Event 24 - Britri Palace to Paddle 2.5km sea swim

While you were probably all still slumbering in your beds, at 6am this morning I was at Brighton Pier for the 24th event of my challenge. This was a 2.5km sea swim, part of the Paddle Round the Pier Festival 2019 and organised by Britri, who I have to say did an excellent job. Thank you to all the volunteers and the lifeguards giving up your time so early in the morning and all day to support the other events going on. This year there was also a 1.5km and a 3.8km swim. I was brave and went for the 2.5km. To put you in the picture of where I was at in terms of preparation and training....I've never swam further than about 400m in the sea ever! The swim was cut short for the Brighton Triathlon last September due to adverse weather conditions and I've been in the sea twice since then, both times in very choppy conditions. The Saltdean Lido opened a few weeks ago just at the same time I realised this event was three weeks away and I got "the fear"...so I've been training two or three times a week and managed a 2.7km swim in about 1hr 10mins last week so I knew I could do the distance.....I just wasn't sure about the sea bit! I feel physically fit at the moment so that part was ok I suppose so I'm not completely nuts....although that is questionable.
I woke this morning and looked at the sea from my bedroom window and....horror....it was flat as a pancake, perfect conditions for a sea swim so my hope of the event being cancelled (sorry everyone!) was out the window....it meant I was actually going to have to go through with this!

What I loved about this morning was how lovely and quiet Brighton is at that time of the day. There are quite a few clubbers spilling out of different venues but no one being loud or causing any trouble, just very chilled - oh those were the days :-) Back then I never thought I'd be the one in a wetsuit making my way down to the beach to do something like this, funny how things change!

My Dad came to support me and he admitted to me afterwards he was really worried about me doing this event.....I was worried about myself!


We got to the start pen and the organisers realised that the lifeguard safety team hadn't arrived yet so it gave me some time to get in the water and acclimatise. The water was so clear I could see fish, it was beautiful and it definitely steadied the nerves as the water felt lovely. My plan for this event was to go really really slowly because I have a habit of getting involved in the "rush" at the start of races and then if you get out of breath and you're swimming it takes a while to get back to normal and it makes me panic a bit, I also don't like swimming near other people. So I hung back and made sure I had a nice big space and walked into the sea as far as I could before setting off. The first part of the race is a swim straight out to sea along the length of Brighton Pier, you then turn around the pier and head off horizontal to the shore line to the West Pier and i360. I could see lifeguards on surf boards near me all of the time so I felt safe and not once did I panic, not even when I swam past a jellyfish! I have to say I don't particularly like the salty water but you can't do anything about that and it was lovely out there in the sea. There was quite a lot of petrol smell from the safety boats but I'd rather that and feel safe....some people love that smell I hear?

I tried to just zone out most of the time and tried to remember to switch breathing sides so I didn't get one knackered arm. I think at about 1.5km when I could see the burned down West Pier I started to speed up a bit as I was so relaxed and didn't feel out of breath at all. I did my best to keep in a  straight line and kept sighting to make sure I wasn't going too far off track. Its almost impossible to go off track on this event as there are safety crew everywhere which is great.

I was so glad to see the final yellow turning point because from there, its a straight swim right back to the shoreline and I went for it on the last section as I had loads of energy left, I ran out of the sea and got my medal! Gotta love a medal! And that was it done....boom another one in the bag in a time of approximately 58 minutes (official times yet to be released).

This event is genuinely THE ONE I didn't think I was going to manage, out of all of them. I did it, I can't believe I did it. I didn't think I was capable of something like this. I'm so glad I pushed my boundaries. This event has really set me up for my upcoming London to Brighton Tri in August and the swim is in a lake (no salt - yay!) and just less than 2km (a shorter distance than today) so its given me the confidence I needed to go into that triathlon with a strong self-believing mind.

My next event is Run 5:30 with all of my lovely Runpals! It's is a 5 km run around the streets of Brighton on Friday 19th July at 5:30 in the morning.....a great way to start the day. This will be my first ever Run 5:30 and I hear we have a huge group of Runpals taking part in this one :-) can't wait. I'm now off to the Saltdean School Summer Fair where I'll be marshalling the kids races with the Runpals, see you there x (still can't believe I got a 2.5km sea swim in the bag by this time in the morning haha!)






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