#failed
This year’s winter challenge was meant to be a little less taxing and a bit more fun, however, as proven by the results below we failed! That being said Brian won, so chapeau Brian! Kate, Lisa and Pivo posted 0 and me and Katie post some (but not many) points!
Even though it was a bit of a disaster (I (Manda) couldn’t bring myself to part with my team mermaids cap!), we like to look at the positives so here are the good things that came out of the winter challenge:
- We did 100×100. Katie, Brian and me went down to Charlton with some others and swam the 100×100. Katie and Brian then did a cheeky 10k pyramid a few weeks later. Ultimately this helped with the training for mine and Katie’s Swimathon antics and Brian’s 24 miles over 24 hours swim.
- I did an hour continuous swim on my own at Crystal Palace, which at the time was a big deal as I was having to do most of my training alone whilst on maternity leave and the lido was no longer viable for anything over 1k. I spent most weeks bribing myself to finish the set with the thought of a galaxy caramel but this week I just plodded on knowing it would secure me 20 points… and a galaxy caramel!
- We have started doing the odd 1 length fly in training voluntarily!
- Brian did a festive swim back in Ireland over Christmas and even got featured in the local newspaper.
- We became hard-core* cold water swimmers. The temperature plummeted and we kept swimming at Tooting Bec Lido. Despite myself and Katie admitting defeat in November, we managed a brisk 30m in 1.5c* as part of the UK cold water championships in January and then reappeared in the lido once it hit 10c again. We are now regulars at the SLSC Sunday morning races and we hope there will be more of the same next Winter!
Ideas for next year’s Winter Challenge welcome!
*by our standards!
TEAM Mermaids 