Tuesday 3 January 2012

Newport Beach Pool to Peak 2km Ocean Swim 2012: I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya

Newport is one of Sydney's glorious northern beaches
About halfway through the Newport ocean swim I wondered if I should have downed 2.5 glasses of champers (a nice Australian drop from Chandon) the night before. At the time I thought nothing of it. In fact, I thought nothing.

How cool is this? A post-swim massage with an unbeatable view

Silly me. The middle of an ocean swim with a healthy dose of chop is no place for regrets. After seeing my Irish swimming mate Mr Very Big amble past me with a grin across his smug mug, I was motivated to carry on.

A further psychological boost came from a swimmer in my age group, who I noticed just before the last of the eight cans that marked the anti-clockwise course. She was starting to inch ahead, which usually wouldn't worry me. But yesterday I thought, 'No way chicky babe. One way or another I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya."

And I did. Just as we were coming in, I powered up and tried to catch every available wave. I didn't have a great deal of success but still managed to get ahead of her to run up the beach to the cheers of Miss Hissy and her friend and Mr Very Big and his family who'd come to the beach to celebrate his birthday.      

I was pretty chuffed even though my time wasn't amazing and I'm at least 10 minutes behind the fastest swimmer in my cohort (this is why I never post my times!). 

It was a brilliant day. The sun is finally here to stay in ol' Sydney town, which can be a mixed blessing.

I'm loving summer.

Boxes of fresh fruit for placegetters. One day...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I see the parking inspectors gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. You and all the others. Next time bring a tape measure and your copy of the Da Vinci Code, so you can interpret those crazy northern beaches parking rules.

Shayne said...

Love ya work Richard!

Unknown said...

Did you see the tweet from os.c ?
It's all good if you call Pittwater Council they will squash the parking fines from Monday. So maybe they didn't got ya.