Down the road today to Monikie Country Park in Angus for the Midlands District Open Water Championships. No longer an open water novice, Joey was swimming the Open 500m in the morning and the Open 2k in the afternoon, followed by a regular 1k relay.
The weather was even worse this week - though the water was better - but thankfully some OW veteran parents had come prepared, with a gazebo, a tent, a festival trolley to pull it all in (it's a long walk from the car park at Monikie!), and some excellent iron bru flavoured gummy sweets (which came a close second to the gazebo as my favourite thing, and only because the gazebo sheltered us from 2 hours of rain).
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Joey coming round the first 250m loop
(he's got the orange arms) |
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| All done! |
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| Winner winner chicken dinner! |
The second race didn't go quite so well. Joey was on fine enough form during lunch and ate a good warming pasta, but somewhere between finishing lunch, going for his second briefing, and coming back to the gazebo, he cooled down and was shivering putting his wetsuit back on. He had a slow start to the 2k and by the time he came out he said he couldn't feel his hands and basically just burst into tears. Queue getting him in to the tent, stripping him down, getting some hot chocolate into him and trying to warm him up. All the while assuring him he didn't need to go back in again for the relay in half an hour's time. Which is tough when there are only four of you down for the day and no one else can step in!
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| Joey's got his eyes on that aquarun! |
An an ex-GASC swimmer (and the oldest son of Zach's coaches) "stepped in", and not only completed his leg of his team's relay, but the final leg of Garioch's, which was very, very nice.
Not a bad haul from the 4 swimmers though (the two on the left completed 5k)!
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