Million Metre Club(swim)

[paulgould]

Started swimming in June 2018 to train for a cross-Solent swim, which was subsequently cancelled due to unavailability of the support kayakers.
With an unplanned break from Mar 2020- Jun 2021, and then another 6 month break up till late last month, I managed to reach the 1 million metres logged this morning.
I am finding it a very good alternate exercise option, not being too strenuous or weight-bearing, and leaves you with a real sense of well-being afterwards.

Paul G

[JonT]

Started swimming in June 2018 to train for a cross-Solent swim, which was subsequently cancelled due to unavailability of the support kayakers.
With an unplanned break from Mar 2020- Jun 2021, and then another 6 month break up till late last month, I managed to reach the 1 million metres logged this morning.
I am finding it a very good alternate exercise option, not being too strenuous or weight-bearing, and leaves you with a real sense of well-being afterwards.

Paul G

Congratulations Paul. My swimming abilities are limited to "good enough not to drown". One million meters of swimming sounds like a huge amount to me.

[plummy]

I find swimming intensely hard work as I have very little upper body strength. Add to that I never mastered front crawl I'm left with breast stroke as an option which is a lot of upper body. I'm therefore like Jon - happy not to drown. I think 25m is my limit!

[obirobsan]

One of my colleagues has tempted me with the Escape from Alcatraz mini-triathlon next year (2023). I've never been a huge swimmer though. In my youth, I enjoyed "crazy" whitewater rafting, and eventually gave it up because I just couldn't swim well enough to not feel like I was going to drown every time we got dumped... and we got dumped. a lot.

[paulgould]

Thanks for your replies, all.
Dave - I think I am the exact opposite of you - while I am not a great swimmer, i rely totally on upper body strength(which I need to haul my not inconsiderable bulk through the water ) and can only swim front crawl( and a bit of backstroke, but not without SatNav!!).
Obirobsan - the Alcatraz swim is notorious for being quite tough with extremely strong currents so well done for even contemplating it.
Many years ago when I was doing tri-athlons I did an event with a 3.5km sea swim - what with rough seas, strong currents and jellyfish stings it was a frightening experience and made me realise that open-water swimming is a completely different beast from lane swimming in a pool.

Paul G

[Draggon]

That's impressive work there, Paul G! Or maybe it's not and it only sounds impressive to this not-interested-in-swimming-for-exercise-cuz-it-kind-of-scares-me guy!

[paulgould]

That's impressive work there, Paul G! Or maybe it's not and it only sounds impressive to this not-interested-in-swimming-for-exercise-cuz-it-kind-of-scares-me guy!

I think it is the latter - it only sounds impressive- I am a tugboat rather than a speedboat but bloody-minded enough to keep going nonetheless

Paul G

[webberg]

Good stuff Paul.

Back in 2003/04 when in rehab for (yet another) knee operation, I used to go to the local club to swim pretty much every weekday. It was 7 minutes from desk to the water!

I went with a friend and we would pace by the one in front moving aside if his feet were touched by the one behind.

We eventually managed to get to 65 lengths of a 25m pool in around 30 minutes and did that for over a year.

Frustratingly I never really managed to get any quicker even over shorter distances although I did go to lessons to learn how to breathe properly and I can still do tumble turns.

With you on the open water stuff though - completely different sport.