Tuesday, 16 July 2013
#SwimforSusan and the spirit of the open water
Wales
its nearly time... #SwimForSusan
Training has been pretty boring but i feel ready and the recent heatwave has made me desperate to get in the water!
We have shifted our last couple of weeks of training to the pool on account of getting really bad swimmers itch which has been keeping me awake at night... theres no point in training for months for something only to rock up half asleep because you have been scratching all night.. so we have been avoiding all our local lakes!
Recently the open water swimming community has lost 2 inspirational and lovely souls; Jonathan Joyce and more recently Susan Taylor who sadly passed away on sunday nearing the end of her channel swim. I will be swimming Lake Windermere in memory of both these swimmers, writing their names on each arm so they are with me every stroke.
Our pilot Colin Hill unfortunately can't make it on saturday so we will have The 2 Daves onboard the boat and Claire in a Kayak keeping an eye on Justine.
Don't forget its not too late to sponsor us... all money is going to the Teenage Cancer Trust
http://www.justgiving.com/channelingpositivity
Thanks for all the support and messages.. and not least for all the money that has already come in!
k
x
Thursday, 30 May 2013
bloomin' freezing!
so we have had a think and weighed up all the pros and cons and decided that we really want to make the distance .. and don't want to risk getting pulled out with hyperthermia! We are both carrying less fat than we were for the channel and despite eating everything in site, this doesn't seem to be changing. We are also doing everything we can to get acclimatised, but at the moment even an hour is a real challenge. So we have decided not to rule out wearing our wetsuits on the day.
I know this is frowned upon by some members of the ow swimming community but this is something we do for fun and to try to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust ... so if we feel like rubbering up.. we're gonna blooming well do it!!!
7 weeks to go.. so a few decent weeks of solid training and then we can start to rest up:-)
its been a long slog so far and has proved to both of us that we don't enjoy training for this kind of event... we both find it really boring!!!! so the next challenge may well take the form of another kind of relay or something a bit less isolating!!
catch you later
x
Thursday, 9 May 2013
2swim4life
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Windermere Awaits......
There's a few things that have changed since our channel crossing. Firstly I'm older which to be honest is proving an inconvenience as my body doesn't seem to recover quite as easily as I need it to and secondly our job changes have restricted the length of our OCD morning training sessions. But fear not, as usual Kate has constructed an epic training plan which takes all of this into account! So from now until then it's "go hard or go home"....................
..............I might go home some days.................well I am 40!
Follow our training from this week by clicking on Training Diary
Monday, 9 April 2012
DW Final Blog
Day 3 was Easter Sunday and as our last blog said we had made a plan at the end of Day 2 to complete the 38 miles in under 7 hours. We started at 7.15am and set off on a mission of 6 miles per hour. Our support crew of Tom and Phil were on form to keep us motivated and on time - and they did a cracking job! - thanks boys :-)
We paddled the first 6 miles in under an hour, and by 3 hours of paddling we were 20 minutes ahead of schedule. We had a few mad moments including an interesting approach to the rollers at Sunbury Lock which resulted in an almost, but not quite, capsize which even the supporters classed as a "good recovery".
Phil produced the best motivator call from the bank of "Go Girlfriend" which made the lady in the Mr Whippy van next to him smile and made us laugh for quite sometime!
By 30 miles in we had overtaken all the other crews who had set off before us on Sunday morning, meaning we had to keep our stroke rate up on our own without the motivation of chasing anyone down. We have to admit to reverting to a bit of a sing song to keep us going "there were ten in the bed " proved quite inspiring in terms of keeping our stroke rate up and we even found ourselves singing the "12 days of christmas" to the people taking their Easter Sunday stroll by the river!
We crossed the finish line first of the day in a time of 6 hours 52 minutes.
That meant our time to Teddington was 21 hours 40 minutes and we were lying 7th in the Senior K2 Endeavour category.
Day 4 was always our biggest concern. We are not the most stable of paddlers and the tideway is very fast flowing and can be really difficult to paddle. We were worried and slept pretty rubbishly on Sunday evening especially as we had to get up at 3.45am with no breakfast! We were on the water by 5.45 in the dark but we managed through some low points in moral to get to Battersea Power Station with relative ease. Time seemed to go very slowly this morning even though the water was flowing very fast. We approached the finish line with the Houses of Parliament on the left and Big Ben chiming 8am. We were home and dry - literally!
I have to admit to hugging the man who placed the medal round my neck - I think I was the only person to do that as he looked quite surprised!! Our overall time was 23 hours and 56 minutes and we are vey proud. We hope we might inspire you to take a challenge and Challenge your Positivity!
It only remains for us to say a big thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement and all your wonderful donations. We have successfully raise £2155 for the oncology ward at Queens - if you wish to add a donation there is still time - visit our justgiving page at www.justgiving/Claire-Lis. Thanks for reading!
Claire and Liz signing off xx
Sunday, 8 April 2012
Day 2 - It Goes On........
So we set off this morning at 7.45am from Newbury, today we had 36 miles and 26 portages to complete. We had made a pact last night that if we improved our speed on the portages we could be home and in the bath half an hour quicker - so we were on a mission!
We were delighted to see some friends of ours at the first support point. Paul and Harriet are amazing paddlers who have the DW record for a mixed K2 over the none stop 24hour race. They ran a tag team support with us along the tow path for 11 miles, keeping us going, and providing us with some great tips and hints along the way. They did a sterling job of feeding us malt loaf, bananas, and jelly babies, sometimes all at the same time!! As a consequence we managed to paddle further today in less time - hooray!!!
Today passed without incident with the exception of the attacking swan at Reading. We are channeling our positivity brilliantly and we have a plan to go even faster tomorrow! We are AMAZING!!!