Book & DVD reviews related to Open Water Swimming, Swimming Technique, Oceanography, Meteorology, Locations, Nautical History, Sailing
There’s a concept called Buy It For Life where you purchase an item that should last the rest of your life. In criminal terms, in Ireland life is 25 years. I wrote this review back in 2011 and it’s time to revisit my first look at the Keypod key safe. I bought a Keypod (2nd Generation) in the mid-noughties during…
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…
In the autumn of 2014 I picked up an injury when I got a Grade 3 ankle sprain. I couldn’t swim much due to lingering chest infection (and didn’t want to either, as open water swimming season was ending). However years of ingrained habit made me swim anyway. I thought some kicking might help rehabilitate my ankle but I found a…
Craft beers are the thing, right? Local, interesting, more flavour, more fun. One of humanity’s oldest craft’s giving the blandness of the global industrial homogenisation of food and taste a hopeful poke in the eye. One of the better things of living in Ireland, because of the country’s still large agricultural sector, is our access to local fresh food…
The Finis Tempo Trainer, the original (and still available in some outlets) model, was another interesting idea from Finis that, as usual with said company’s electronics, wasn’t particularly well executed. I first bought one back in 2008 or ’09. It’s most obvious flaw was that you couldn’t replace the battery. So it was random luck…
My pool bag now includes the silly total of five four five six five different types of paddles! Update March 2014: Added another paddle, subsequently removed yet another paddle. See below for comparison of PT Paddle and Complete Fitness Coaching Palm Paddle Warning: overdoing paddle work is a mistake easily made. I was already doing a lot…
It was a genius idea by Dee. Jelly babies are notorious favourites of open water distance and Channel swimmers. Tiny parcels of coloured and flavoured glucose perfectly anthropomorphised, that sate a craving. Relatively waterproof and easy to pass to a swimmer, or for crew to snarf a few themselves, they provide an instant hit of…
I’ve written a couple of previous annual posts reviewing various goggles, (one, two) that I’ve used, of which it seems there have been quite a few. (There are few greater swimming pleasures than wearing brand new goggles!) I am a relatively recent user to Swedish googles (aka Swedes), I’ve been wearing them for less than…
This is an update to my original review from a couple of years ago. I always place reliability at the forefront of product requirements, and too many reviews are based on initial experience. – When I started putting in big metres some years back, because I swim by myself and am slightly OCD about many things,…
What is it? Fitocracy is a “social media fitness website”. It is intended as a fitness goals and tracking site integrated with an online community. I received an invitation for the beta (test) version in 2011 but didn’t avail of it for about a year afterwards. I signed up on a whim in January of…
In late Channel season 2011 I was in Varne Ridge to crew a solo. Present for that tide were a bunch of Channel Aspirants from Western Australia, advised by seven-times world open water champion Shelley Taylor-Smith. They had had a long wait with bad weather. One of the swimmers was UK-born but WA resident Paul Newsome, the…
The simple ideas are often the best ones. I’ve previously reviewed Irish Company Amphibia Sport‘s excellent Evo Sports Bag and I recently received in the post one of the company’s long-awaited (for me) silicon Sports Ring. I forgot to test swim it the weekend after I received it, so it had to wait until this…
Soon after starting to write this blog, I realised I really wanted to share some of the great sights of Ireland’s Copper Coast where I mostly swim. I actually remember the first day I wanted a waterproof camera was when I came across a YouTube video of Sandycove Island by Ray Terry with Finbarr Hedderman, Danny…
I have an overwhelming aversion to so-called Reality TV which extends to any program that could remotely be considered related so I had never seen nor knew about Irish Sport’s Company Amphibia Sport and its founder Adrian McCreevy appearing on (and winning, I think or is that the relevant term?) Dragon’s Den for new businesses,…
I’ve previously reviewed Aquasphere Kaiman and Kayennes for open water swimming and that I hadn’t previously been successful with using low profile goggs. I had settled into my Aquasphere use over years. After I wrote that article Paul Ellercamp of oceanswims.com in Australia sent me a pair of his favourite goggles, low-profile competition/racing View Visio aka…
Dover’s best known swimming Bed & Breakfast accommodation is Hubert House, but the B&Bs in Cork are better, (naturally, says a chorus of Corkonians). I know, I’ve stayed in both, and unlike Hubert House, Gabriel House on Summerhill in Cork is owned and run by an English Channel Soloist, Liam Maher, the tallest of The Magnificent Seven, and…
I’ve covered a few of swimming books a long time ago, two of the big books of our sport Kathy Watson’s The Crossing and Peggy Lee Dean’s Open Water Swimming and Bill Sweetenham’s Championship Swim Training. A few of the guys are excellent at covering open water swimming books, particularly Mark Robson‘s links of the classics of…
I’ve mentioned before that regular icing is a great way to address the knots and aches that build up in a swimmer’s body when they are doing regular hard training. For myself these start to occur once I start to regularly go to 25,000 metres a week and over. I’ve also mentioned the tennis ball…
Rob Dumouchel does a great series of high-tech reviews for open water swimming, so, never being too proud to steal an idea, I’m concentrating on the low tech stuff, like lights, goggles, ear-plugs and more to come. I read a question online: “I need a water bottle. Not just any water bottle – the King of Bottles“.…
The first time I ever swam at night was a Sandycove night swim in 2008, organised by SISC member John Conroy. Everyone had to have their own chemical lightsticks for safety and identification. Chemical lightsticks are plastic tubes with a mix of chemicals inside, available in red/orange, blue, green. You bend or snap the plastic…
Some things are so important, yet so mundane. Wherever you gather a few swimmers together, you can be certain the subject of goggles will arise. And pool swimmers and open water swimmers often differ quite widely. In pool swimming people often go for smaller goggles, either Swedish or goggles based on the Swedish design. For…
It is a fact widely acknowledged that the BBC makes the best television nature and science documentaries. David Attenborough’s name has become a global watch phrase for excellence. But it is always the whole BBC team bringing in the best nature writing and filming and locations, in this series using the Planet Earth Polar camera-man,…
Silicone ear plugs. Ear plugs. Made out of silicone. Little balls of silicone. That you squish into your ear. To block and protect your ears. From cold water. Got that? In the box: On left, two new and unused plugs. Next two from top second left, plugs used during winter. Next two, bottom centre and…
Since I’ve been using mine for a few years, I’d planned to write a quick review of the KeyPod, since I’ve often been asked about it. But I just noticed this in ALDI for anyone looking for a cheaper option, on sale next Thursday for those in Ireland! Safety Lock Weather resistant steel safe Shackle…
Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in the 1960’s, one of the most important and influential books of the 20th century. But ten years previously she wrote another best-seller, The Sea Around Us. Carson was a biologist and in The Sea Around Us she stepped out of her familiar world and into the marine world. Amongst…
LoneSwimmer 