Battling against the current
My schedule today included a 2km swim, so rather than drive to the pool I was determined to do an open water swim – In the rain of course.
The westerly wind meant that the seafront was a little too rough so I headed off to the estuary where the water was dead calm. Suited up and in I got off on a nice easy swim.
Estuary Swim
All was going well and I was plodding along at my usual speed of around 2.5 mph, I then headed out into the channel a little aiming for the far side of the River Leri. Visibility was terrible, I could barely see the writing on the sleeves of my wetsuit and certainly couldn’t see my hands as they stretched out for the catch. There aren’t many landmarks out in the estuary either so it’s always a little difficult to tell where exactly you are. In the end I spotted a bouy and decided to head to that, so on I plodded. However, each time I looked up the bouy didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
In the end I stopped to have a look and realised that the current was now getting pretty strong. I knew that it would as it was a big tide, there had been lots of rain overnight and it was getting on towards a few hours after high tide when the current would be at its strongest. This is precisely why I headed into the current in the first place.
I guess I could have just stayed there swimming against the tide, not actually going anywhere, but decided that might not be that sensible as I could at any point start going backwards without realising it. So, despite only having been in the water for about 10 minutes I thought it would be safer to head back. Getting back to the car with the tide was a little quicker, and my overall swim was only about 0.6 miles, so if I take into account a bit of time of swimming at a decent pace but not going anywhere I probably only managed half the distance I was supposed to do. Never mind, at least I here to swim another day!
You can see from my GPS trace that I was going well until I hit the main channel where I was stopped in my tracks. The graph of my speed (green line in image below) shows the same. Despite still swimming just as strongly the GPS thinks I was going nowhere. I soon sped up on the way back though.
Swim Speed
