Look Mum, I'm A Swimmer!
On swimming long distance for the first time and knowing how and where to start.
My first memory of swimming isn’t really of the swimming at all and instead more the fear of the water and crabs and jellyfish. As a child, open water seemed like the scariest place I didn’t know. A stranger I shouldn’t speak to. Adult life has been one big tumultuous sea throwing waves and debris into the land that is my body. I wanted to swim, to properly swim, to move my body into the water as if claimed by it. So I did…
As I pulled into the town, I stepped into my past. This was the first time I had been back to Barmouth in over 20 years. I had spent a lot of my childhood there with my family as my Nana had a caravan nearby. We spent our summer holidays in Snowdonia and had beach days in Barmouth carrying buckets that had cracks in and chasing seagulls away from our picnics.Â
In the 20 years that had passed and with the stretching of time some of those people and memories had been lost, but not all. As I looked out onto the beach I saw the figure of a man and a small boy and got a lump in my throat convinced I was looking at myself and my dad, all those years ago. A nana sat on her chair as it buried itself into the sand and if I squinted my eyes just enough, she looked like mine. But she wasn’t, and I’m not that boy and that was not my dad.
Instead, I was a man standing at the edge of a familiar car park clutching onto my bags, about to swim from the beach in less than 24 hours. Swimming into an unfamiliar distance. 10 kilometres, from the edge of the sea and down the river of the Mawddach to an end I didn’t know I’d reach.
I am a runner with a favourable energy for long distance so going far was not new to me. I had what it took to push through the silent conversations in the latter miles of distance running, ‘just a park run left Cameron’ I’d whisper as I tried to tow my now stainless steel legs with me to the finish line. But a marathon distance swim? How would I ever do this? Running a marathon suddenly seemed a lot easier and not as daunting. When running a marathon, you need not worry about the road ahead of you turning, gushing, twisting, throwing you into curbs or spectators that will sting you. Your main concerns are weather, needing the toilet and of course - not finishing. Swimming a marathon seemed to come with so many more physical obstacles, like waves and currents and rocks and jellyfish. Then of course, not finishing. I needed to finish this.Â
This would be my longest swim ever. I had spent 10 years living in London before moving to a fishing town on the Scottish coast where I now swim. My London swims were not much of anything, a pond here and a lido there. And in ‘official’ training for the 10k the furthest I had done was about 4k up and down the local stretch of shoreline by my house. Pacing it like a nervous relative in a hospital waiting room. I did spend an hour spinning myself around a lake near my hometown like a spoon in soup. And then a calendar of pool swims bouncing back and forth off the walls and trying my best to avoid kids leaping in and throwing their goggles at each other. In fact, the pool swims were probably the best training, they came with a sense to be cautious of my surroundings and to dodge obstacles and then of course the mental grit to push through the boredom of going up and down the same lane for an hour. I could have done more training but I didn’t and wouldn’t know when I’d ever done enough and so I found myself as ready as I was.Â
The morning of the swim started early for me, most mornings do but that particular morning even I was too early. My sleep had been short and interrupted. I slept on the couch of the cottage we had rented (out of choice) and spent most of the night hearing bats through the chimney of the stove opposite me, which still had a warmth and glow from the night before. I tiptoed my way across the front of the cottage and over to a set of outdoor showers. I wanted to ready myself as much as I could. Be alert, be in my body in the same way I would everyday. Dressed by 6am and ready to be out the door by 6:30am sharp. Kate, Tim and I would head down first, straight to the old harbour and get the boat down and onto the water ready for when the rest of the team would arrive at 7:15. The three of us left slightly before on time and as we drove there I could sense my fingers twirling themselves around each other- my nerves were just waking up. When we arrived at the old harbour and unloaded the boat that Tim and our photographer Hollie would use to follow us, I had 40 minutes to get into my head and more importantly, get into my wetsuit. I feel like I am in the middle of a fight when trying to step myself into a wetsuit. It’s never easy and so there I was closing my fists and squating myself to fall into it.Â
As we stepped ourselves into the water I could feel conversation unfolding around me and I said things I do not remember. Words probably just made themselves and the only conversation I could hear happening was in my head ‘ok that’s not too cold, that’s good, that’s one thing out of the way’ and ‘look, you have to do this now, what else is there to do but this?’. I removed my goggles a few times and pretended to readjust them, I was stalling, waiting, who’s going to lead? Not me. Before I could find the answer, Lance reached out into the wide water and pulled himself towards the view, then Nathan, then Amanda and then…’oh god, it’s me, it’s my turn, 3,2,1’ I sang internally in a Hyacinth Bucket tone. My arms weren’t quite attached yet and so I moved them however I could until they found themselves in a rhythm. I stopped after a few strokes and turned to see if I had actually done it and how far it would be if I needed to turn back. I wasn’t going to turn back. Forward was the only way back. Kate and Kari had just set off and so I stalled and kicked my legs to wade and waited for them to catch up so that I could be in a pack. I didn’t have the strength to catch the front group and was happy to have just another moment to remind myself that it was now properly happening.Â
Kari had her own Kayak support and took to her path confidently. Kate and I were side by side and eventually I found myself in a rhythm. The water swirled and filled my wetsuit slightly and I wondered about the fit and whether I had specified the wrong size and then thought about how late it was to be caring about that. It’s hard to recall what I thought about for most of the swim, everything was happening all at the same time and so there wasn’t much of a stillness to make sense of things, rather just an abundance of life happening around me and the overwhelming realisation that I was enjoying it.Â
I could hear the drone buzzing above us and for a moment I became it, following the shape of my body as it moved through the water and panning out to view the valley as we filled it with our shapes. Our arms were spinning and we looked like a farm of swimming wind turbines powering joy. Until I noticed a log ahead and turned my body to avoid it, now back in the water where I actually was.Â
At one rotation I caught sight of the half of Kate’s face that was airborne. We had lost sync and were now facing towards each other on every second stroke. I found myself close to laughing, but then remembered that laughing whilst swimming in a deep and fast river was not safe and so the impulse had soon gone. I don't know what prompted me to laugh, I think it was all the happiness suddenly hitting. The realisation that ‘I'm doing this, I'm really doing it’ and that seeing Kate next to me each time I turned for air was evidence that I was swimming, I was keeping up, I was moving forward. Forward towards the end.Â
All weekend we had this mantra given to us by Kari, which was to ‘accept that it goes on forever’. And as I spilled my smile onto the grassy banks in Penmaenpool it occurred to me that forever wasn’t long enough. And somehow I wanted to turn around and do it all again.Â
It’s strange to think that those two people between the start and end are the same person. They are both me. They are both a swimmer. Maybe step one of becoming a swimmer is to just give yourself to the world. To just… start.Â
After the end and back at the cottage, surrounded by wetsuits hung like medals dripping their happy salty tears onto the slate floor we gathered on, Kate asked ‘How was it? How did it make you feel?’ my response was the only thing I knew, ‘emotional’. We were held the whole way by the river and hugged by the high hills beside us. I felt more safe than I did on shore just looking at it all. With every stroke I broke in and out of myself. Becoming new but the same. A new me being forged between the ripples and birthed at the finish. How strange to be born at the end.Â
For many years the sea felt like a world I shouldn’t be in. But I kept showing up, knocking on its door until the day came that I realised the door was never locked and that I could just let myself in. So I did. One foot in front of the other. My first few weeks in open water were spent being still and frozen both because of the cold and because there was so much of it that I didn’t yet know what to do with it. The world gets bigger when you let yourself into places you’ve been told you shouldn’t be in.
I spent a lot of my life in places I was told I shouldn’t be in; the fashion world through work, the world of football matches and locker room talk. None if it was true. I belong wherever I choose to belong. And on that day I belonged in the Mawddach, with new friends throwing our arms like blunt knives into the water, chopping our way through the wide open world. What a joy it is to feel like you belong, and to be held by the river as it turns itself from the sea. Swimming a first big swim and with that the last. Because nothing is ever the first thing twice.Â
The world is open, let yourself in.
Go walking, go running, go swimming, go headfirst and forwards. However you do it and wherever you go… just go.
Piece originally written for The Outdoor Swimming Society and their free monthly journal ‘elsewhere’. You can find and subscribe to the journal via the link HERE.
I am currently Creative Producer at The Outdoor Swimming Society and sit on the editorial team as picture editor for the journal. Do have a look at what we do!
Lastly, It is no secret that Jacob Collier is special and this live rendition of his song Little Blue for Mahogony Sessions further shows us why. I might even make up half of the 3.3 million views this video sits at. Goosebumps, still.
Enjoy.
Thanks for reading,
till next time
Sincerely,
Cameron