Al’s Swimming

I’ve addressed this before, but the most common question I get asked is whether I use goose fat. Quite apart from having grown my own special brand, goose fat was used back in THE day - along with feeds of brandy and sausages! Nowadays, people tend to use Vaseline, however, due to the sensitive nature of my skin I’ve found that I’m unable to use it regularly. I’ve found that I can train for about 2 hours before I start to chaff. I can tell you it made for quite an exciting experience putting deodorant on the next morning after I found that out!

The other night, I decided to just swim lengths in ‘my pool’ until it went dark.  The water was wonderful as usual, but a bit on the cold side at the start if I’m honest (probably all the rain!). As I was swimming the last length, a pilot boat pulls up beside me…

“We’ve had a call from the coastguard. Are you alright?”
“Yep”
“What’s your plans and course?”
“Eh? <Gamma, Hotel, Bravo [Going Home Bro]> Just heading to the buoy and then swimming into shore”
I see the change on his face as he realises that I’m not wearing a wetsuit.
“How long have you been out here?”
“oh…a couple of hours…”

Good to know that they (and the residents of Granton) are keeping an eye on me.

As you know, I’ve been on standby for a while now and one of the problems has been the constant flow of weather fronts buffeting the UK. See this week:

It just seems that they are never ending, which of course they are, but you know what I mean! With time starting to run out, it’s starting to weigh on my mind - will I get to go this year or will it be another winter training? It probably will be anyway, because I’ve enjoyed it.