggle.. not with the swimmming, but with getting and staying warm after the swim.. even whilst wearing thermals, hats, gloves tracksuits and big coats and being inside a sleeping bag and tent

As the hours went on my pace slowed a little from 22:30 mins to about 25 mins by mile 11.

It was after mile 11 that i made the decision to stop at 12 miles. For both justine and I the challenge was about seeing what we could do and learning from the experience. We are still in heavy training and we needed to be sensible, and as more and more little signs of hyperthermia started to show themselves we decided the safest thing to do would be to call it a day and get ourselves warm and healthy! The last thing we wanted was to come away from this injured or poorly!

It was a great decision!!!! My last mile felt great (!?) i did it in 24:30 and i was pleased to be heeading home in a nice warm car feeling proud of what we had achieved.

Things i have learnt from this:
1 go go juice makes me burp and trump... lots
2 its hard to keep a steady pace when your cold.. we must work on this!
3 food that worked well for me were small moist things like philippas delicous lemon cake! also trying to take on small amouts of fluid often (although the regular trips tpo the loo were getting a bit tedious (i must learn to wee whilst swimming!)
4 we both need to try really hard to get fatter
5 we both need to get some seriously warm clothes for the boat
6 our swimming is strong and between us we both covered over half the channel distance (which is what we need to do on the day)
7 support and a positive mental attitude is essential. Our Buddies were awesome in helping sort our heads out and helping us remember to eat and drink
8 travel lodges suck ass

i think thats about everything!... it was a great event and we were swimming with some great people that really helped support and get us through! I will look forward to seeing who finished the full 24!

we'll pop some photos up when we get a chance!