Brighton Le Sands

7am Saturday Morning and 20 of the usual suspects are getting ready to plunge into what looks like a lake. It was beautifully calm, hardly a ripple and an amazing skyline to go with it. Vlad outlined the course, slightly different this week as we are stationed at the middle net outside the Brighton pavilion rather that at the northern end. We did this to have a course north and back of approx 3km, then south and back about the same.

This meant the guys could feed every 3km or 35-50 mins depending on the swimmer. For a distance swim greater than 2 hours this is the ideal time period between snacks.

Feeds loaded, caps goggles and Vaseline on and off they went with Vlad and Sonny supporting on skis. Easy 4 hr swim.  So we all thought.

Someone else decided to be enjoying that body of water on Saturday- every swimmers nightmare - Stingers.

Of the 20 that started, we lost 1 very quickly, 3 more after about a km, and a few more after that. The guys who were on the hairy side faired a bit better that those a bit less gorilla like. The worst hit on the day was Johnny  Jameson. The poor guy got hit badly after he had got out, walked back to base and went to get a drink before he was going to go on. That was his swim done for the day. 5 managed the full 4 hrs, tori got out at around

3 and a bit which is still impressive as she got straight off a plane from the us and came down to swim.

A great mental test for everyone on the day and interesting to see how different people react. There seems to be no real characteristic that makes stings affect people differently.  And only real treatment seems to be a hot water dose and antihistamine and maybe pain killers if its bad.

One thing everyone did agree on an how fantastic the morning was and aside for the "monsters" the water was great.

Hope to see you at the next one - coach charm

Ps Rachael probably a good thing you weren't there :)