8) Pools. Lakes. Sea.

Overview

These last two months have seen me re-entering open water after a winter of pool training. I've transitioned from indoor pool drills to outdoor pool drills, to local lakes and finally to salt water at Southend-on-Sea. Pool drills are measured in distance (number of kilometres, usually in a specific time frame), in contrast to open water training which is measured in time in the water.

And I've also stripped off some layers in open water, going from a shorty wetsuit, to a long sleeved swimsuit, to ordinary swimsuit. So bring on the summer!

The middle of April took a swim dive due to a New York work trip which I extended by a few days to do the tourist thing.

While I ran most mornings in New York, due to having no pool nearby, runs in general are still few and far between. My legs constantly ache, and knowing I've either just done a swim or have one the next day, doesn't inspire me to venture out, although I do miss it. I am back to workouts though, to target arms and core. I do that at home and do as much or as little as I want, depending on time available and what else I have going on.

April 2026

April was a quiet month swimming-wise. The start of the month chugged along with pool drills and the middle couple of weeks were taken up with a work trip in New York. I'd researched public swimming pools before I went, in the hope of finding somewhere I could swim either early mornings or evenings, but there was nowhere nearby with lane swimming available at the right time to fit around my work schedule.

So I decided running would have to replace swimming while there. The first morning I ventured out, I followed Google maps to Battery Park, ran round from the road side to the bay side, then stopped dead as I caught my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. It was calm and quiet at 6am, with no-one else around. I took a couple of pictures to capture the moment, did a couple of laps round the park and headed back to my hotel. Interestingly, the streets there were so full of scaffolding structures, that my watch struggled to track my route accurately due to the poor GPS signal.

Once back from my trip, it was straight back into the lakes. Until now, 2026 has all been about pool work. So while drills were still very much on the agenda, it was good to get back into my local lake, Trifarm, albeit in a shorty wetsuit.

I've become oblivious to the way my bathroom looks after swims. Following a pool session, my kit gets hung over the bath to dry ready for next time. And following lake sessions, I shower once home, rinse my kit in the shower with me, then hang it in the cubicle to dry (I've learned neoprene shouldn't be left to dry in direct sunshine as it eventually damages the material).

It wasn't until I had visitors coming that I realised how dreadfully cluttered the bathroom had become, with kit from two swim days scattered across almost every surface, apparently having established permanent residency!

May 2026

My training plan for May saw me doing open water double dips - do a cold water swim, get out, warm up, put on a dry swimsuit, get back in and start again. My coach's words were 'it's horrible and you won't want to do it, but once you're in the second time, the temperature never feels quite as bad'. Yeah, right!

While multiple dips might be lovely on holiday in soaring temperatures, my coach was right - you definitely don't want to go in again once you're out. Having quashed the shivers, warmed up in the car with the heater on full blast, wrapped your fingers around a warm flask and had a hot drink, just the though of getting back into cold water is enough to want to start the car engine and drive home.

From one extreme to the other - I'm fortunate that where I pool swim, there's both an indoor and an outdoor pool and May was warm enough at times, for me to clock up a few kilometres in the sunshine, with a few brave sunbathers lining the side of the pool.

Around the middle of the month, I found a quirky Edwardian Bath House in Manchester for an evening swim during a work trip. As I swam beneath the glorious glass and lantern roof, looking towards a stained-glass window at the end of my lane, I felt as though I was sharing the experience with generations of swimmers from the past. Built in 1913, Withington Baths & Leisure Centre was the first public baths in the town to allow mixed bathing, and much of its original character remains today.

And in Amsterdam the following week, I found a fabulous outdoor pool, where I swam until the sun went down. With each turn, the sun sat a little lower in the sky until it eventually disappeared from view. Cool water; a 50 metre pool; perfect! One of those swims you wish could last a little longer.

Towards the end of the month, I revisited Leybourne Lakes in Kent – my regular haunt for long swims last year while training for Windermere. It was lovely to be back swimming among the swans, ducks and geese. There's something reassuringly familiar about Leybourne; it feels like my spiritual swim home. If it's Leybourne, it must be long swim day – it takes my mind straight back to those 4, 5 & 6-hour swims from last year.

And, in the same weekend I got a fix of seawater too. At Southend-on-Sea, the colourful beach huts were looking their usual cheery selves and I shared the water with the 'dippers & chatters' (as I call them) – the friendly and incredibly hardy souls who swim there all year round. It also happened to be barge race day, so the horizon was dotted with sailing barges, making a lovely backdrop to the swim. I was also introduced to a lady from one of Southend's more serious swimming groups who kindly offered to keep me posted on their swim schedule should I fancy joining them for longer swims in future.

On the evening between Leybourne Lakes and Southend seafront, I witnesses an incredibly rare Blue Micromoon: Blue purely signifying a rare calendar event - in this instance, the second full moon in a calendar month. Micromoon meaning a full or new moon occurring when the moon is at the farthest point from Earth. The combination of a Blue Moon overlapping with a Micromoon is a very uncommon alignment making it an extremely rare occurrence which is not expected to happen again until 2053.

By the time of the next Blue Micromoon, I wonder where the waters will have taken me; where I'll be, how I'll be, or even, if I'll be...

Onwards & forwards...

What have I learned these last 2 months?