This is becoming exhausting... It's that part of the season after all The Big Ones, but there are so many swims on, quite largish ones, that it's exhausting keeping up with them. That may be due partly to the party we had after Malabar today, celebrating the birthday's of our staff photo drunk, Glistening Dave, and Rotto-bound transformer, RealDeal_Cat. Dave turned 60 yesterday and today was his first outing in the sub-Codger age group. It wasn't a milestone birthday for Cat, but this was her last swim in Sydney before heading to Perf for Rottnest next weekend, where she's swimming as part of the Tweetybirds quad team, four laydee swimmers who know each other largely only through Twitter. That's Cat above, on the left, with sibling Tweetybird Liz Hill (@SwimBikeKnit).
Heard good reports from the Pier to Perignon, which is one of the glorious swims on the calendar. So sad we couldn't be there ourselves. And Malabar, while a little mucky in close, was such clear water from 150m off the beach, although some punters reported some lice, and one even tweeted that he'd been stung by a bluey. Musta been the only bluey in the bay.
We'll have our report up tomorrow. In the meantime, our swimmer feedback surveys are open for both those swims... Pier to Perignon... Malabar... We shot some video and plan to post an essay on different strokes, also tomorrow. Provided that blob we discovered on the outside of the lens wasn't there all day.
Anyway, what did you think?
What a unique place Malabar is, I've lived on Sydney's Northern Beaches all my life and never visited this magical place before. Not sure why I haven't been there (they did extend the sewage outfall didn't they).
ReplyDeleteI'll be back, a friendly beach with some friendly folk and lice but not so friendly hidden rocks on the water's edge.
On a more general note regarding Ocean Swims, I would like to see more organisers accept that if we are wearing the Timing Chip there is no need to draw on us with the marking pen. Although I do appreciate that if I had lost either my left arm or right leg on Sunday they would have been returned to me.
Actually, there is a need to write numbers on arms even with timing chips. Some swimmers cheat by missing booees, or they miss them inadvertently through inattention. Numbers on arms are the only way of identifying those swimmers. Mind you, few event organisers check that swimmers actually go around buoys. All should.
ReplyDeletethere is a small chance of being injured in a swim by another swimmer and a number written on somewhere is a reasonable safety thing.At bondi last week i think there were a lot of new swimmers who were threatened by the crowds out in the ocean.I was nearly kicked several times by breast strokers at the acute angle bouys and a closed fist hit me on the head and then on my back on the leg out to the southernmost turn,maybe a rerun of the oceanswimmers etiquette might help
ReplyDeletejust curious .. have the random prizes been drawn yet for the pittwater series. don't remember seeing anything.
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