Pier to Pier Sea Swim

I recently took part in the Lowestoft Pier to Pier swim which is a 1,000 meter swim in the North Sea.

It was actually quite warm air temperature at 9am and waited until a few minutes before the start to fully put on the wet suit in the heat, even so I was glad to get in the cold north sea. It was ideal swim conditions with only small waves and it was sunny.

It started from the beach which for some reason I started near the right side which was the shortest distance to get past the end of the groyne. There was quite a few lifeguards on patrol on various canoes and surfboards in case anybody got into trouble.

When running in to the sea I was surprised there was not that many fast people on this side so I was able to get in to my swim rhythm quickly with only getting hit a few times. Once I reached the end of the gryone it was almost a 90 degree turn to the right to head towards the other pier, luckily this was easy to sight.

I was going at a good pace for me and was surprised how quickly I had got to the pier, there was a person in a canoe there to prevent you swimming in to the pier which I managed to avoid. At this point I knew there was somebody close to me as I was getting hit a bit as we turned round the pier. At this point I kicked a bit more to get some separation until I could not swim any further on to the shoreline. I then started to run up the beach about 20m to the finish. I was concentrating on the finish line and nearly fell over down  a dip in the sand but I could hear the person behind me was close so I took the racing line, looking at the results he was given the same time as me.

I finished this in 19:41 and was 19th out of 41 who entered and was 7th in my age category. I enjoyed this low key sea swim/race and will do this again.

Training at Easter

Over the Easter break I did 4 days of 2 a day training sessions. That week I did over 9 hours of training with an appropriate proportion of training each of the three areas. However the following week I only managed 3.5 hours due to having a cold and over half this time was from the last day of 2 a day training sessions.

During the Easter training while cycling up a hill I got my first puncture which I was able to successfully replace the inner tube and get it all working back on my bike. Here are some more scenic photos where I got the puncture, photo 1, photo 2 and photo 3. When I was cycling I was able to use my aerobars for a while until the wind made it to unsafe to use on the main roads.

Even though I was in East Anglia there where a few hills, here are a couple that I run up, hill 1 and hill 2, and a hill I cycled up a number of times.

I also did a 1 mile swim in a 50m pool which was bootiful (sponsored by the food processing company). It did not use chlorine but UV filtration which made the water crystal clear and with no smell of chlorine, it was weird especially as a had a whole line to myself.

On a 7 mile run I went past the most easterly point on mainland Britain which is in Lowestoft. They have a Euroscope to mark this point and to show the distance to various places. There is also a big land based wind turbine near by, I took a few arty shots of this, from the coast (at the euroscope), near the base (behind a fence) and behind a gas tower.

I even stopped here for an ice cream but their shop closed to general public :-(