swimming the English Channel
Sam Penny's journey to conquer the Everest of swimming
I was a very lucky boy this week. The Australian Trials for Commonwealth Games were being held on the Gold Coast. As member of Masters Swimming, we swam a relay on Wednesday night just before the big guns came out for their finals! The pool is fully set up for the Games and looking spectacular. As anchor for my team, I was able to take my time to soak in what the venue looks like from the swimmers perspective. The crowd in the stands feel like they are right on top of you as they tower over. The few thousand people watching certainly make some noise! Every swimmer at the games will hear the roar. In Masters Swimming, relays are categorised based on the cumulative age. Our age group was 240-279, which gives you a good indication of how old the rest of the team was. It was fun and a great experience for all of us. A World Record! I felt like our relay was a novelty event as straight after us, we were lucky to still be on pooldeck to witness a great World Record. This was the curtain raiser and also a roof raiser. George Corones had just moved up to the 100-104yr age group and was attempting to beat the record of 1min 31sec for the 50m Free. He smashed it and came home in 56secs! There were quite a few tears of joy around the place. So great to see. My video has been viewed more than 45,000 times on LinkedIn already! His story went right around the world. It was a great feat. A Tiring Week of not much After such a great week, the week before, I was left very disappointed with this week from a k's in the bank perspective. Helen and I drove to the Gold Coast and back on Wednesday night. We got home just before 1am and were buggered for all of Thursday. I felt so foggy all day that I went for a very relaxing 2km ocean swim to clear my head. It was great as the water had cleared and I could see the bottom for most of the time across the bay at Mooloolaba. Friday night I caught up for beers with a fellow English Channel Trainer, Simon Knapp. Simon is a brilliant swimmer and the same pace as me (he's still unfit) so the swims we have done together have been perfect. Unfortunately, he loves beer and wine as much as me so put us together and.... You know how it ends. Let's just say that Saturday morning, I slept through my alarm. I was really hopeful of doing 10km but there was zero chance of that happening. Sunday I caught up with the boys and did a lazy 2km. Think I was still suffering from Friday night. I have finished this week very tired. Wednesday was so late that I think I should have slept all of Thursday and Friday and not tried to swim. I hope this tiredness goes away sometime soon.
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AuthorSam Penny is attempting to swim the English Channel in August 2018. Follow his journey here. Archives
August 2018
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