the 'elite' wave swimming in liverpool's albert dock. i'm at the back somewhere but not right at the back yessss!!a shorter race report this time, reflecting shorter race (just wait until ironman!!)
In brief it was great and once we got going i enjoyed every minute. The emphasis there is on the 'once we got going' maaaan it was cold! It took me a lot of bravery to peel off the layers and climb into the wetsuit and i thought i would be warm in the wetsuit but hell no! i was freezing! and so was everyone else. We were standing at the swim assembly waiting for the pre-plunge briefing just shaking with the cold. The great british summer, huh!
newsflash!! The new bargain basement wetsuit and i are friends! wahey! it's so much better, more pliable and doesn't try to strangle me and i can move my arms. Not sure if it had the effect of helping me to swim faster this time as by the time we started i was a frozen iceberg and wouldn't have noticed if someone had stuck a knife in my arm, but hey at least i didn't suffocate from the wetsuit this time, just from the cold water and icy arctic breeze whipping over the water. Nice.
So, we got into the water for the 8am start. Bl**dy cold but hey we will be off soon. Not to be, we were kept there waiting for 10 minutes! we were as blue as our hats! There were 30-something in the 'elite' age group start and only 8 were girls. I had googled them all and they were all fast but they were also all ages from 17-19 age cat to 45-49 so a good cross section. I was not the only frozen competitor, everyone was getting worked up with being left in the water for so long and were getting rather riled and starting to shout at the canoeists and man with the tannoy. Once we started it took me a while to realise i was moving as my limbs had gone numb, i tried to follow some feet but they were all too fast for me after about 150m but i kept tabs on a small group just in front of me and didn't let them get away too far. I actually loved the swim once we were actually swimming and it was over too soon! And there best thing was that there people behind me still, yesss!!
