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…
A couple of years later, I am still a little surprised that LoneSwimmer.com won the inaugural 2012 Irish Blog Awards for Best Sport and Recreation award (when the site was also a finalist in a second category). Ireland is a sport-obsessed country, even more than many others. Football (soccer), football (rugby), football (Gaelic), football (compromise rules) and even…
I had forgotten about the anniversary but I started LoneSwimmer.com on a whim on the afternoon of 18th of January, 2010. Little did I guess where it would lead. Since then LoneSwimmer has grown year on year, and often month on month. It was viewed in 185 countries in 2013 though the countries that most…
We humans cannot avoid applying patterns, recognising changes, marking time, and marking time. We impose arbitrary markers, and the years begin and pass and end with signs and notifications, anniversaries and announcements, resolutions and changes. In 2012 Evan Morrison and I started the marathonswimmers.org forum. Evan and I believed marathon and aspiring marathon swimmers and…
LoneSwimmer 