Swim Rutland 4K

Today saw me swimming in England's largest reservoir in the country's smallest county for a swim.  Rutland water!  It's about two hours away from JKS HQ so we went most of the way up last night via dinner with Mum JKS and then stayed in the Corby Premier Inn (such comfy bed, so hard to leave it at 5.30am!).

It's a shame that it wasn't more sunny as it all looked a bit grey but it was a lovely venue with lots of water! There was a 2k race and a 4k.  The 4k was an out and back and the 2k was just the back, which involved swimmers getting a boat to the other side.  Registration was quick and easy and instead of a t-shirt we were given a kit bag to put kit in during the swim.  There was a small delay in setting off as it had taken a long time for everyone to get on site but soon we were all in the water.  And there were a lot of people!  There must have been about 250-300 people.

Everyone set out very hard as is always the way and this is the bit of a race that I always hate, busting a gut to try to keep up.  After a bit it always settles down into a rhythym and for me I can start to try to pick people off a bit (as I don't have the top end speed).  It wasn't a straight across swim, we swam out to a headland and then across to the church following some buoys.  I was a little concerned as the 2K from the other side was due to set off 30 minutes after the 4k which was just before I was expecting to reach the other side.  As we approached, I could see all of the 2k swimmers in the water waiting.  But luckily, it must have been slightly delayed as we got around the corner before they set off.  Slight technical hitch for me as I tried to do a corkscrew turn around the buoy, getting tangled up in the compulsory towfloat.  As we approached the last quarter of the swim, it got very choppy indeed which was both fun and annoying at the same time.

Out of the water and I had no idea what time I had done as I hadn't bothered to look at my watch or start the timer.  I was hoping to be under 1h10 (I could probably comfortably swim 1h6 or 7 in the pool but OW conditions can often slow down) and Mr JKS says that  it was ~63 minutes on the watch.  The woman at the finish said that I was 5th lady back which is good given the size of the field (I checked the start list and 156 women had entered).  So all in all very pleasing.  I've decided to swim next weekend at Box End (3.8k) to practice the pace again ahead of the Fuschlsee Crossing the following weekend.