First swims

In the last couple of weeks I have begun to dip my feet back into the world of open water swimming. Living in Munich is great because it is surrounded by many fairly big lakes which are all generally very clean and currently a good temperature for swimming in. I decided to do all of my swimming this summer in these lakes, rather than the pool, because there is no better training for open water swimming than swimming in open water.

My favourite places to swim have been Feringasee and Heimstettenersee. The latter is almost exactly 200m across form one side to the other, with a buoy at about 100m across, in the middle. This will be a good place to train, time intervals, and try and work on my speed. Feringasee doesn't have such easy measurements, but I have been swimming here more so far, possibly because it is closer to my house, and possibly because it feels slightly warmer. It is where I have done my longest swim so far, a fairly modest one hour.

Swimming in the lake feels great. The water is cool and refreshing and very clean. Everytime I've been so far the sun has been shining brightly, and from a mental perspective, I've been doing well. When I tried to swim the Channel four years ago, I had big problems in training because mentally I didn't like being in the water so long, but so far this hasn't been an issue. However, I did also struggle back then with getting very cold in the water. I evetually overcame this by gaining lots of weight. With that insulating fat long gone, I am once again feeling the effects of the cold, and whilst I can mostly ignore it when I'm swimming, after the hour swim I sat on the shore shivering intensely, and doing the longer swims I want to do this summer feels difficult now because of this.