Swimming South Africa

Otherwise and a chocolate diet.

My swimming project here in Cape Town has attracted some local interest and yesterday I was interviewed by the South African Broadcasting Corporation. Nancy Richards from the women's programme "Otherwise" invited me onto her show. Having fled London screaming that I needed a break it was actually a lot of fun to be back in a radio studio. Not least because of Nancy's other guest, Joan Wanyama. Joan's been in South Africa for two years having married a white South African. They met when he was working in construction in Kenya and she was the checkout girl at his local supermarket. They married, had a son and moved to Cape Town where Joan's been a housewife and writer. She's just finished a book for young adults about a school girl who has an affair with her teacher and contracts HIV.

Joan told me that being a black woman married to a white South African isn't easy. She and her husband feel they can't show affection in public because of the criticism and disapproval. Her husband's family want her to divorce him and refuse to allow her into their lives. She told me it's very different from Kenya where mixed-raced couples are considered normal. So did she like living in Cape Town? "It's beautiful, but I'm disappointed with white South Africans", she said.

Meanwhile, I wrote to legendary South African swimmer Lewis Pugh for some swimming tips. You may remember Lewis as the man who swam down the whole length of the Thames last year to raise awareness about climate change. He's also swam in Antartica in just his speedos - read all about it here.

Lewis wrote back with a long list of training tips including:

If the cold is a problem, there are a number of ways you can improve your
ability to withstand cold in the short term

1. Eat more. The fatter you are - the better you are able to withstand cold.
I have never met a thin animal in Antarctica! So now is not the time to diet.

2. Practice only in the cold. Cold showers. Swim in the sea. Not in a pool.
Get into Clifton. Over a very short period of time you will notice a MASSIVE
improvement. But u just have to stick to it. Be determined. Your body will
adjust.

3. Power of the mind. Be flipping determined. When u get in, have no doubt.
Fix in your mind that u r getting out at one place - Blouberg.

But if the water is around 11 - 13 degrees - no matter how hard you try, it's
gonna be an uphill struggle, if you are very thin. This is one sport where it
helps to be a little chunky!

Thanks Lewis! I'm off now to train with couple of chocolate bars and full fat latte....

More Shark Tales.

I awoke yesterday to the sort of headline you don't want to see if you're about to do the Robben Island swim. "Altantic Coast Shark Warning." Not good.

I had allowed myself to be persuaded that sharks don't like it on this side of the Cape, but apparently cooling water temperatures on the other side are luring them over. A medium sized Great White has been spotted circling the area. Should I be less scared of a medium sized shark than a extra large one?

But despite the fear, I would like to see one. Preferably from the safety of a large (not medium sized) boat. This weekend, Godfrey and family took me away to a cottage in the seaside town of Kleinbaii, close to Gansbaii, home of the Great White. Rows of fishing boats lined the quayside, all promising to take you on a Great White adventure. I'm quite tempted to do it, but perhaps after the swim.

Meanwhile, this sort of tourism upsets Godfrey who's seen his passion for coaching swimming and life-saving threatened by Great White behaviour in the past few years. He doesn't want the creatures encouraged in any way at all. So much so, that a few years ago after an attack near his home, he proposed a shark bounty hunt. TV crews and journalists from all over the world headed to Cape Town to cover the event.

But the local reaction was less positive. "Authorities must act before this madman does", was the headline in one paper. Environmentalists worldwide condemned him for planning to slaughter an endangered animal so he decided it was better to go underground for a while. But I'm not sure his shark bounty hunt ambitions are dead. It may take just one more attack to launch them again.

The 5km qualifying swim.

This is a bit hard to write as I'm still suffering from the cold. It's worse when you get out of the water as your warm core blood heads out to your extremities, bringing freezing blood into your centre and making you shiver. But I did it! I was the slowest swimmer in the pack - in fact after the first circuit, I can't remember seeing the pack again. But I did it!

The temperature was around 14C at the coast and no warmer that 12-13C on the course - which was about 500m from the shore. The first circuit was fine. Somewhere during the second circuit, I started to feel I had strange lumps of meat attached to my feet. My toes had frozen, but it was bearable. By the third circuit, my fingers had joined my toes. I became claw swimmer. I couldn't close my hands and pulling was almost impossible. I think I swam the last circuit with just my legs - my arms forming some sort of feeble windmill claw-like stroke. Quite a lot of me wanted to get out and give up. But claw woman was determined to continue.

It's not all that unpleasant. The sun was on my back and the water was deep green. It was also choppy, which made me feel I was swimming in a washing machine. I seemed to have conquered my fear of sharks and even quite enjoyed swimming over the kelp forests. But being in cold water for a while does make you loose your sense of humour. I found myself getting angry at my guide who was trying to stay next to me on his surf ski, but kept falling off. I later found out he'd never been on one before - in which case, he was doing a pretty good job. But in the cold, I found it hard to appreciate this. I began to have uncharitable thoughts that a big shark would come and eat him. It was unfair, but it did cheer me up. Luckily a more experienced guide took over. He knew to stay within eye-contact and say lots of encouraging things, even though it was obvious that most of the other swimmers had got out, had lunch and were packing up to go home.

Still, I have now qualified to swim from Robben Island to Cape Town later this month. And now I think I'll go home and get warm.

How to become a long-distance swimmer.

After my third 3km training swim this week, I believe the true talent of the long-distance swimmer is the ability not to get bored. Especially in the pool. The sea is a lot more interesting, but a lot more scary. Godfrey took me to Cape Town's Camps Bay on a grey, steely morning earlier this week. We were planning to swim up and down the bay, until I realised there was something I feared even more than sharks - waves. When I see when coming, I'm never too sure whether to dive under to try to go over. Quite often I end up being dumped, fearing my neck is going to snap when I hit the bottom. But Godfrey just laughed at my fears - he can be a hard man. Since then, I've been relieved that most of my swimming has been in the pool.

There's a 50m outdoor salt-water pool right by the sea at Sea Point. It's a beautiful place to swim with the afternoon sun beating down on your back. But after twenty lengths it does get a bit dull. Some people sing when they swim, but I find this difficult when concentrating on breathing. I ususally store up a few problems to try to work out. Sometimes this works, but more often my thoughts just go around in circles.
At Sea Point, I've found what distracts me most is looking at what's in the pool with me. Usually there are other swimmers. This isn't all that encouraging as they're all much faster than me. But then again, they could all be professional athletes training for the Olympics - or so I like to think. I've also noticed that there's a chicken bone at the end of the pool. It's been picked clean and I spent a good kilometre today wondering how it got there. Did someone throw it in after eating a bucket of KFC? Did a seabird find it somewhere and drop it into the pool? If so, what kind of seabird? Are there any albatrosses around? As you can see, the chicken bone is good for swimming. There are also quite a few plasters on the bottom of the pool. I find I don't get so far with these. After starting to wonder what kind of wounds they were covering, I realise I'd rather think about the lone chicken bone.

Sharky days

With schools still closed for the Easter holidays, my first few days have been dominated by my own swimming training. Thanks to Godfrey Mocke, the director of South Africa's SwimSafe programme, I've been out in open water getting ready for a 5km qualifying swim this weekend. If I complete that without a problem, I'm set to swim the Vista Nova Robben Island to Cape Town race later this month.

I was warned that the Atlantic coast would be chilly - it is, but that's the least of my problems. It is cold, but no colder than the Thames in the summer or the Hebrides. No, my real problem is fear. Fear of dark shadows under me, fins breaking the surface and of being eaten alive. I've watched far too many shark movies to relax in this water. Godfrey assures me that although there are Great Whites around, I wont be eaten. I'm not sure how he can be so confident.

In the past two days I've become an expert in the history of shark attacks around this coast. Godfrey's pointed out the two spots where people were last eaten alive - and you'd be surprised, they're very close to shore. One lady was taken a couple of years ago while she took her morning swim in Fishoek Bay. There had been a big catch that morning by local fishermen and she was warned to stay out of the water, apparently. But she kept swimming her usual backstroke close the rocks on the southern end of the bay. As she thrashed away, perhaps the shark thought she was an injured seal. He made straight for her, circled her three times and gobbled her up.

Then there was Henry Murray, a friend of Godfrey's son, who went spear fishing a few miles down the coast. He too was circled a few times before finally being taken. His last words were "ouch, ouch" or their equivalent in Afrikaans. His wetsuit complete with car keys washed up on a nearby beach the next day.

Godfrey believes the shark tourism is responsible for bringing the fish closer to shore. Boats run decoy seals behind them to attrack the sharks and encourage them to breach. But in doing so, they're moving sharks away from their traditional hunting grounds. There's been some recognition of irresponsibility by the local officials. Yesterday, the local government urged for new regulations to keep boats at least 100m away from sharks after a Great White jumped onto a rubber boat carrying seven tourists.

Anyway, I'm off to swim 3km in the green waters of Gordon Bay this afternoon. Godfrey says there aren't sharks there. We'll see.