Swim a mile in open water
The week before, you practise sighting in a swimming pool, lifting your head every six strokes like a periscope, while the lifeguard watches and clearly thinks you have gone strange. Then you stand on a slipway in a wetsuit that smells of neoprene and last summer, and 1.6 kilometres suddenly feels like a very long way to be alone with your own breathing. Average swimmers take thirty to forty-five minutes; you take forty-two, and around the twentieth stroke past the far buoy you stop swimming toward anything and start simply swimming, which is the part of the day nobody warned you about.
Practical
- Cost
- $20–100 (event entry or wetsuit hire)
- Best time
- UK summer, when lake and sea temperatures reach 14–20°C
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time it takes
- 30–45 minutes in the water, half a day including travel
- What people get wrong
- People assume pool speed and open-water speed are the same and go out too hard; the real skill is sighting every few strokes without losing rhythm, not raw fitness.
- With
- Alone