So long, and thanks for all the fish

It was huge in every sense.

Huge fun. A huge effort from everyone involved. Huge support for the fundraising effort. And a huge swim.

After a month of above average temperatures and flat seas, I guess it was time for a bit of a change. The forecasts in the week leading up to the swim had started off scary but then seemed to steadily improve. Perhaps a hint of confidence - over confidence? - started to creep into the equation.

Based on the training swims, I'd even secretly started hoping that I might get near to the magic 3 hr mark for the swim. Definitely a stretch target and requiring a faster pace than I would normally swim for a 2km swim in the pool, let alone a 10km swim in the open seas.

But nervousness and reality came flooding back at about 7.24pm on  Friday evening when, at the pre-race briefing, the swim organisers casually mentioned that:

1. the coast guard's forecasts for the weekend were for 2-3 metre swells from the South, with 20 knot winds; and
2. the swim was in fact a bit over 11km rather than 10km.

Egad!

So here's how it played out, stroke by stroke:

Saturday 2pm: Carbo loading begins in earnest.

Saturday 4pm: Stomach butterflies take up residence.

Saturday 5-8pm: pre-race warm-up at Paddington Bowls for a friend's birthday (Happy Birthday, Jo!). Stuck to lemon squash. Lack of beer did not improve my lawn bowling.

Saturday 11pm: early to bed. Stomach buttterflies seem to be holding a quidditch tournament.

Sunday 4.44am: wake up. Relatively impressed that I've slept this long. Stomach butterflies now holding a  smash-up derby. Going over gear lists (what I need for beach, for kayak, for end of race etc) in my head puts me out again.

Sunday 7am: Wow! I slept in! This is it.

Sunday 7.30am: Homemade muesli, banana + coffee, the breakfast of champions (or, at least, the breakfast of people who make up the numbers in these events).

8.20am: arrive at Bondi Beach. It's sunny, but 12 degrees, wind blowing from the South, there's a pretty decent swell and some waves rolling in, some of them biggish. Oh, and a sign just where the start line will be saying "Dangerous Currents". So why do I look so very pleased?

8.30am: my well-wishers are out in full force. They look as nervous as I feel!

8.50am: strip down to speedos. Brrr. Apply vaseline under arms and back of neck. Head down onto sand, ready for the start. A bunch of people are applying what looks like creamed honey all over their torsos. Shark repellent? Additional flotation? Insulation? Who knows?

8.59am: this really is it. Nowhere to go but out to sea.

Mostly it's blokes who are silly enough to do this sort of thing, but there were a few ladies too

9.00am: off we go!

9.03am: swimming along nicely, I get through the break. Or at least, I think I've got through the break, when all of a sudden - wham! - I'm swamped by a big wave I didn't see coming and half lose my goggles. Stop. Tread water. Tighten goggles. Tighten them a little too much in fact, so that by the end of the race, with my yellow cap on, I look a bit like this:

9.04am: underway again with goggles in place, when I see a sea snake! Or at least it looks like a sea snake, and it's attached to the legs of one of the other swimmers! We're not even out of Bondi bay, and already the wildlife is attacking us. No, hang on. It's an electronic shark repeller. Is it too late to go back and get one of those? Maybe I should just swim next to this bloke the whole way.

9.10am: reach the first checkpoint which is one of two dozen white boats bobbing about off Ben Buckler (the headland at the north end of Bondi), where each swimmer is supposed to check in and get matched up with his/her support boat, before heading off up the coast. There are 50+ solo swimmers and about 40 teams entered in this event, meaning there are close to 100 boats bobbing around and about 50 people on kayaks too. The sun's in our eyes. The surf's up. This is not so easy.

The flotilla as viewed from North Bondi

Fortunately, Fred "The Lynx" Linker - my kayaker, lifeline and guide for the day - has worn a distinctive red cap and I manage to spot him. Great! Now we really are underway, and we thread our way through all the other boats/kayaks.

Turning around Ben Buckler, squinting into the sun, it's cliffs, cliffs, cliffs, as far as I can see going up the coast. Our isolation is stark.

Cliffs, cliffs, cliffs

I decide to use North Head as a landmark for navigation. Hopefully I'll remember to turn left before we get there.

9.25am: getting into a decent rhythm now. Everything's feeling pretty good. Fred's close by keeping an eye on me, and Doug and Vaughan in the support boat are shadowing us about 50m away. The water temperature is great too - about 20C. Far warmer than it was standing on the beach.

I'm swimming about 200-300 metres offshore. Not too close to the cliffs ,where the waves breaking on the cliffs reflect back and create a whole lot of rough water. But not too far out either. From the distant silhouettes of some other boats, it looks like some people are trying to circumnavigate New Zealand on their way up the coast.

As we move up the coast line, we can track our progress against the landmarks up on the cliffs. First up is the chimney from the Nth Bondi sewage treatment works. Nice.

9.50am: Fred signals that it's time to have a snack. The plan is to eat and drink something every hour or so. So I stop and tread water, hanging on to the side of the kayak. Fred hands me an energy gel - tropical flavour. Haven't tried this one before, but find it tastes equally as bad as raspberry when mixed with a mouthful of seawater.

Looking at the GPS, it seems we've already covered about 4km in the first 50mins! That's an unheard of pace for me. The GPS was probably being somewhat optimistic, but it was clear we had the current pushing us along too. Happy days! Let's keep going.

10.20am: As a friend said to me, "just keep swimming".

10.40am: Still making good progress. We're continuing to pass landmarks up on the cliffs.

At one point Fred motions to me to look up, and there, just discernible as human-shaped figures on the top of the cliff are my family and some friends who've decided to walk the cliff tops tracking my progress. They'll follow me all the way up to South Head and then around to Watsons Bay.

After giving them the thumbs up, I put my head down and... just keep swimming.

11.05am: What's that I can see in the distance? It's a little red and white lighthouse! Why is that exciting? Because that lighthouse is on the very tip of South Head. It marks the entrance to the harbour and the beginning of the final stretch of the swim.

Almost immediately, things start to get bumpy. There's a lot of chop coming out of the harbour, coming off the cliffs to my left, and somehow also coming in from the open sea. The wind has picked up too.

My normal freestyle stroke has me breathing bilaterally. But no matter which side I'm breathing on, I'm getting as much water in my mouth as air.

The rough water also seems to be slowing me down. But I'm getting closer to the lighthouse. Just keep swimming.

11.10am - 11.35am: I can still see that bloody lighthouse! Enough already! Because I'm pivoting around it as I come around and into the Harbour, the lighthouse is constantly on my left. Intellectually I know I'm making forward progress, but the combination of the rough water, wind and that bloody lighthouse makes it feel like I'm going nowhere.

He'll be coming 'round the lighthouse when comes, he'll be coming 'round the lighthouse....  

11.40am: Can't see the lighthouse anymore! Hooray! It's still very choppy though. I was sure once we were in the Harbour proper, it would smooth out considerably. Not so.

Lady Bay Beach is on my left. This is meant to be a sheltered part of the Harbour, but not today. Just keep swimming.

In the distance, I can see the city skyline.

11.45am: I'm passing Camp Cove - the last little bay before Watsons Bay. I'm now very close to shore, maybe only 20m out. There, on the headland, is my entire family. My kids are jumping up and down, Alina, her parents  my parents and my aunt and uncle visiting from NZ are all waving. They're all calling out. I stop and give them a double thumbs up. I'm almost overcome with emotion. After nearly 3 hours in the water, the end is so close now.

Team Glaucoma, rounding the tip of Camp Cove. 600m from the finish line. Manly ferry in the distance

Entering Watsons Bay is like falling into an icy bath. Really. The water has been a balmy 20C ever since Bondi Beach, and I haven't felt cold at all. All of a sudden, from one stroke to the next, the temperature drops at least 3 degrees. Swim faster!

11.55am: Swimming through the moored boats in Watsons Bay now. There's a turning buoy I need to go around before heading in to shore.

11.56am: I can see the finish line, which is the wooden boat ramp at Vaucluse Yacht Club. The pier all around it is full of people. I can hear them yelling. They're yelling for me!

Vaughan and Doug are right behind me in the boat. Fred's right next to me. They've had my back the whole way.

Now Fred's yelling - "100m to go!"

"C'mon Daniel. 50m to go!"

"25m to go! Keep swimming"

11.58am: the Finish Line!!!

I touch the bottom of the boat ramp. People are yelling, clapping, cheering. There's a race official right there who says something to me, which I completely can't hear.

The boat ramp is wooden and very slippery. I haul my torso up onto it, slip and roll onto my side. I kneel, then stand up, slipping some more. Everyone's still cheering. I can see my kids standing at the top of the ramp clapping and jumping around.

I stagger up the boat ramp to the race officals' table where they write something down.

Now everyone's hugging me. Now I'm completely overwhelmed.

It's done. I'm done.

Here's the finish on video:

Geoff Pollard, National Executive Officer of Glaucoma Australia was there to greet me. Through the swim, we had raised over $12,500 $13,000! What a fantastic result.

With Geoff Pollard, NEO of Glaucoma Australia. Note my goggle eyes!

Wow! Managed to do it in under 3 hours. I had been hoping to get close to 3 hours, but never really thought I could beat it, even if only by a couple of minutes. The South swell definitely helped.

Here's the GPS trace of our route. Thanks to the team, you can see we steered a superbly straight course the whole way, with no time-wasting deviations in to shore or out to sea.

After a few minutes, I find my fabulous team: Doug, Vaughan and Fred. I can't thank them enough.

Vaughan, me, Fred and Doug

So a huge thanks to everyone involved in making this swim and fundraising exercise such a success:

• my brilliant support team, pictured above, who gave up their time and suffered through the cold, to look after me;
• my absolutely amazing wife - Alina - and my kids, who put up with me talking about nothing but swimming for 3 months, and spending a huge amount of time at the pool or the beach training;
• my wonderful extended family and friends, many of whom came along to the start and/or finish of the race, and who tweeted, facebooked etc details of my efforts to spread the word;
• my friends at Addisons, for all their encouragement and interest;
• all my varied training partners, whether on foot, on bike or in the water, and especially Robbo "The Salmon" Salamon who enjoyed the training swims so much he entered and completed the swim himself - great stuff!;
• Sophie from Ozpaddle who made the kayak available and made the logistics of it easy for us;
• Paul Ellercamp from Oceanswims.com for helping to publicise this effort;
• Geoff Pollard of Glaucoma Australia for publicising the swim and looking after all the fundraising admin;
• John Fallon and the other volunteers who organise the South Head Roughwater, putting on a spectacular event; and
• last but not least, everyone who supported the effort with words of encouragement, interest and donations to Glaucoma Australia.

Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

That's all from me. I'd like to end with the traditional oceanswimming farewell song:

PS - please remember to get your eyes tested regularly for Glaucoma, particularly if you are over 50 or have a family history of Glaucoma. Don't let the "sneak thief of sight" rob you!

This is it!

This is it. This is the big one.

This is Andre the Giant vs Hulk Hogan.

This is Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker.



This is the Habs vs the Leafs in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

This is fantasy, actually. Yet again, the Habs have managed to bomb out in round 1 of the playoffs, despite finishing the regular season with the 2nd best record in the league. And now the Leafs have lost to the Bruins too. But you get the drift.

This is Harry vs Voldemort.

This is my sole nod to post-90's pop culture.

Race Day is here. On Sunday morning, at 9am I'll set off from the North end of Bondi Beach, aiming to climb out of the water only once I've:

• swum up the coast
• turned left at South Head
• swum into the Harbour
• steered clear of the nude bathers at Lady Bay Beach
• waved to the beautiful people at Camp Cove
• kept swimming
• and, hopefully, finally, 10.5km later, arrived at Watsons Bay.

I know I can swim the distance, but as I've said may times before, it really depends on how kind or otherwise Neptune and Poseidon decide to be on the day.

Here's Poseidon catching a wave at Lady Bay Beach

So what's the forecast? Well it's been changing all week. It started off kinda scary:

This forecast is intended for yachtsman, for whom "green" means "good" (ie lots of wind for your sails),
and "red" means "bad" (ie becalmed). For a swimmer, becalmed is preferable.

This is the 7 day forecast from Monday morning which suggested rain, 2 metre waves and winds of 20-25 knots. Yikes!!!

However, as the week has gone on, the forecast has mellowed. As I write this, the forecast is for sunshine, 1 metre waves and winds under 15 knots, with the graph retreating back to yellow for Sunday morning. Let's hope we see red before then.

So now some figures:

Training
As a hopeless trainspotter, I have used Strava to keep track of my training for this event.

Looking at this calendar year (which is really when my training in earnest has occurred), I have:

• swum 139.6 km (as Rocket Ron would be entitled to say "what happened to the other 400m?")
• run 73.8 km
• cycled 1,495 km

It does add up I guess.

Fundraising

Speaking of adding up, I am just so stoked to be able to say this, funds raised for Glaucoma Australia - your generous contributions - have hit $11,280!

The original goal was $10,000, arbitrarily based on $1,000 per kilometre which, I'll admit, was a bit of a stretch target.

I am so grateful to you all, and to everyone who has donated, and I know Glaucoma Australia is too. The funds will be used in GA's continued and tireless work to minimise visual disability from Glaucoma.

Thank you all again.

If you haven't donated and would like to, here's the link.

A big team effort
Just in case I've given the impression that this whole thing has hinged on my ability to swim the 10km, let me say that it goes far beyond this and involves a huge amount of effort on the part of many people.

I've mentioned Doug "The Captain" Campbell before in this blog. Doug is generously making his wonderful boat available to support me through the swim. You can't enter this swim without a support boat: quite simply, without Doug this would not have been possible at all.

And it takes more than one to crew the boat. I haven't yet met, but I'm already indebted to, Wendy, Vaughan, Marc, Anthony and Jo who will all be on board with Doug to ensure that, come what may, we're prepared for anything.

On race day, well before 6am, Doug and his crew will be fuelling and readying the boat for the day ahead. They'll set out from Middle Harbour by 7am to be in position at the 9am race start.

After it's all done (by about 1pm if everything goes to plan), Doug and his crew will head back to Middle Harbour, and clean and stow the boat. That's a big day, and a big effort. Thank you in advance!

Similarly, I've mentioned Fred "The Floating Kiosk" Linker before. He'll be my constant companion in the water, kayaking at swimmer's pace all the way from Bondi to Watsons Bay, keeping me on the straight & narrow. If the sea's rough, it'll be Fred, bobbing about at wave level, who feels it the most.

I've also been helped through the training by a big cast:

• Rocket Ron, Paul "The Prancing Moose" Gertler and Speedy Sean who've accompanied me on various bike and swim missions;
• my Dad for getting up horribly early every Wednesday to make sure I could get to squads and treating me to fabulous post-swim breakfasts;
• Robbo The Salmon, Kevin The Kingfish, Lyle The Hammer, John and Doug (another Doug) who made the big ocean training swims possible; and
• my colleagues at work who didn't laugh at my hopeless attempts at Pilates.

Finally, a huge thanks to "All Terrain" Alina and our kids for putting up with my early starts and training schedule.

A huge thanks to you all.

So, now all that's left to do is... swim!

See you on the other side.

Well that's reassuring

In my last post, I told you about a training swim that had seen five of us swim from Bondi to Bronte and back again. About 4.5km all up, and double what most of my regular swimming crew and I would already consider a decent race distance (the annual 2.2km Bondi to Bronte oceanswim).

It had gone well, everyone was feeling pretty stoked, and within a few hours of finishing that swim, the texts were already circulating proposing a bolder, much longer training swim: Bondi to Coogee and back again. A neat 10km or so.

Bold indeed. None of us had ever done a race or swim of anything like that distance, and in fact the furthest any of us had swum in a pool before was about 6km.

Bold also because this was going to take us a long way off shore. You can see from the GPS trace of our route below that we were a long way out, particularly off Bronte/Glamarama where we were probably close to 1km off shore.

That is a long way out. Really.

Out there, bobbing about in grey water, so deep you can't see anywhere near the bottom, you do feel a bit exposed.

So this was going to be pushing the boundaries.

At first, it was just Robbo "The Salmon" Salamon and me toying with the idea. In truth, had it just been two of us on the day, I would almost certainly have chickened out and voted for the slightly less scary trip to Bronte again.

But, already fulfilling his intended role, Fred "The Lynx" Linker came to the rescue. He wanted to get a few more open water kms under his paddles before the big event, so he said he'd accompany us in the kayak.

Suddenly this was sounding like it might happen.

The opportunity for chickening disappeared altogether when Kevin "The Kingfish" Einstein said he'd come and swim with us too.

Super Sophie from Ozpaddle made it all possible, getting a kayak to Fred on Friday night.

We were now three swimmers and a paddler with a kayak, and no excuses for not doing it. Gulp!

Saturday dawned overcast but completely still. So just before 7am, there we were at the beach, staring at the very distant headland - the ominously named Shark Point - that we'd have to swim around to get to Coogee.

The result? Well, you can watch for yourself because we took some video footage. I've tried to embed it in the space below, but if there's nothing there, then click on this link to watch.

After this many blog posts, you'd think I'd have figured out how to embed the videos properly. Alas no. They work ok if you're looking at this on a PC screen, but not on mobile devices for some reason.

So it seems that, on a good day, in calm conditions, I can swim 10km in open water. And so can Robbo and Kevin. After such a sterling performance, Robbo has even decided to enter the South Head Roughwater himself. Good onya Robbo!

Have I just killed all the suspense for the actual race itself in just 10 days time?

I don't think so.

Race day itself - Sunday 19 May - will present a whole lot of new challenges, including:

• conditions that can only be worse (given how good they were last Saturday);
• having to swim in through the Heads of Sydney Harbour - a notoriously currenty and treacherous bit of water;
• there being no psychological safety net of somewhere to bail out en route - when swimming to Coogee, if we'd got into trouble we could have swum in to any of a number of beaches along the way eg. Tama, Bronte, Clovelly, Gordon's Bay. On the way to South Head, it's just cliffs, cliffs, cliffs - they don't call the suburb Dover Heights for nothing, you know;
• a bunch of other swimmers, kayaks and boats to navigate around;
• swimming after a crappy night's sleep - I know already that I will be tossing and turning with nerves the whole night before the race, anxiously looking at the bedside clock every hour or so and stressing that I'm not sleeping; and
• the pressure of knowing that so many people have contributed so much time, effort and money to supporting my swim, and the corresponding need for me to deliver!

On that subject, I'm delighted to say that fundraising is now well past the $9,000 mark! With a bit of luck, the original goal to raise $10,000 ($1,000 per km) will be met. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed.

This coming weekend? Nothing quite so epic as last weekend. Hoping perhaps for a few good laps at Bondi (1km per lap) or maybe I'll join the Hammer Squads again at Icebergs.

It's hard to believe that the event has come up so quickly. I'm getting pretty excited about it...

No TV and no beer make Homer something something

Scientific studies have shown that alcohol impairs athletic performance.

Really?

Is this a newsflash to anyone?

Anyway, what it means is that as from earlier this week (the end of April) until after I (hopefully) climb out of the water at Watsons Bay on 19 May, I'll be giving alcohol a miss. In other words, July will not be dry, but (the first 3 weeks of) May will be.

Doesn't really sound like much of an achievement, I'll admit.

What they don't tell you about are the side effects:

I guess that's a risk I'm just going to have to take.

The fundraising really has moved on now. Over $7,000 raised! I'm so thrilled about this, and I know Glaucoma Australia is too. Thank you again to all who have contributed.

We're really getting down to the business end of things. The swim is just two weeks away, so both training and logistics for the race are a frenzy of activity.

On the training front, last weekend Robbo, Doug, Kevin, John and I swam from Bondi to Bronte and back to Bondi. A round trip of circa 4.5km in open water.

To say that conditions were great would be an understatement. To say that I'm praying for conditions like that on 19 May would be the understatement of the year.

Crystal clear water, water temps of 21c, minimal swell, no wind, bright sunshine. Just heaven.

This was then followed by no swimming at all for a few days while I attended a work conference in the Hunter Valley where, as it turns out, there is not a single 50m pool open at this time of year.

Hard men like me don't get out of bed for 25m pools, so I was left with no alternative but to take the bike and get a few early morning rides in. Ourimbah, Awaba, Singelton - a singletrack trifecta worth doing if you're ever up in that part of the world looking for somewhere to ride.

When I got back in the pool for my usual Wednesday morning swim - with Boy Charlton closed for the winter, now relocated to the secret, concrete, underground bunker also known as Cook and Phillip Aquatic Centre - I found I had pretty much forgotten how to swim.

No kidding. Ok, well kidding a bit.

But the point is, it was a major struggle to squeak out 60 laps or just 3km. Was I being punished by the swimming gods for skipping my Monday swim? Seems a bit harsh. Was it the repeated late nights and early mornings of the conference catching up with me? Maybe.

Whatever the reason, I was somewhat perturbed, unsettled, disconcerted and certainly a bit discombobulated.

Fortunately, my swimming mojo returned for a Friday morning swim, and I punched out 2km at a pretty quick and consistent pace.

This weekend we step it up another notch. Saturday's plan is Bondi-Coogee-Bondi, circa 10km all up, which is pretty much race distance. We'll be accompanied by Fred in the Ozpaddle kayak to practice mid-race fuelling and communication.

On the logistical front, race day run sheets have been drawn up (including important notes to self such as "0840 hours - apply sunblock and vaseline") and gear lists prepared (for a sport with little or no gear involved, I have somehow come up with the need to pack 3 separate bags of equipment).

Most importantly, the commanders-in-chief of each of our modes of transport (boat, kayak and self-propelled) held a high-level tactical meeting to discuss the necessary procedures for race day. Here's an action shot.

Well, Doug, Fred and I got together for a chat anyway.

So, as you can see, there are a bunch of people putting in a whole lot of time and effort to help me pull this caper off. Let me say again how grateful I am to everyone who is supporting this effort, in all the different ways that you are doing it.

Anyway, I will hopefully have an interesting report on an epic training swim to share with you next week. Or - given my tendency to prattle on a bit - it might turn out to be an epic report on an interesting training swim.

Either way, until then.

Performance enhancing drugs

For a gear-freak, there's not really much to swimming.

Speedos and a pair of goggles are the only mandatory items (and the speedos are optional if you go to the right beach, of course). Optional accessories include, umm, swimming caps. And that's about it.

Which is not to say that you can't accumulate a lot of gear: every time you enter an ocean swim race, you get a new cap. When you've been doing it a while, you wind up with a quite few of them.

This is less than half of Robbo "The Salmon" Salamon's collection. Thanks, Robbo!

It's always been a bit of a dilemma what to do with all the old caps. I chucked all of mine out during a spring cleaning frenzy one year. But true aficionados keep them.

What else can you use to help you along?

Wetsuits, flippers, snorkels? All excluded by ocean swimming race rules, I'm afraid.

No, it's really just you, the water, the conditions and the little whiny voices in your head.

How about performance enhancing drugs? It's been a pretty big year for them.

No, of course.

Unless you count this. Which I do. A lot.

(Much more exciting than watching the kettle boil)

Double ristretto, thanks.

Race day will start with a solid breakfast, but in an endurance event you need to keep eating during the event to keep yourself going. Technically, that's to avoid glycogen depletion, also known as hitting the wall. A huge amount of science goes into sports nutrition, and there are all sorts of formulae for how much and what you should consume, but what I've found works best for me is eating something high-carb every 45-60 mins. Something like a banana, a honey sandwich, or an energy gel.

Energy gels work better than they taste. These Hammer gels are a new brand I'm trying, which seem to taste better than the old ones.



Both Rocket Ron and Agile Alina will attest to how much of a boost these little guys give you. You have to keep forcing yourself to eat them as you go along, but they do work.

So that means that every 45 minutes or so during the swim, Fred "The Floating Kiosk" Linker will paddle up next to me and it'll be Hammer Time.

By the way, is it just me or are Psy's pants in his new Gentleman clip recycled from MC Hammer's poo-catchers from the 90s classic?

And you thought he was totally original...

Big thanks again to everyone for their words of encouragement, interest in the swim (and I now appear to be a major media personality), and of course donations to Glaucoma Australia. Contributions are now at almost $6,000 which is absolutely wonderful. Thank you again.

With just on 3 weeks to go, I think it's time for a dip...

Call me Ishmael

My heart goes out to all those hurt or affected in today's horrible attacks at the Boston Marathon.

Kiss your loved ones and be thankful for every day.

********************************

A lucky dip. A lottery. Anyone's guess. Who knows?

That's the answer to the question "what will the conditions be like on the swim?".

They could be like this:

Photo from Aquabumps.com - he is a brilliant photographer

Or they could be like this:

No, I'm not the whale

I'm kinda hoping for the former.

Apparently, if the conditions are too rough, the organisers will cancel the race in the interests of public safety.

I'm sure that's right.

But what I'm also sure of is that the organisers' view of when it's too rough to swim will be several degrees further up the "harden up and just bloody get in the water" ladder than mine!

So where does that leave us? Well, it potentially leaves me battling the Great White Whale, Fred "The Lynx" Linker seasick on a kayak and Doug and the support boat crew wondering how the hell they got themselves talked into this nonsense.

But hopefully it won't come to that.

In fact, hopefully it'll be exactly the same on May 19th as it was this last weekend.

Saturday morning saw me fronting up to swim with a squad at Icebergs, led by Lyle "The Hammer" Hammerschlag.

Conditions in the bay were just too good to spend much time in the pool (even a pool as gloriously close to the ocean as Icebergs'). So after a brief warm-up in the pool, one by one like hungry penguins we leapt off the rocks and into the bay.

No swell, no current, brilliant sunshine, water a balmy 22C and crystal clear. It couldn't have been more perfect.

After a relatively relaxed 2 laps across the bay with the squad, The Hammer and I did another 2 laps with a bit more pace.

About 5km in total in the water, if you count the pool warm-up as well. But it was a day when I felt like I could swim forever. Well, yippee, on May 19 I get to try!

A few people have asked why they run this swim in May? Isn't the water really cold then?

Actually, no. In May the water temperature is still a relatively warm 20+C.

I'm banking on the law of averages.

It's not until July that it gets properly cold. And that's relative.

Cold swimming? This is cold swimming.

Kinda puts it in perspective.

But really, it's all about the conditions on the day. I've done lots of ocean swims over the years. Most of them are around the 2-2.5km mark, but I've also done some longer ones such as Coogee to Bondi (5km). Never 10km before.

But by far the hardest swim I ever did was a paltry 1.6km - the famous Sydney Harbour Classic. It runs off the steps of the Opera House, out towards Fort Denison and then back again. Easy peasy? I thought so.

Instead, I spent the whole way fighting currents that went in every direction except the one I was swimming, got belted by chop from start to finish and drank half the contents of the Harbour. Miserable.

And all because of conditions on the day. And the fact that my high tech pre-race nutrition consisted of a Krispy Kreme doughnut. Delicious at the time, but not exactly the breakfast of champions.

Fundraising
The fundraising effort continues apace, and I'm really humbled by everyone's generosity and support.

Someone very kindly made a large donation in support of the swim directly to Glaucoma Australia, so it doesn't show up on the Everyday Hero page, but it means the total raised so far is now over $5,000!

Thank you again.

If you haven't donated yet, but would like to, please just click through here.

Spreading the word
If you feel so inclined, please also feel free to share the link to this blog or the fundraising page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest or whatever other social media you use.

You can "share" by clicking on the link at the top of the page. The more the merrier.

Slaying the little whiny voice inside

Have you ever talked to a mountain? Or a road? Or a distant headland?

They don't answer back. They never answer back. They just keep dishing out more hills to climb, more road to push yourself along and more distance to swim. Until they don't, and you get to the end. It's nothing personal, see?

I know this, and yet still I talk to them.

More precisely, the little whiny voice in my head talks to them. Or talks to me about them.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Another hill? But I just rode up a hill!"

"Is that thing getting any closer?"

These are the little conversations that go on inside my head in the "hurt" phases of an endurance event. It generally hits just after the half-way point of the race, when everything's a bit tired, everything's a bit sore and yet there's still a long, long way to go.

There were a few of these conversations on Saturday which, as promised, involved a fairly monster mountain bike ride.

Slipping silently through sleeping Sydney at six am, we had parked and kitted up at Glenbrook by 7.30am.

The plan for the day? Ride from Glenbrook (at the bottom of the Blue Mountains) to Wentworth Falls (near the top of the Blue Mountains) and then back again. A round trip of a neat 100km or so, all off-road.

"Rocket" Ron Bauer and I had been planning to meet up with a friend who had instead been volunteered for school canteen-renovation duties on Saturday, so it was just two of us to begin with.

The first half of the ride, circa 47km, was all about the climbing. It took us up the Oaks Fire Trail to Woodford, followed by a brake-burning descent down to Bedford Creek, and a monster climb up to Wentworth Falls. There, at the erstwhile sanatorium Queen Victoria Hospital, we met up with "Speedy" Sean  for the return run.

It's not just the vertical height distance between Glenbrook (elevation 163m) and Wentworth Falls (elevation 867m) that made it so tough, but the fact that the trail between them climbs and descends, climbs and descends, seemingly forever. You gasp and grind your way to the top of a hill, only to see the trail disappear downwards again, dissipating all the hard-earned height and rewarding you with yet another grinding climb.

Just over 100km in all and, according to the GPS, 2,686 vertical metres of climbing. Yep, the whiny voice counted all of them too, but after 6.5 hours of riding it was gone.

An epic ride is inevitably followed by an epic hunger. First stop after finishing the ride was the pie shop in Glenbrook. Actually, there are two pie shops in Glenbrook and, as always, competitive tension brings the best result. After scoping them both out, the one with the most delectable looking cinnamon doughnuts and apple pies won out. I'm not sure the owners knew what hit them, but the scene was a bit like this:

A fantastic day's riding.

Thanks again to all who have generously donated. We're well past the $4k mark now, and it continues to climb.

Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible (and with 30 June fast approaching, now's the time to lock in a nice big deduction, right?). Convinced? Just proceed here to donate.

The training continues. Apart from Saturday's big ride, I did a solid 2km in the pool on Friday and another 1.6km in the pool today accompanied by Paul "The Prancing Moose" Gertler.

Between now and May 19, the bike's going to take a back seat and the swims will get longer and more frequent again.

Til next time...