El Andalous - To Swim or Not to Swim

Unusually Rough Day at the Beach

I’ve been swimming pretty much every day since October, but we’ve just hit a cold patch, or maybe even a cold couple of months, so I’m not sure if I’ll be doing much exercise for a while. I’m not usually this wimpy, as every other year I’ve swum all year round, but at this time of year, I do question my sanity. By cold, I mean that the outdoor temperature is supposed to be around 18 degrees with quite gusty winds during the day, then going down to about 8 degrees at night. The sea will just get colder and colder. Help!

I'm a bit frustrated at the moment with my swimming. For some reason, I can’t seem to be bothered to do a non-stop distance swim anymore; I stop whenever I feel like it. I think this has come about because I’d heard that you should not practice a bad stroke; you should stop, recalibrate, and practice better style and have your body remember that.

So, I’ve got used to resting now whenever I feel like it. And then I reason to myself that I’m not training for anything; it’s supposed to be for fun. But afterwards, I feel  annoyed with myself. And I'm also frustrated with myself for being so wimpy about getting in the water, too, and even opting out altogether.

On the plus side, I’m probably swimming further in total as I’ve targeted to stop swimming one hotel further along now from previously (and then there are the rest periods where I’m treading water, so also using up some energy compared to just sitting around). One day, an Egyptian guy offered to tow me back on his windsurfer, saying it was his taxi service!

Annoyingly, my Garmin watch started to malfunction. It kept on switching to the wrong time (what’s the point of a watch that doesn’t tell the time!). At one point, it buzzed in the middle of a swim and then suddenly changed my location to about a few kilometers further away. I was suddenly better than an Olympic swimmer. On another swim, I was apparently zig-zagging about at some amazing pace as well. It went through a phase where it wouldn’t upload my data. And eventually, it just gave up. It was fully charged, but didn’t turn on or else it would hang in cyberspace.

I’d only had my Garmin for about two years, so I wasn’t impressed. I was also annoyed that it doesn’t provide you with your personal bests for open water swimming – only for lap swimming. My Suunto was far better from the point of view of usable statistical analysis of your data.

I’ve dithered for a while about what watch to buy to replace it. I didn’t want to get Garmin again, but annoyingly (fortunately?) they have recently brought out an updated version of their dedicated swimming watch (my one had been all-purpose sports), which got great reviews. I’d wanted to buy Suunto, but it seemed that the watch I had four years ago was still up there as among their best for open water swimming, but I was worried that it would soon be replaced by something better; I also felt it should have moved on by now.

So, reluctantly, I’ve ordered the Garmin Swim 2. It should arrive this week. Since I’ve been without my watch, I’ve extended my daily swim to that extra hotel along to ensure that I don’t get lazy. It would be tempting to swim less now that I’m not uploading my swim data for the total distance competitions on the Garmin Groups. I’m curious to know how much further I’m swimming, but if I had to guess, I would say I’m probably doing a total of around 1.8km each day. Not too shabby, but I’d be happier with myself if it were non-stop!