A week ago Robert asked me to complete his team for the night swim
marathon in
Oosterhout. Not sure what it actually was, I naturally said yes. Turned out
that we had a team of 8 and we had to swim some kind of major relay from
Friday 19:00 until Saturday 7:00 in a 50 m outdoor swimming pool, to get as
many lanes as possible.
We had a schedule that everyone would swim roughly 15 minutes and then get
about 105 minutes rest to recover. As this recovering period is actually too
small to do any serious sleeping and as some other things had to be done in
between (eating, drinking, writing down round trip times of fellow team mates
etc), it is needless to say that doing this all night long is quite tiring
after a normal working day and after a week where one slept only for 6 or 7
hours.
None of our teammembers had a license to start in official competitions, so
we were allowed to compete in the amateur class. This class ranged from teams
that were there just for fun (some were swimming with attributes like
inflatable toys and some were swimming breast stroke all the time in a very
slow and inefficient way), to teams that existed completely with young members
from a competition swimming club who brought there own supporters and
massagers. Our team consisted of a mix of 4 members from a competition
swimming club and 4 others. Two of them were unfortunately not really fast
swimmers, and we didn’t have supporters let alone massagers (although the
parents of Manon did bring some very good pasta salad). Anyway, we managed to
stay in second place until 2 o’clock and were even ahead of 2 teams in the
official competition class. However, we then already saw that the team of
Tiamat (from Eersel) were quite ahead of us and it would be quite hard to get
ahead of them.
At 2:15 however, everyone was forced to get out of the water as the lighting
was getting too close. As I was really tired at that time, I decided to get
some rest in our little tent on the field. However, the tent was already taken
by Sjoerd, so I had to go inside the camper. At 3:45, the race was continued.
The 1.5 hour break caused a shift in our schedule and now everyone just had to
swim 5 times instead of 6.
There was an extremely high level of chloride in the water and the water was
very ‘misty’. Although I’m used to swimming without goggles, my eyes did get
irritated by the chloride and other stuff (and dirt) in the water and after my
third session (after my third kilometer), my right eye got so irritated that
it kept crying for over 1.5 hours. Still, I decided to do the fourth without
goggles, as I’m not used to goggles, I have to adapt my style to them, the
often leak or get misty and they are generally irritating. Needless to say,
after my 4th kilometer, the irritation wasn’t decreased and I really had to
swim my 5th with goggles as it really felt like it would cause serious damage
if I would do it without.
The first 3 kilometers were still quite good. My times were not as fast as I
would have hoped, but so were the times of the other team members… perhaps
it was the water or something… Anyway, the first 3 were 17:30, 17:45 and
again 17:30, thanks to some girl who was desperately to catch me up when she
started swimming and I was already at 600 m… after 100 m se finally caught
me, only to find out that she was just maginally faster than I was and I could
get behind here in her slip stream for 250 meters; the last 50 m I was fed up
with her and just passed her by. I don’t know what had overcome me that night,
but I caught 2 people in the first session, 2 in the second, 4 in the third
and one in the 4th and again 1 in the 5th session. That girl was the only one
who ever caught me that night and somehow I just couldn’t tolerate that, so
when I had the chance to get in her slip stream and to pass her again, I just
had to do it.
During the 4th kilometer (which started around 4:20), the fatigue was getting
noticable and I did a 18:06. Still not to bad, as my lap times were still
pretty flat, but definately not as good as the previous rounds. However, it
was very nice and encouraging to start the session in total darkness and then
to see the sky getting lighter near the end. The 5th kilometer was even worse.
As I had to start the last one at 6:33, and as Els said whe wanted to do the
final session, I told my team that I wanted to do a full kilometer again, but
if my 100 m lap times were suddenly increasing fast or if they were close to 2
minutes, they had to get me out of the water and put Els in as I expected she
would do better. This session was really tough and I lost count after a few
lanes already. I could hardly get my arms to strech out before my hands
touched the water, my shoulders were really painful and I was almost begging
to get the ‘this is you last lap to finish the 1 km’ sign, but it just didn’t
come. Finally after just 700 m, they got me out of the water as my times were
still quite flat, but slowly creeping slowly towards the 2 minutes.
Extrapolating my times would have given me a high 18 or low 19 minutes.
Unfortunately Els was really tired also and her lap times weren’t that much
different than mine. Ah well… 4.8 km is still a nice result (my fist session
was 1.1 km, as my team mates forgot to give me the ‘last lap’ sign after 900
m).
Our final score was 33.4 km iirc (I still have to get a copy of the official
results), which was good enough for a third place. 3th out of 19 groups is not
a bad result for a team that was formed at the last moment and that didn’t
have any special long distance training in advance. We even managed to stay
ahead of one of the teams in the official competition.
In the car on the way back I was so tired that I nodded away several times and
when I opened my eyes, they had troubles to focus on the road; I saw two
copies of the same road, each at a different angle, and they were kind of
waving towards and from each other. I was just realy glad I didn’t have to
drive. At 10:15 I was finally home and I got into bed at 10:30 (unfortunately
to wake up again at 12:00 and not sleep anymore after that for quite some
hours).
Looking back, it was really tough but also a lot of fun to push your limits
and it is really three times as much fun to do something like this outdoor at
night then it is to do it at day time. It’s just really special to start when
there is still plenty sunlight, go all the way through the dark and finish
again at sunrise. The first half of the night was also really special and a
lot of fun as at that time it’s still quite warm, most of the people still
have quite some enery and with all the music and the nice lamps and party
lights around the pool, it’s really a small (and very special) party!
Hopefully next year, we will have a faster team and better preparation to
claim the first place!
