As mentioned in the first part, this irregular series resulted from the great documentation that former CS&PF President and multiple English Channel swimmer Nick Adams generously shared with me from his copy of the relevant Fry’s Outdoor Magazine. The series quickly grew into an overview of the early years of marathon swimming. Part One and…
The local pool and gym is taking part in Operation Transformation in January. So there will be six weeks of hell in the pool, as most will not succeed. and will have given up by mid February. This is the same as almost every pool and gym in the world, it will just be exacerbated…
In the last part we closed with Byron’s continued explanation of his Hellespont swim to Mr. Turner, (below again). “With regard to the difference of the current, I perceived none; it is favourable to the swimmer on neither aide, but may be stemmed by plunging into the sea, a considerable way above the opposite point of…
I had intended this article to cover further the articles shared by Nick Adams from the turn of the last century, but I realised that I would have to digress from those accounts and go back to the classical origins that inspired the sport and thence to those whom the origins inspired. Hence, I’ve altered the…
Is it too cold to swim? and when is it too cold to swim? are perennial questions that have prompted a number of articles and to which I will likely return in the future. If I was to list the variations of ways people inquire if the water is sufficiently warm or too cold to swim, well, the list…
Two years ago I finished my very long series about Ice Mile Swimming. In that series I set out to describe a journey of personal attempts to complete an Ice Mile, my reason for so doing, which was at odds with the rest of people who achieve an Ice Mile, and subsequently my investigation of…
I went for a swim one evening recently, my first time in the sea in about three weeks. The air was warmer, the day nicer, the sun setting later than it had in mid- February. But the water felt bitter. My skin thermometer told me it was about seven degrees (and feeling colder due to…
If open water swimming was as simple or simplistic as is sometimes portrayed I’d long have ceased writing. Olympic or professional open water swimmers who distil the skills associated with open water swimming to a mere “learn to sight, swim straight” have over-looked all the other skills they may have learned along the way. Similarly, amateur marathon…
A Guide to Lane Swimming Etiquette For three years, a guide to lane swimming etiquette has been this site’s most consistently popular post, rarely out of the Top Five most popular posts at any single time, still read hundreds or sometimes even thousands of times every week. It is heartening that swimmers around the world…
1. While there is debate amongst experienced pool swimmers about the crime of peeing the pool, (some don’t do it, some do and they are wrong!), there is no similar among debate amongst open water swimmers. Everyone pees in the sea. However some people may find it difficult to initiate, especially in cold water. If…
There are better cold water swimmers than I. There are faster cold water swimmers than I. There are hardier cold water swimmers than I. There are more scientific cold water swimmers than I. There are more experienced cold water swimmers than I. There are people who love colder water more than I. There are even…
Since I believe that to be a proficient open water swimmer you should also be swimming in the pool, occasionally I cover pool topics. There’s a slight ambiguity in my title terminology between a swimming pool and a pool for swimming, because the general title of swimming pool doesn’t necessarily mean a pool for swimmers. I’m…
This third and final part follows: Part One on Oceans. Part Two on Lakes and Rivers. I was at the top of the 1000 foot high Cliffs of Moher with the wind was blowing Force 11. I noticed that unsurprisingly most people were unable to move easily. It had never previously occurred to me that somehow over years…
My reviews tend to follow a similar pattern, as I write the sort of reviews I prefer to read. When I read Amazon reviews I’m the one who reads the negative one star reviews and the horrendously long ultra-detailed ones that make you wonder if the reviewer has a life. I find the combination of the…
This is the second of a three-part series covering the features and hazards of open water swimming locations, the first of which covered the ocean.The Ocean is sufficiently complex and changeable to require its own article. I had intended in this second part to cover the remaining locations but the article was simply too long. Part Three will cover…
Open water is open water, right? Well, yes and no. Sure, water itself is only water, whether fresh, salt water or brackish, and if you can swim, then theoretically you may think that’s all you need to know. Unfortunately, too many beginner and intermediate open water swimmers don’t think about the various conditions and hazards…
As a linkbait title, you have to admit it’s pretty intriguing. One of the toughest things for me about writing this site is article titles. I try to make them interesting when the best thing to do is make them effective for search engines, which is a very different thing. The best titles are a combination of…
Disclaimer: All you have to do, is merely spend 5+ years and thousands of hours writing and then stuff starts to arrive. This is my second swimming watch review this year, and for this one also I did not purchase the watch but it was supplied by the manufacturer Swimovate. No conditions were requested, no…
August the 24th is the day in 1875 that Captain Matthew Webb successfully swam the English Channel, landing at Calais on his second attempt in under 22 hours. It’s the date that the sport of Channel and Marathon Swimming unofficially claims as its birth day, (disregarding previous unsuccessful attempts by Webb and others). So following a suggestion by…
The Hype Cycle is a new type of swimming stroke in development for triathletes that is likely to soon be adopted into the wider world of marathon swimming after FINA adopt it as the official sixth stroke. As developed by the University of Portsmouth’s famous open water safety research department, instead of standard arm-stroke the research…
It may have been a summer or an early autumn day, back when the working class of Ireland all went on holiday in the first week of August, sometime during what I would later discover had come to be known as the New Age or Age of Aquarius elsewhere in the world. It’s not even a whole day…
It is an oft-repeated observation of many swimmers that the sport itself is meditative, with many experienced lap and open water swimmers reporting they regularly “zone out“. Some years ago, I wrote a brief article considering the positive or enhanced state of Alpha wave production in the brain during certain physical activities such as surfing and open water swimming,…
LoneSwimmer is mostly about covering the positive aspects about swimming, or at least, of my swimming life, and imparting what I’ve learned in the hope of spreading the knowledge. But every swimmer, every person involved in any sport has things about their sport that they dislike or … maybe even hate… 1. Extreme Cold Water I…
A significant technological change in swimming over the previous few years has been the development and introduction of various sports watches intended primarily for swimming. Most of these watches introduce some feature or combination of features, from lap counting to calorie expenditure to GPS tracking. For example some years ago I reviewed the Swimovate PoolMate watch, my…
I just have to start this with a disclaimer: I’m not really a kayaker. I have spent maybe eight hours total escorting swimmers on a kayaker and my total kayaking time is only about twenty hours as I write this. I’ve done so little kayaking that I can estimate the total time spent. However I am a…
LoneSwimmer 