COACHING
Summer 2008 and I’m dressed in a suit, sitting at my desk in an office at the top of a skyscraper in Beijing. Not far away in the Olympic Rowing Lake, Keri-anne Payne takes silver in the open water 10k. That same year, back in the UK, Colin Hill launches The Great Swim, and something called the Outdoor Swimming Society, and another thing called Swim Trek start building momentum; the scene is set for an outdoor swimming revolution in the UK. Summer 2018 and I’m dressed in shorts and T-shirt with a cozzie underneath, sitting at a desk and Keri-anne Payne is asking me and 11 other outdoor swimming addicts why we’ve signed up to the STA’s new Level 2 Open Water Swimming Coaching course. We’re an eclectic bunch – wild swimmers, skins distance swimmers, ice swimmers, wetsuit racers, triathletes and Olympians – united in our desire to “give something back” to the sport we love and enable others to experience it too. I am so excited.