My first sea swim was reasonably successful. With two weeks to go before competing in the Portsmouth sprint triathlon I thought it was becoming imperative that I actually ventured into the wild blue yonder. An email from my club, Portsmouth Triathletes, mentioned that this Saturday would host a practise run for the main event. Having bottled the previous Tuesday because of bad weather there was no way I could afford to leave it any longer, so out of bed I got and headed down to Southsea.
Nerves were not improved by the fact that, as preparations were underway, all anyone could talk about was how cold the water was. A chilly 10.5 degrees Celsius was the verdict, a long way below the 14 degrees that was my coldest (at Eastleigh Lake) so far. One of the lads from the club went in to 'get acclimatised' and appeared again after a couple of minutes suggesting that he wasn't going to swim in that temperature.
I am proud that I steeled myself to do it. There were a couple of get-out clauses. The organiser said that, as it was so cold, we could just watch to get an idea should we want to. There was also the opportunity to do a shorter 400m swim rather than the full 750. I decided that I wanted to see what I could do, I mean at least there were people there to pull me out if necessary!
I am now in love with my wetsuit. The crushing cold that I was expecting actually wasn't that bad and I just plunged in and went for it. After a few minutes I started to relax and trundled along nicely towards the back of the field (athough surprisingly not last). It wasn't pretty and at one point I got the wrong side of the buoy and had to do a bit of a u-turn to go around it. The mandatory muppet moment.
But I did it. And you know, I quite enjoyed it.
Triathlon Muppet
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