Caroline Mason

Orange and azure redux

Ten weeks ago I drove home into a glorious sunset after our first pool training session.  

On Sunday James and I drove into an equally spectacular azure and orange sunrise on our way to Blackmans for the Beach2Beach.

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect: Flat-calm, 17 degree water (and a bracing 10 deg air temperature).  There were nearly 160 participants for the swim; we completed our registrations and donned our ankle timing tags, chatted to pod members, and soaked up as much of the weak sunshine as possible.  Finally, having listened to Sandra’s race instructions and safety briefing, we started.  I was in the last of four waves of starts, and I was accompanied by our beach coach Pete, who shadowed me for the entire distance me to make sure I was ok.  

As always the first few hundred meters seemed to last forever, but once we had turned the first buoy I settled into the rhythm of swimming.  We had a slight current against us with the last of the ebbing tide, so I didn’t have enough spare puff to swim much freestyle - I swam breaststroke for pretty much the entire distance, and completed the 2.6km in about 72 minutes.  I was happy with this, especially as we had the current against us.

One of our pod members, Ruben, had injured his finger a few days earlier and so was unable to take part,  but he took photos and videos of the CanToo swimmers as we came in to shore.  

I took the photo at the head of this post at Blackmans beach at about 8am.  The first buoy is just visible halfway between the headland and the person walking along the beach.

Miscellaneous donations

Thank you to my friends in my fitness classes, who put cash in the collection pots I left with Sheree, and Sherril.  From Sheree’s resistance training for women  in Margate, Ingrid commented: “Go Caroline!  Enjoy each stroke!!!”

From my Pilates classmates in the mat classes run by my friend Sherril, Scott wrote “Well done - great cause!”

Loris and Alan donated but didn’t comment, and Kirsty said “Well done Caroline.”

Carole wrote “Wonderful cause, thank you,” and Lyn offered a topical comment: “Excellent cause Caroline - well done!  (Stepping into the Trump research breach!)”

Nikki wished us good weather - “Great cause.  Well done,  Hope the day is kind.”

Finally - always the Pilates teacher - Sherril wrote, “T-Zone on - shoulders down and back - head down - and enjoy your great efforts.”  

Thanks to their generosity I was able transfer nearly $200 to our pod fund, to top up the sponsorships of those who didn’t get to their $800 fund-raising target.

What a journey

Friday today, next Sunday will be our last open water training session.

I’m going to make an effort to swim every other day next week; it’s nearly a two hour round trip from home to Blackmans or Kingston beach, which takes a big chunk out of the day, and I don't want to run my energy down.

James and I went to Kingston beach this afternoon, an entirely satisfactory arrangement: We got a couple of takeaway coffees and one of James’ favourite Spicy beef baguettes from the Ebb and Flo cafe, then I swam up and down, and James had a pleasant walk along the beach in the sunshine.

The conditions were perfect, flat calm with a slight north-bound current along the beach.  I made good time and my anti-chafe strategy worked perfectly! (see my earlier post on that subject…)  My freestyle is much easier and my breathing greatly improved, so I was very happy with my swim.

Back at home, I took some time to read back all my blog posts since I started nine weeks ago.  What a journey it’s been:  I’ve become fitter, and a much better swimmer.  I’ve met and befriended 20 other lovely people - and our stellar swimming coaches.  I’ve been part of a pod that has raised over $20,000 for early-career cancer research.  I’ve learnt to really enjoy the sea swimming - not just messing about in the water - and have got over being such a wuss about cold water.

One open water, and one more pool training session to go, and then it’s getting up at stupid o’clock on March 23rd, to get to Blackmans Bay beach by 7:30 in the morning for the 9am start.

What a journey.

(Not) pipis

Less than two weeks to go before the Beach2Beach race.

The sea training at Kingston beach last Sunday went well for me.  We walked along the beach towards the dog end, and swam back to the beach ramp opposite the KSCLC; I was able to swim the distance without running out of puff, and didn’t lag too badly behind the others.  Coach Sandra spent time emphasising how important it is to have an idea where we are aiming for once we round the headland on race day, so we don’t waste time coming in to the beach at the wrong place.  We were all instructed to fix a beach-side landmark in our mind’s eye, then we swam a couple of hundred metres out to the safety RIB and swam back in, aiming for our landmark.  

I caught up with dive friends at Fortescue Bay on Monday and had my first swim UNDER the water in a couple of months.  Following our successful swim last week, Rachael and I made a date for another mid-week afternoon swim at Blackmans.

I left home on Wednesday as the rainstorm was breaking - a bright flash and almost immediately the deafening crash of thunder overhead.  Drivers were taking it very easy in the rain, and I made it to Blackmans without incident and met up with Rachael.  

There is something very nice about swimming in the rain: The sea surface was almost oily smooth with a slight swell, and from underneath the raindrops make dimples in the mirror surface.  As we got towards the southern end, we could taste the freshness of the rainwater on our lips, and see a slightly orange haze just under the surface.  Mindful that Blackmans gets poor pollution scores after rain, we turned to swim back, and got out of the water a couple of hundred metres short of the blowhole end.  As we walked back, we saw dozens of little surf clams lying on the sand at the water’s edge, all of a very uniform size (between 15 to 25mm long), apparently all from the same year class.  As an immigrant from New South Wales, I immediately identified them as Pipis - but they didn’t look quite right.  I checked up when I got home, and discovered that they were actually Elongate Wedge Shells, Paphies elongata, I believe they had been driven out of the sand by the fresh rainwater pooled on the sea surface.

We treated ourselves to hot chocolate at the Blackmans Beach cafe, and then headed off towards town.  

Big problem.  The traffic was backed up on the Southern Outlet - with the generous patience of fellow drivers, I was able to cross two lines of traffic and detour down via the Olinda Grove exit, and then spent the next three quarters of an hour in barely-moving traffic in town.  Got to the pool half an hour late, many of the pod stuck in traffic were so late they just gave up and went home.  There had been a serious accident on the East Derwent highway mid-afternoon, and the streets in town were still jammed three hours later.

I had a good pool session, and managed to do a 1000m timed swim in 25 minutes.  Coach Joe was pleased with my progress, as was I!

Dear Diary

It has been AGES since I last wrote to you … last week I spent a few days in Sydney staying with a friend.  We were pretty busy so I didn’t get a chance to swim at Bondi Beach, but my swimsuit, cap and goggles all had a nice trip to NSW.

Goofing off to Sydney meant that I missed a pool training session and a Kingston beach session, but I believe they coped alright without me.  

So my first exposure in 10 days to water deeper than the bottom of the shower, happened yesterday when my good dive buddy Rachael suggested we have a swim at Blackmans.  We had a totally brilliant time.  The wind had come up during the day, and the air temperature had come down, so the water was well lumpy - but warmer than the air.  We swam from the blowhole (northern) end to the southern end, with a few pauses for leisurely chats on the way - at one stage a flock of hundreds of gulls flew low over us, some of them passing within a meter or two above us, a delightful sight.

At the southern end we decided to walk back along the beach as we were both on the edge of being chilly.  As I ducked my head in the water to swim in I saw a large Southern Eagle ray against the sandy bottom.  I called to Rachael but she didn’t see it - I pursued it for a bit, but it swam lazily out of sight in the murky water.  Yeah, I know, if there’s no photo it didn’t happen, but it made the swim even more joyful for me.

No Eagle rays at the Clarence pool later that evening.  Training last night was about distance, and we did a few sprints too.  I’m concluding that I seem to swim crawl better without using my legs at all:  When I asked Joe how to improve my kicking, he suggested that I try to find the sweet kicking action by swimming legs only, pushing against the side of the pool.  I actually went backwards in the water when kicking.  

This needs more work.

Chafing at the bits

I’m quite getting in to this ocean swimming lark, and in the interest of being able to do it in the colder months I decided to get myself a proper swimming wetsuit.  These days they are so finely tuned to control buoyancy, streamlining and flexibility, that there are wetsuits designed for breaststroke swimmers as well as crawl swimmers.  

I’ve gone for a breaststroke suit, which has very stretchy panels in the upper chest, and less buoyancy in the legs than the freestyle suits.  It’s lovely.  I have to ask for help doing up the zip, because it’s very snug, but I barely feel it in the water.  Except… learning curve:  I did a long swim in it the other day, and found that my swimsuit had chafed me quite badly around the swimsuit armholes.  Coach Sandra advised me that one can buy lubricants that will both grease the chafing, and waterproof your skin so it is less soft.  Coach Joe cheerfully suggested coconut oil.  

I’m going to try ‘commando style’ and not bother with a swimsuit underneath it at all.

Four weeks to go

Our brilliant coaches have been on my case in the last couple of weeks. Joe, shadowing me during our beach swim last weekend, criticising/ teaching/ reminding me how to get the best power from my arm strokes, and minimise drag from my legs.  There were good sets of waves coming in on the beach that day, so we spent some time catching waves and body-surfing - I got caught and dumped at the front of a wave, which I fear was captured on film.

In the pool Bec kept an eye on my style. Our session last Wednesday was focused on kicking, so we did a dozen lengths with kickboards before putting the drills into practice with swimming. All up, a couple of kilometres.

Yesterday (Saturday) I swam 2.6km at Kingston beach: From where we parked up around the middle of the beach, up to the point at the dog (northern) end, then back to the sailing club (southern) end, finishing back where I started.  I swam mostly breaststroke - without stopping - and completed in about 70 minutes.  This is very pleasing, it means that I will be able to complete the Beach2Beach in four weeks’ time within the 80 minute cutoff.  I swam it without my wetsuit, and I was chilled by the time I got out, even though the water temperature was around 19deg.

Having shown myself that I can complete the swim using my preferred breaststroke, I am now going to concentrate on crawl.  I’m finding this more difficult because it’s a much slower stroke cadence, and I’m running out of puff while waiting to take a breath between strokes. 

It’s our beach session this afternoon, so I’ll work on my breathing.

Small change

Many of us in our pod have already achieved our $800 fundraising goal.  For others the goal is still in the distance, whether because they don’t have the spare time, or extensive social networks, or are energetic serial fundraisers who’s friends are experiencing ‘charity fatigue’. 

A couple of weeks ago the pod decided to help get them over the line by redirecting donations to a pool [pun unintended]  that could be used to top up the funds of those of us who aren’t quite there yet.  I’ve had a couple of offers from friends to publicise my  CanToo swim, and collect small change on my behalf;  CanToo has to charge a small admin fee for all the online donations and for contributions in the order of a cup of coffee, the admin fee swallows up a lot of the donation.  I’ll convert small change donations to money-bearing electrons and send them through the aether to the pod fund.

We had a pod pizza evening last Sunday, with a raffle of goods donated by our venue [T-Bone Brewing Co., woohoo!] and purchase of home-made desserts (thank you Lorrain!) which netted around $700.

My pod are lovely people.

Astrology

It’s 6am, and I’m in the kitchen with a cup of tea.  Last night I was afflicted by ‘alarm clock anxiety’, which caused me to wake at hourly intervals in the small hours of the morning, until I gave up and got out of bed.  I’d set the alarm to get me up in time to drive to Kingston Beach for a morning swim; pod-member Ross had suggested that we might swim the kilometre from Kingston Beach south to Boronia beach, to give us a taste of swimming under the cliffs.  He’s promised to post a picture of the conditions at Kingston about 8am, I’ll make the decision then as to whether to go - a good blob of weather blew in yesterday, and there are brisk winds and big swells forecast for today.

That weather arrived yesterday afternoon, while I was in the water.  I’d dismissed the idea of swimming on the Saturday, but my Beloved decided he needed to get out of the house, “Do you fancy a coffee on the beach? - you could go swimming.”  So we drove north through the rain.  The air temperature had been in the mid 30’s during the week, by yesterday it had fallen to 10 degrees - 10 less than the temperature in the water. 

Welcome to Tasmania.  

When we got there the water was calm, with a small swell coming in to the beach, and a light breeze - perfect.  My focus at the moment is on my leg strokes, as my kicking is very inefficient and tiring, so I set off towards the northern end of the beach doing crawl.  The water was clear enough for me to see the sandy bottom a couple of metres below, but suddenly the visibility dropped as I swam through the water flowing from the Brown River.  Mindful of what comes down that river after rainfall, I turned back; up to that point I’d been pleased with my swimming speed, but I was wa-a-a-ay slower on the return leg as I swam against the chop and into the increasing wind.  My you-beaut new sports watch gives me a real-time distance-swum readout, so I ploughed on to complete 1000m, and then turned to swim a little way back along the beach in order to get out of the [warm-ish] water closer to the [cold] showers.  By this time there were waves coming in to the beach and a distinctly chilly, rainy wind blowing, so a hot coffee in a warm van was very welcome.

The new sports watch comes with a phone app that allows you to inspect a vast array of your bodily functions in great detail.  With brightly coloured graphs and informative messages (“You slept long enough, but not well enough to bring your stress levels down overnight.  You might feel higher stress or fatigue today.”)

This is a slightly more scientific version of astrology.  It targets our desire for detailed information all about ME; it invites endless examination of every detail of what is ordained by the stars, or how our hydration level /sleep quality /flights of stairs climbed /heart rate determines the quality of our lives.

A lovely bit of marketing.

Thank you

We’re about half way through our training now, so a good time to repeat a big thank you to all my sponsors.

Elton John glasses and a grass skirt

When podlings pass their $800 goal, we celebrate with a daft hat, pink leis, mad Elton John glasses - and for the guys - a fetching grass skirt.  Oh, and a certificate.  Ruben, Melissa and I all got our certificates last Sunday.

Puff piece

I’ve been rather dispirited about how badly I’ve been doing, particularly in the ocean swimming.

Last week at Kingston Beach we were shown how to do running entries from the sloping beach into oncoming waves, until we get enough depth to start swimming.  What a lot of fun!  We run down the beach into the shallow water; as the depth increases to knee height we start to swing our lower legs up and out to the side with each step so our shins are less impacted by water resistance.  Think camel racing.  Once the water gets to mid thigh, you start diving, launching yourself from the sand and landing with a bellyflop in the water before taking the next one.  This isn’t the cute little dive THROUGH waves, this is full-on panicked frog.

By the time I get to enough water to swim, I’m wiped out.

I get a swim-coach escort these days on our beach circuits, I suppose she’s there to hand me my Zimmer frame when I get out of the water.  As I took my third rest break on my back, Sandra pointed out that I was wheezing, and asked me if I had asthma.  Well, no, not that I’m aware… she suggested that I go to the Kingston SLSC tent on the beach with her, and take a couple of puffs on a salbutamol inhaler to rule it out.  At the tent I was shown how to use the puffer by two lovely lifeguards, who quickly and efficiently made sure I was ok.  I was slightly disoriented by the two girls as they are identical twins, and I mean identical - I wondered briefly if I was seeing double.  Then back to the water with my brand new airways, for the next circuit.

What a revelation!  I completed the circuit without pausing, and I couldn’t hear myself breathing at all.

It turns out that in Oz one can buy simple inhalers without a prescription, so I went to a pharmacy and explained to the duty pharmacist what I wanted.  He grilled me closely, and then dispensed a puffer on condition - cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die - that I would talk to my GP about it.

I’m seeing my GP next week.  

I don’t like the look of that.

The important thing first:  A big shout-out to the New Town Skin Cancer Centre, I owe them my life.  Read on…

I had my annual skin checkup the other day; I have the Northern European skin type and a mis-spent youth in the sun, so I’ve been having checkups for the last thirty years.  Three years ago, the lovely doctor who was  checking me (we’d been chatting about this and that as she scanned my skin) paused what she was saying, and went on thoughtfully, “Hmmm, I don’t like the look of that.  Let’s get you back in and we’ll biopsy it.  Just in case.”  

‘That’ was a calico mole on my shoulder blade, no more than 4mm across (the diameter of a peppercorn.) I returned a couple of days later for the biopsy, and a piece of skin the size of half an olive - with the mole perched in the middle of it - was cut out, and closed up with a couple of stitches.

Ten days later I was back to have the area that had surrounded the Grade 1 melanoma excised.  This time, a lozenge of flesh about the size of a sardine was cut out, with the stitches from the biopsy still in the middle.  The length of the excision (10cm) was so that the skin would heal without puckering, and the depth (full skin thickness, nearly 15mm) was to ensure that any stray melanoma cells would be removed.

My doctor’s colleagues were quietly awed by her skill at spotting the tiny lesion, as they mentioned to me during the quarterly checkups I had for a couple of years after the diagnosis.  I’m back on annual checks now, no more melanomas for the moment.

In the language of battles with cancer, this was a skirmish, the melanoma scouting party was wiped out.   Last century, two of my late work colleagues lost their battles with melanoma.  Curiously, both guys had the cancers originating in their groin area, and both had done a lot of arc welding while squatting wearing those tiny 1970’s stubbies shorts, copping intense UV welding flashes.  Their cancers were not discovered (or perhaps, acknowledged) until they had metastasised, a death sentence.  These days, with the advent of targeted therapies, the prognosis is much better.  But I would much rather lose a sardine from my shoulder blade than go through treatment.

Prevention.

Prevention.

Prevention.

And early detection.

Who knew?

An addendum to my last pool blog:  During our end-of-session laps as I approached the deep end of our lane, there were a few swimmers queued at the wall,  waiting to swim back.  I’d lifted my head from the eyes-down position so I didn’t smash into the end of the pool, so I saw a group of underwater headless bodies clad in our CanToo swimsuits perched on the foot-ledge.

Pushing that water

We are a pod!  The CanToo name for we groups that participate in the training and sponsorships is ‘Pod’.  The routine for the pool sessions is for Joe-our-coach to describe and act out the drills we will be performing, along with the POINT of the drills; we then get into the water and practice the drills, while the coaches watch us and offer comments and corrections.  We have two lanes reserved for our sessions at the Clarence Aquatic Centre, and last week we were divided into ‘confident in the water’ (aka fast) swimmers, and ‘less confident’ (slow) swimmers.  Genuinely unsure, I asked which lane I belonged in, as a ‘confident, but useless’ swimmer.  I got a long look from the coach, and was put in the slow lane.  I suggested that we should be called ‘Starpod’ and ‘Dudpod’, but it hasn’t caught on. 

The ever-patient Joe explained to me that there is an optimum speed for drawing our arms through the water to capture a cushion of water, and push against it.  Too fast, and the arm just slices through the water without generating propulsive force.  I tried it, and it’s much less tiring, and I actually get somewhere.

Progress.

Now to try it in the ocean…

Definition of insanity … a digression

There is a saying to the effect that ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result each time.’ 

I’ll tell you the story of my history with FitBits:  I bought my first at the airport six years ago - not cheap, but I quickly came to like what it did.  Unfortunately the screen developed cracks, so after a couple of years I replaced it with the next model, which had fixed that problem.  With this one, the screen pixels faded, so after a couple of years it was unreadable.  So I replaced the second with a model that was sold as being ‘Water-resistant to 50m’. 

50m water-resistant, imagine!  But they lied.

Last week my third FitBit died after an hour in a swimming pool.

I am not insane.  I have deleted my FitBit account and ordered a sports watch from a reputable brand.

Jelly

Sunday at Kingston Beach, our second open water session.  I had had a swim the day before at Blackmans Beach in perfect conditions, glassy calm and overcast sky.  I managed to swim the length of the beach in half an hour; it took me the first quarter hour to get my second wind, and I swam more breaststroke than crawl, but at least I’m reassured that I will be able to finish the 2.6km Beach2Beach swim within the 90 minute cutoff.

The weather at Kingston Beach the next day was choppy again, and after a beach briefing on how to recognise dangerous waves, we were directed to the pontoon moored off the southern end of the beach near the sailing club.  We did swimming drills, practice to keep on track during the swim by aiming for a prominent landmark.  

The prevailing wind and sea currents had concentrated Moon jellyfish from the current bloom at the southern end of the beach.  This meant that every couple of strokes your hand would encounter an ooky blob of jelly - however they are not dangerous unless you are a very small creature of the plankton.  Wikipedia tells me that member species of the jellyfish genus Aurelia (the most well-known is the Atlantic species Aurelia aurita) are almost impossible to distinguish unless you have a gene sequencing machine in your back pocket; the local species is called ‘Aurelia sp.’ because it hasn’t been formally described yet.

The photo is of the GPS track of the session shared by a participant with a clever watch.  The pontoon is at the bottom end of the track.

Ducking and goosing

We had our second pool session last night, we’d been asked to bring fins and snorkels along for our drills. First up, we were given drills to give us a feel for the effect of drag in the water, by finning a few laps with our hands held in various attitudes in the water.  From there to sculling with our hands in the water, and then finning and rotating our our upper bodies in the water every sixth stroke.  For the final quarter hour of the session we did a few laps of freestyle.

In the pursuit of streamlining, we are supposed to keep our heads in line with our bodies - this prevents arching of the back, which is tiring and presents a larger cross-section of our bodies to the water.  I find this difficult to remember; when I’m diving I’m used to looking where I’m going, not at where I’ve been.

A comical consequence of this ‘eyes-down’ swimming position happened as we were standing at the shallow end of our lane listening to Joe, our coach.  One of our group, a very nice, large, jovial man, came barrelling down the lane (eyes-down) and swam straight in to me - his leading hand went straight up my bum.  He was SO mortified.

I couldn’t stop laughing.

Well that was harder than I expected.

We had our first beach training session on Sunday. We were issued with fluoro rash vests at the Kingston Beach SLSC , and had a number texta-ed onto the back of our hand; this is our roll call number for the duration of the course (mine is 21), and we are checked several times during each beach session.

Orange and azure

First pool training session:  A mutter of thunder and flickers of lightning on the horizon alerted me to the approaching storm.  I decided to head off to my first pool session early, and the first fat raindrops were darkening the earth as I got into my van.  I drove up the Huon Valley in a tropical downpour, headlights on, wipers in top gear, rain clattering on the roof and windscreen - more Sydney than Cygnet.  Then, on the other side of Vince’s Saddle, sunshine as I drove towards Kingston.

And they’re off...

It’s our first pool training session at the Clarence Aquatic Centre this evening.  We’ve been sent supportive, friendly emails from the Can Too team; they will be well-practiced in wrangling newbies after training 22,000 participants.

WHY???

I'm supporting cancer research and prevention with Can Too Foundation. 

As a young man with a young family, my Dad was diagnosed with a vicious, deadly cancer,  Adrenocortical carcinoma.  Forty years later, thanks to an out-of-left-field experimental treatment that put his cancer into remission, he died of something quite different.  I myself survived Melanoma, a couple of my work colleagues didn’t.  Brain tumours took other colleagues, and my cousin, far too early; some of my friends diagnosed with breast cancer are still alive, others never made it back to their families.

We need research to learn how to prevent and cure this many-headed disease, our own cells attacking us from within. That's where the Can Too Foundation comes in: Can Too provides professionally coached training programs for participants of any fitness level to run, swim and cycle their way to a healthier lifestyle and a cancer-free world. 

In return, I am raising funds that go towards innovation in the prevention, care, and control of cancer. Since 2005, Can Too Foundation has trained over 22,000 participants and raised over $30,000,000 to invest in over 150 cancer research grants.

It would be fantastic if you could sponsor me, or even better join me in a program!

Thank you for your support!