We we were blessed with one of the best days I have ever experienced in Langebaan. It is the middle of May, normally associated with single digit temperatures and pouring rain in the Western Cape of South Africa, however, yesterday we had 30°C air temperatures and a fresh 13°C water temperature for the annual Around The Island Swim 2013.
I have taken a new approach to Open Water Racing this season, and have tried to avoid the extreme cold of the West Coast of Cape Town. I have found that the fitter I have become, the leaner I have gotten and the direct result of this is a lower threshold to the cold water. After a bit of persuasion from my training partner, Richard Willmore, I decided to join him at Camps Bay for this years Human Rights Day swim 2013.
Rich came to pick me up at 06h30, we headed off to Newlands pool for our regular training session. I managed to fit a very comfortable 5,5km before we packed up and headed on to Camps Bay for our “Main Set”, the 5km Human Rights Day Swim. This years event featured an 800m swim, a 1 mile swim and a 5km swim.
The 2013 South African Open Water Swimming Championships took place last weekend in Grabouw, just outside of Cape Town. The Eikenhof Dam in Grabouw is a great venue, often used for Triathlons and Xterra off-road triathlon racing.
After an initial bit of confusion, the SA Open Water Swimming Championships were brought forward by a month, the initial date was mid-April 2013. This change caused last minute adjustments to training programs and added a bit more pressure to everyone’s final preparations heading into the SA Open Water Swimming Championships. The event hosts three distances, namely the 10km, 5km and 3km swims, I was swimming the 10km and 5km races.
Day one greeted us with fantastic weather, the dam was flat and temperatures soared into the mid-thirties. The 10km race got underway at 10h00 on Saturday. This is a very competitive race and the qualifying standards are very tough. As a result of the fast qualifying times, the field of the men’s and women’s races are quite small and due to this, it was decided to combine the two races, starting the males and females off at the same time. I was ready to go, wearing my Arena Powerskin full body open water suit and Arena Cobra mirror goggles.
10km Start
As part of my planning for 2013 I started looking at my training and racing logs for 2012 and it made me realise that it had to be one of the biggest years of my Open Water swimming career. Not only have I achieved some great results, but it has been a phenomenal journey. I have been given some amazing opportunities and the support I have received has been fantastic. There have been a few people that have really believed in me, and backed me 100%, and to them I am most grateful.
Family
Brian Curtis Mile 2012