South Head Roughwater and BON VOYAGE SYDNEY!!!

Hey all...So this will be my last blog or should I say BLOB on Australian soil - it's all happening and creeping up fast! I am soon to return home to Ireland and its going to be mental!!! (apart from the training swims lined up, I’m from a good catholic family and my older siblings are reproducing like rabbits – so there are 8 wee nippers waiting to meet their aunty Colleen!)

Participating in the South Head Roughwater ocean swim (Bondi Beach to Watson's Bay) the weekend before last has refocused me and added the fuel I need for the task ahead.

A brief recap on the swim -  IT WAS TOUGH AND AWESOME… that's it.. 

Alex and I coming into the finish flying the Armagh flag!

 No, on a serious note, I had a few pointers from a good friend and swim-mate Scott Miers the day before in regards to being patient, however, I still managed to underestimate it. The water looked calm and conditions were perfect and everyone was talking about how this was the year the fast guys will break records. OH BOY was it a different story when we all got in the water! I knew I had my work cut out for me as there were two great swimmers and lovely girls in the race with much more speed and experience in their arms, but I wasn't afraid of blowing up as I was treating this as training and practising my nutrition. My partner Alex was kayaking (her first time), but I had absolute trust in her to keep a good line and take no sh*t from me - and that’s exactly what she did. 

Thank you Coach Charm!

The race started and I planned to go hard - if I died it would just be a learning curve. So I went out hard, got into a rhythm and then got frustrated as I felt I was making very little progress past Ben Butler (just past north Bondi headland). But this was all part of it so I knuckled down, enjoying the cliff scenery and Alex singing and paddling beside me. All was going relevantly well until we hit the first lighthouse and then the current got really strong - you could even see the seaweed and fish frantically being pushed in the opposite direction as we were heading. I completely underestimated this swim and all the different variables it fired at the swimmers, but it was so much fun and the group of people doing it were awesome. I have to give a special shout out to the guys at South Maroubra RSL, as without them guys I wouldn’t have been able to enter and may have been eaten by sharks! 

Coming in to the finish was awesome (not at the time, but now looking back), and there was a great atmosphere at Watsons Bay Hotel.  It was a successful day completing the swim in 3 hours 5 seconds and coming in first female solo - not a very good time for 10km I know, but it just shows you what the conditions were like. Good day, good training, great celebrations. 

So a lot has happened since this swim and a lot still has to be done, but baby steps all the way! South head swim was another step in the right direction - it scared me a lot in regards to what is to come as I found this swim hard, and if this was hard, then I need not even bother with the north channel as it’s a monster in comparison! Anyways these are the type of tricks and arguments you have with yourself repeatedly.  

Last weekend was a 4 hour swim at Brighton le Sands - it was like a swimming pool, everything was perfect but it was BORING (so it was wonderful mental preparation as I’m going to have to get used to being bored). This week I will clock up a steady 30km in the pool, hopefully get to swim from Coogee to Bondi (as I have never done this and am dying to do it before I go home) and then complete a 6 – 8 hour swim on Saturday leaving Sydney with a bang! I will also most likely be as stiff as a board and the air hostess will have to carry me off in Dublin - Hehehehe!

On a more serious note, I will sadly miss Sydney and all my awesome buddies here. On a swimming note – I will definitely miss all the swimmers at VLAD swim and the amazing coaches - THANK YOU everyone for being so inspirational in their own wee way (and you know you’re all very welcome to come and use South Armagh’s 1.2km 12 degree outdoor pool anytime you want!). In the end though, I think the timing is perfect for a change of scenery - a time for me to refocus and start working hard again while getting acclimatised to the cold water and tough love from my siblings. With trying to organise and move all my belongings overseas, training is going to have to take a bit of a back sit after the past couple of weeks BUT there is a lot of great training swims, camps and competitions happening over the Irish summer so STAY TUNED and STAY CLASSY SYDNEY!

 PURE ATHLETE

www.pure-athlete.com/

A special shout out this week to PureAthlete – these guys have a bunch of spectacular new products produced in Ireland Co. Galway, all focused on helping athletes improve their recovery and, as a result, leader to better performance in their respective sports.

I have trialled some of their stuff after big events (the bath salts in particular are the dart), like the 8 hours swim in Melbourne and the South Head Roughwater race - when my body was in complete turmoil. AMAZING! I don’t know what it does but it gets into your muscles and releases all the bad sh*t out of them, and has really seemed to help with speeding up my recovery. For all the Aussies, they’ve recently opened a branch in Port Macquarie too. 

While training over the last few months I’ve really come to realise that while training miles are important, recover is just as important (if not more so). So the cycle continues – train/recover/perform/train/recover/perform – and I want to thank these guys for helping me along the way.