I'm back

I can't fit into the day all the stuff that I used to. That's why I've been gone for quite a while. Is being 50 something to do with it? I don't think I am trying to cram more things in, but maybe I am.

 

What kept me very busy for the first two months of this year was the Rottnest Channel Swim. It happens during the last weekend of February every year. We have about 2,300 swimmers and about 10,000 spectators on the day. Some watch the start at Cottesloe

Beach, some are crew members on boats and some go to Rottnest Island to see the swimmers arrive.

 

Some solo swimmers ready to start. The lights in the background are their support boats.

 

 

I was the race director, which is a position that has responsibility for everything on the day. The buck  stopped with me! It involved a lot of meetings for the few weeks before the swim and maybe because I am well and truly over 50, I would just get home and not want to do anything else! Is it just me?

 

There is only one red T-shirt and it belongs to the Race Director - me!

 

 

I have researched being permanently tired and have found that it can be due to any number of things. Working long hours, then having meetings out of hours and trying to keep up my swimming training probably didn't help. Also, the stress of the week before the swim - the weather was really bad and I might have had to cancel the whole thing!

 

Imagine that - 2,300 swimmers who have been training for the better part of a year let down by the weather at the last minute. That is not to mention a few hundred international and interstate swimmers who have travelled a long way to participate in the swim. The swim has been cancelled only once before, and it was me who cancelled it. The weather was so bad that no-one complained about the cancellation. Some swimmers who had travelled from Japan were very nice and said that is the risk of open water swimming.

 

Anyway, all my thoughts were consumed by that and there was no space in my head for blogging or doing the assignments that I was meant to be doing for an online course (big mistake - I need the motivation of having to go to a class everyweek otherwise I don't do what I am meant to do. Anyone got any suggestions?).