Zurich – Swim from Eich to Nottwil

Swimmers Warming Up

The weather improved again towards the end of August and, to my surprise, I was able to fit in one final lake crossing on 31st August. This happened to be the grand finale of the Swiss Open Water Cup that I mentioned previously. It was the event where they would hand out all the cups and medals, plus there would be events held in and around the lake for a general day of fun. They were lucky that it happened on a really hot day, so around 200 people turned up for the swim, I believe. This was the longest swim I would do all season (2.5km).

I had registered to take part, but I hadn’t paid online as for some reason my payment wouldn’t go through. I queued to get my starting number etc and saw all the medals and cups starting to be lined out on the table. I heard the person in front of me commenting on how many cups and medals there were but still there was no way she was going to qualify for any of them. Those were exactly my thoughts!

I finally got to the front of the queue; to my surprise, they didn’t seem to have a record of who had paid and who had not paid. I volunteered the information that I hadn’t paid and they happily took my money, but this is very Swiss – so much is done on trust. It’s both admirable and puzzling.

Since it was the grand finale, we got an astonishing number of freebies. On registering, I got not only my starting tag, but also a rucksack, four little packs of Haribo sweets, herbal shampoo, a swimming buoy, discount off the local gym, and I can’t remember what else. We all had to wear a swimming buoy for the swim (this is becoming more and more common); usually you have to rent a swimming buoy for 50 CHF (refundable?) if you don’t have your own, but here we got one for free.

I couldn’t work out how to put on the electronic tag on my ankle, which would time my swim, but someone in the changing rooms helped me. She’d obviously seen me staring at everyone else, because she volunteered the information that it didn’t matter which ankle it went on.

We were given the normal introductory talk and to my dismay there were two lanes, one for the swimmers, and one for stand up paddles (SUPs). They stressed that it was very important to keep in the correct lane and not to end up at the wrong exit point since the timer would only record your arrival once. I could smell disaster in the air! In the end, I decided it didn’t matter too much, since I wouldn’t be in the front and thus could just follow everyone else. There are advantages to being below average!

They interviewed some people before the swim took place, which made me feel a bit out of place at first since some seemed to have expectations of time that seemed impossible to me. Finally, the interviewer found one person willing to say that anything under an hour would be an achievement (I was expecting to do it in about 1 hour 10 minutes), and another person saying that he didn’t care because he was just there for fun. That’s more like it!

The swim itself went well and started at the civilized time of noon. My plan was to keep near the back to avoid the rush at the start, but we were all asked to start at the same time, so this wasn’t really possible. However, I was able to follow other people and I didn’t lose my way. I had to psych myself up for swimming for just over an hour so that I wouldn’t have expectations of being able to stop any time soon, and also had to tell myself to relax on the initial push and shove at the start.

I finally reached the buoys marking the end of the swim and could feel the ground under my feet. I stood to stop my watch (which has GPS to time and record the swim), while someone yelled at me to continue running as I had to reach the mat first. I began to run, being the obedient person that I am, but then realized that actually I wasn’t racing, so I slowed down to a walk and took my time. I’m proud to say that to my surprise I managed to do the swim in just under an hour (59 minutes!). As I stepped onto the finishing mat, I received a finisher’s medal, which I proudly wore for the next hour or so.

I came in 54th out of 85 women, which I don’t think is too shabby a performance! The fastest person did the swim in 30 minutes (male, 19 years); the fastest woman (18 years old) did it in 33 minutes! I can only dream of swimming at 5km per hour, let alone sustaining it over 2.5km. It was the swim where I felt the most tired at the end, but not exhausted.

Sadly, the organizers of the Swiss Open Water Cup made a loss, despite sponsorship, and it’s no longer going to continue as far as I know. I feel lucky to have been able to take part in it and sad that it won’t happen next year. One year isn’t really long enough for such an event to gain sufficient traction to get people to take part, so I wish it could have tried to keep going for at least one more year. Life is tough, sometimes!