Ryan decided to make a weekend of it.
After packing up from Leeds a quick trip across to the Lake District the following day for the 5K Open Water Swim in Windemere, I’ve not swam 5k in open water before so wasn’t too impressed to find it was a non-wetsuit swim because the water temperature had risen to 20.
I’m usually quite happy to swim without a wetsuit but with the fatigue of Leeds still with me I could have done with the extra buoyancy.
The race was held with all age groups in the same race, so I was lined up with Elite adult men and Juniors who were seeking qualification for the British Championships at Loch Lomond, the race consisted of 3 laps, I was working hard to stay in the pack for the first two laps then got dropped after 3.5k and had a tough swim in on the last lap with no group to help. It was a big learning curve and in fairness I had not done the mileage to do the race full justice, I was fairly pleased though with 6thplace in the Youth race in a time of 63 minutes.