This year, the setbacks came at the start of the program, with me coming down with a severe illness that kept me out of the pool for nearly a month. I have done some very, very hard yards in the intervening time, and now even though I’m not as fast as I’d hoped to be by this stage, I at least know I have the endurance to finish the race… bluebottles notwithstanding.

I have also been fortunate enough to hit my fundraising target once again, thanks to many generous sponsors. One of the toughest parts of the program this year was asking people for money a second time, particularly given I was out of the water for so long, and then with the flood situation in Queensland being a more pressing concern for donations, so all the donations I received were very, very much appreciated!

Finally, as well as doing many kilometres in the pool, I’ve also tried to enter a few other ocean swims this year, which has been a lot of fun. The site banner shows me as a little dot emerging from Bondi Beach after completing the 1km (actually 1.29km) North Bondi Roughwater ocean swim at the start of January. I also swam in the Avalon and Warriewood-Mona Vale swims, braving huge surf (seriously, check out the photos; it felt like my recurring tsunami nightmare was coming true) and bluebottles respectively.

See you on the beach!

Alice and Katie with caps and timing chips, ready to race

Getting to Can Too training early is almost always worthwhile, especially when we have a cancer research who’s been funded by the programme come and speak to us, as we did last night. We met Dr Hilda Pickett, who does basic research on telomeres. She described telomeres as like the aglet on a shoelace; a protective structure at each end of a chromosome. She explained how, in normal cells, the telomeres shorten slightly each time a cell divides, thus naturally limiting cell division; however, in cancer cells, the telomeres are maintained so the cells can divide an unlimited number of times, becoming a tumour. Hilda’s Cure Cancer Australia grant was awarded for a project examining ways to target telomerase, the enzyme responsible for the telomer maintenance in cancer cells. For more information, Hilda’s very interesting one-page bio is here.

Hilda also spoke to us about the importance of organisations like Cure Cancer Australia in funding cancer research by young researchers. She described how difficult it is for young researchers to get funding in general, as they necessarily don’t have the same level of experience as older researchers; however, a grant like the one awarded to her by Cure Cancer Australia allows young researchers to do innovative research, get a foot in the door for getting other grants, and get experience in writing competitive grant proposals.

After Hilda’s talk, and a little pep talk by our team captain, it was time to get in the pool. The swimming itself was, frankly, bloody hard work. We did interval training, wherein we had a fixed time interval to swim a certain distance, then a rest between finishing the distance and the end of the interval, then started all over again. It was all a bit of a blur, but I think we did seven lots of 200m, at a pace of 4:45/200m. At first we were getting about a minute’s rest in between swims (which would be a pace of 17:25/km if I could keep it up!), however by the end that was down to more like 30 seconds or less. By the third set out of seven I was ready to throw the coach in the pool for making us continue, had I had the energy; by the end, I could barely manage human language. However, I was assured I did extremely well considering I’d been sick and off training!

To save you the trouble of clicking that link, I’ll quote myself:

At the end of October 2009  I signed up with Can Too to train for a 2km ocean swim (the Cole Classic), and raise $1250 for Cure Cancer Australia, by February 2010. By the end of December I’d decided to stretch myself and go for the Big Swim instead, and by the end of January I had completed the swim (one week after a car crash, and still with a faster time than the man who was soon to become Australia’s opposition leader) and raised just over 150% of the original fundraising goal.

I enjoyed the whole thing so much, I thought I’d come back for another go in 2010/2011, this time with an eye to doing the Big Swim right from the beginning, and bringing a couple of friends along for the ride.

This season has already had its fair share of challenges: three weeks in I came down with a violent gastrointestinal illness which kept me out of the water for two weeks, and no sooner had I gotten over that and back in the pool than I was knocked down again by a nasty cold, missing another week of training. But, I’m back into it and keen to make up for lost time.

So, it’s been an odd start to training, and I have a lot of work to do. But one thing has gone well: Katie and Larissa and I organised and ran a trivia night at The Arthouse Hotel, which helped kick off our fundraising efforts raising a total of $1081 for Cure, split between the three of us.

However, I still have a ways to go before I hit my target for this year, so as always I appreciate any and all donations. Of course, I hope it goes without saying that if you can’t or just prefer not to donate, that’s cool too. However, even small donations help; if you can only afford $5 or $10, I’ll still be very excited to receive it!

Now that I’m back in the water, I’ll try and update with some more beachy thoughts very soon.

The Big Swim course, from thebigswim.org.au.

After my doubts on Saturday, I made it through The Big Swim in 0:54:34 (handicap time 0:49:16) which is faster than I was expecting! All the training and preparation paid off as I got to run up to the finish line exhausted but thrilled to have made it.

I got stung by what I believe was a bluebottle on the home stretch, though: I have never experienced anything as painful. From a sharp pain in my little finger that made me scream as I was swimming, the pain then radiated all the way up my arm to join up with the pain in my back from my injury. As soon as I made it across the finish line, I had to make a beeline for the first aid station, barely acknowledging the dear friends who had driven all the way up there to see me finish! I then sat with my hand in a bucket of hot water (apparently the best treatment for these stings; it certainly alleviated the pain while I kept my hand in there) wincing in pain and generally being sooky for a period of time that I have no concept of. Luckily one of the aforementioned friends came and found me and was kind enough to fetch my bag so that I could get the painkillers I’d brought for my back. Codeine and paracetamol really take the edge off a bluebottle sting; within a few minutes it merely felt like I’d burnt my finger on hot metal.

Following the bluebottle adventure, I was able to come out of my pain cave enough to avail myself of the glorious peaches provided for the swimmers, thank the friends who’d come to see me swim, and join the other Can Too’ers for a drink, before getting a lift home with my best swimming buddy, Katie.

I’d like to keep up the sport; looking back, the excitement of running out with all the other swimmers and getting out past the breakers, going the distance in the sea and getting to the finish line with such an incredible sense of achievement is more than worth the occasional pain and all the early morning and late evening training.

When I began training, I was expecting to swim in the 2km Cole Classic. However, after a few weeks of training and exceeding my expectations as to my progress, I changed my goal swim to the 2.7km Macquarie Big Swim. The Big Swim kicks off at 10am tomorrow.

Last Sunday, I was involved in a T-bone car crash. A car pulled out of a driveway in front of me as I was driving at speed along a main road and with nowhere to go, I slammed on the brakes but still hit the other car with enough force to write off my dear little Honda and cause a jolt to my upper body that, combined with my existing spinal injury, left me in enough pain to warrant a ride in an ambulance, to be on the cautious side. Fortunately, I have no major injuries (and as far as I know neither does the other driver nor her passenger), but my back, neck and arms are still very stiff and sore.

On top of that, I’ve managed to come down with mild tonsillitis, which I’m on antibiotics for.

I am still going to be there at the starting line tomorrow, and will be resting up and taking medication to be in the best possible condition for my goal swim. However, realistically, I might not be able to complete the race. There will be lifeguards positioned all along the course, so if I can’t make it I will be in safe hands.

I am so frustrated because I know that a week ago I would have made this swim fairly easily, and to have these setbacks at the last minute, particularly when I have had so much support from my sponsors, just seems so incredibly unfair. However, as we all know, these things happen, and I will be doing my best to stay the course if I’m physically able!

This morning I swam in the 2010 North Bondi SLSC Roughwater 2km ocean swim. This was my first public ocean swim, and despite a rough night’s sleep (overnight low of 24ºC + flaky air conditioner = me, cursing, assembling my new standing fan at 12:30am) I managed to finish the course in around 40 minutes. (Edit: times have been posted and I finished in 0:39:54!)

Every time I swim at Bondi, it’s different. At the same time yesterday as I swam this morning, it was flat and clear, with barely any sea life in sight. This morning, a south-easterly wind picked up and blew the water into a rough chop, and from some current or crevice appeared a massive horde of tiny, completely clear baby jellyfish just near the starting line. Entering the water was like swimming through a suspension of agar blobs, each stroke causing a dull, rapid percussion to resonate through my fingers as they hit dozens of the little creatures on the way through.

Swimming into the chop was certainly challenging. I swallowed many mouthfuls of salt water as I struggled, along with hundreds of others, out through the roughest section to the first buoy. Swimming back down to the second buoy, I had to stop and tread water for a few moments as I was overcome with dizziness from being tossed about by the waves. I also got kicked and punched in the head a few times as the crowd pinched into a narrow stream to round the buoys. But the worst thing was realising that I (and many others) had swum far wide of the gate in the middle of the final stretch, and had to battle against the incoming waves to get back on course. A friendly lifeguard sat on his surfboard waving us in the right direction.

But even as I was spitting out seawater, getting kicked, punched, seasick and sunburnt, there were still moments of being awed by being able to do this. In between gasping for air and trying to keep myself on track, I stared through my goggles at the sea floor and at the cliffs above and at the horizon and the shore and wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world.

And then I ran, panting, up the final stretch to lurch over the finish line and be rewarded with a banana, a cup of sports drink, and hugs from waiting friends.

This morning I was considering passing on beach training, as I was still feeling slightly under the weather. A quick Google search turned up some advice: if the illness is above the neck, just do whatever training you feel up to; below the neck, rest up. So I went along, and ended up doing more or less what I did last week: joining the “faster swimmers” group (I’m one of the slower ones in that group) for a swim out to the boat ramp and back in to shore.

Swimming out I found my stride pretty quickly, despite there being significantly more swell than last week. I’m finding getting out easier and easier each time; the first time was fairly confronting getting used to having to hold my breath to duck under waves, then resume swimming and breathing between strokes. That led to a fair few mouthfuls of water!

Once out past the breakers it was very much a matter of “just keep swimming”, especially when I saw some kind of white jellyfish floating beneath me and had a bit of a panic, even though it was harmless. However, sometime on the way back I did manage to get stung by something which managed to either go down my swimsuit or sting me through it. I didn’t manage to find the stinger, so I don’t know what it was; others complained of sea lice, so that might be it.

I could be put off by this, but really, seeing and sharing a space with sea life is part of what makes this enjoyable (even if there’s not really that much to see off Bondi).

The training program is a calendar specifying what training we should be doing each day for the next three months. There is one ‘rest’ day specified each week, with either a swim or a cross-training session suggested on all the other days (and quite often one of the public ocean swims as an option on the so-called ‘rest’ day).

I haven’t managed any of the cross-training (other than my daily walk to and from work) yet, but I have stuck fairly religiously to the suggested swims, which so far has been 1km every Wednesday and an increasing distance each Monday, starting with an easy 350m on the first Monday.

Yesterday I looked at the schedule for today. “10×100 hard & 100m easy; 5x100hard & 100m easy”. I did the maths in my head (wrongly, as it turned out, but I was only out by 100m and I had a hangover so let’s just pretend I got it right) and baulked at the idea of swimming 1700m on what up to now had been the ‘easy’ day in the schedule. However, I contacted my mentor to see whether that was really what I was meant to do, and she confirmed my worst fears. So there was nothing else for it.

This morning I dragged myself out of bed, walked over to my local pool, and swam the required 1700m; not too quickly, but I got it done in 45 minutes which is none too shabby either. I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have been able to do that a month ago.

The first Thursday night training session was brutal. 1200m swimming on the first night, the last 800m of which I swam with a stitch in one side. I wondered how I’d survive, whether I’d made a huge mistake. Then, the following Saturday I arrived at Bondi beach at 8:45am; sleep-deprived, sore, anxious and wondering why on earth I’d volunteered for this insanity. The doubt only increased as they instructed us to run along the beach and then do push-ups in the sand. Seriously?

Then we ran into the water. We porpoised under waves and swam out to the sand bar, then treaded water as we waited for the stragglers to catch up. Weightless, gently bobbing in the surge, I found myself with a smile on my face, and remembered the joy of being in the sea.

Since then, I’ve been to three more Thursday training sessions, two more beach sessions, and done five swimming sessions on my own time. I’m getting into the habit of swimming four days a week, and the Thursday pool training is getting easier each time, despite more being asked of us (tonight it was 1800m, which I almost managed until my legs cramped up during the warm-down). A 2km ocean swim is starting to seem within reach.