Last night (27th September) saw the final Exeter
Triathlon Club sea-swim at Teignmouth for 2016, and what a lovely night it was; with
calm waters, a beautiful sunset, and (after a couple of minutes warm-up) a nice
temperature.
It doesn’t seem all that long ago
that the start of summer saw a group of about fifteen of us get in at Budleigh
Salterton on the early May bank holiday weekend, braving rough conditions and a
lot of wind to have our first sea-swim of the year, followed by a barbecue in
the spitting rain. After that a small group of us (me, Simon, Sam, Claire,
Rupert, Ellen) went in on a more-or-less weekly basis until the official club
sessions started about a month later on Tuesday evenings.
The club sessions are very well
organised and well run, with a small group of dedicated volunteers and coaches
planning and leading the sessions, as well as the lifeguards from the surf
club, who accompany us every week on their paddle-boards for safety.
Led by ETC’s Head Coach, Rob
Moore, swimmers are split into three-to-four groups, arranged by
ability/confidence/speed, with a pre-swim briefing each week. A novice group allowed for those who were new to open
water swimming (OWS) or just keen to improve some basic skills to work on their
confidence and get accustomed to what can be a very daunting prospect. Even in this group swimmers would regularly cover over a kilometre of water! Moving
up the groups the speed increased, as did the distance, from 1500m right up to
about 3000m for the handful of dolphins amongst us!
We’d practice things like
deep-water starts, drafting, sighting, beach-starts, sprints, endurance, corkscrew
turns, and of course just enjoying the luxury of sea swimming! Having participated
all of last summer in my first year in Exeter, I was pleased to be able to take
part as a coach this time round. My feeling was that it was really enjoyable as
well as beneficial for our swimming practice, and the feedback seemed
to be largely positive.
We were quite fortunate this year
with generally good conditions, decent weather, and not too many jellies. I don’t
recall any sessions having to be completely cancelled due to rough seas, though
my memory’s not what it could be!
It’s not all about the swimming
though, and the pre-swim meet-up in the car park gave people ample opportunity
to catch up socially, as of course did the monthly Chippy Tuesdays at the local
fish ‘n’ chip shop at the end of the promenade!
All in all I’m sad that the club’s
summer sea-swims are over for another season, but unfortunately we’re limited
by the early setting sun as we roll into September/October- which is a shame as
the water is lovely this time of year. However, I hope to keep doing a bit at
weekends with anyone else who is interested, for at least another month. On the
plus side, it will give me (and hopefully others) the impetus and opportunity
to get back into the pool at Middlemoor and/or Riverside to start working hard
again on technique under the guidance of Karen et al.
I hope to see everyone at the
pool in the coming weeks, and we’ll have more of the same next summer.
Special thanks to:
Virginia and Monica for
organising, checking-in/out, payment, safety before and after swimming
Coaches: Rob Moore, Pete Wilby,
Charlie Sumner, Rob Libby, Mike Griffiths (and me)
Teignmouth Beach Surf Life Saving
Club
Juliette Dean: for ensuring we get our
monthly fill of deep-fried saturated-fat goodness!
