Wild Wye Swim 2019
September 22nd 2019
7km river swim
What a lovely, low-key, non-competitive event. And my first ever swim event! The event was held at Symonds Yat, somewhere I have both climbed and canoed previously. The scenery there is fairly unique - big meandering river bends in a green valley. I was looking forward to seeing it from in the water.
As ever I was also nervous going into this as I'd not covered the distance in training (I managed 5km on the 350m loop at Dosthill but got readily tired of the four 30 degree and two 60 degree turns required in each loop). However, with the assistance of the river flow I thought I could complete in about two hours. I had to wear a wetsuit for the event a I did not have the qualifications for skins. A shame.
This pleasingly turned out to be an over estimation as I was done within an hour and a half! And that's with no rain the previous two weeks, I am sure other years will post some much faster times. Things to note:
a) the Wye has some sets of rapids. These are fun but you need to keep on your toes and manoeuvre through them.
b) the Wye has some very shallow sections. Floating / sculling is necessary!
c) my watch goes into miles after 5280 yds (3 miles). I would have liked to know where I was on the course but hadn't converted 7km to miles prior to the event and struggled with mid-rapid mental arithmetic.
The event was well organised - shuttle buses took us to the start where we were let off in groups of 50 or so (it was hard to stand still in the flow at this point so I pretty much just went as soon as I was in). I ended up at the front of the first group, and saw maybe about ten other swimmers for the duration of the swim which was pleasingly lonely.
Times
Total time: 01:29:35
Standings
Non-competitive!
7km river swim
What a lovely, low-key, non-competitive event. And my first ever swim event! The event was held at Symonds Yat, somewhere I have both climbed and canoed previously. The scenery there is fairly unique - big meandering river bends in a green valley. I was looking forward to seeing it from in the water.As ever I was also nervous going into this as I'd not covered the distance in training (I managed 5km on the 350m loop at Dosthill but got readily tired of the four 30 degree and two 60 degree turns required in each loop). However, with the assistance of the river flow I thought I could complete in about two hours. I had to wear a wetsuit for the event a I did not have the qualifications for skins. A shame.
This pleasingly turned out to be an over estimation as I was done within an hour and a half! And that's with no rain the previous two weeks, I am sure other years will post some much faster times. Things to note:
a) the Wye has some sets of rapids. These are fun but you need to keep on your toes and manoeuvre through them.
b) the Wye has some very shallow sections. Floating / sculling is necessary!
c) my watch goes into miles after 5280 yds (3 miles). I would have liked to know where I was on the course but hadn't converted 7km to miles prior to the event and struggled with mid-rapid mental arithmetic.
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| Strava flyby - I'm the black blob... |
Times
Total time: 01:29:35
Standings
Non-competitive!
Comments
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