Sometime between Christmas and New Year, I received a wonderful email from Claire Dummer, one of our readers, saying how much she loved Outdoor Swimmer and especially learning about other people’s swimming stories. She explained she was relatively new to open water swimming and told me her own swimming story.
Claire’s first exposure to open water swimming was in 2016 when she did Swim Serpentine, which she swam breaststroke, in 56 minutes. She did no training before hand and thought no more about open water swimming until January 2019, when she took on a 28-day alcohol-free challenge with OYNB (One Year No Beer). As part of that, she was encouraged to set herself a physical challenge. As a Water Babies teacher, she already spent her days in the water but until then hadn’t taken advantage of that to swim herself. She decided to set herself another open water swimming challenge, signed up to swim a mile at the Outdoor Swimmer Henley Swim Festival, and determined that this time she would do it properly.