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Club of the Month
Beyond the Blue “I’m alive!” The exclamation of joy from every swimmer who joins Beyond the Blue as they make…
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Make me dizzy
Situated in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, between the impressive islands of Jura and Scarba, is a narrow strait of water…
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Staying on message
On a hot, sunny afternoon earlier this month I went out for a paddle on the Thames and came across…
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Ask the Experts
I’m a 46 year old female who took up swimming again about three years ago. I’ve done a few Great…
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Swimrun: your next challenge?
If you haven’t yet heard of swimrun, you are about to. The Swedish endurance sport has hit the UK big…
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Top Six Outdoor Swimming Books
This is by no means a definitive list of outdoor swimming books: it is a personal selection confined by the books…
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Team Work
After flippantly agreeing to join a teammate on an English Channel relay swim – organised by Aspire, the UK’s leading…
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Swimming with the Sharks
We all enjoy wild swimming, but I want to inspire you with another type of swimming: wildlife swimming. All swimmers…
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‘N’ice to know
It may seem strange to be reading about winter swimming in summer, but last winter more of you seemed to…
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A tale of two swims
This weekend I took part in two very different swims. The first, the Great Newham London Swim, had more than…
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Seven Ways to Become a Better Swimmer
What does becoming a better swimmer mean to you? Your first thought might be that better equates to faster. For…
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Film review – Unbelievable: The Chad Le Clos Story
Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting! I thought I was in for something like Cool Runnings but with a…
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How dangerous is lightning to swimmers?
Can you swim in a thunderstorm? Are you safe beside the water? How can you avoid lightning strikes when swimming?…
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Keep it clean
It’s reasonable, I suppose, to assume open water swimmers prefer to practise their sport in clean water. Nobody really likes…
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Five swims in five countries for a five-star son
After the sudden death of my son James in December 2015 and the long wait for the autopsy which showed…
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Vicky Miller to swim from the Scilly Isles to UK mainland
Last year Vicky Miller became the tenth woman to swim the North Channel, one of the toughest crossings in the…
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Swimming the length of the United Kingdom’s longest river
On Saturday, after 18 days and 360km, Ross O’Sullivan finished swimming the length of Great Britain’s longest river, the River…
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You get what you train for (mostly)
Last weekend was the infamous BLDSA Champion of Champions in Dover Harbour. I took part for the second time and…
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A never-ending swimming journey
Often in swimming we set goals with a clearly defined end point: complete an open water mile, swim the length…
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Club of the Month – Brockwell Icicles
The Brockwell Icicles are an informal group of friends who share a love of winter swimming at Brockwell Lido in…
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Swimming my way to recovery
The 16th February 2010 is etched in my memory as the day I heard the words “you may never walk again”.…
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Hold your line and keep on swimming
During a Q&A at the RLSS Open Water Festival last weekend a swimmer asked: “What should I do if I’m…
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Oxford versus Cambridge – Across the English Channel
It’s not the usual thing you’d expect students to be doing in the very early hours of the morning, but…
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Cross-country runner to open water swimmer
After injury forced my reluctant retirement from athletics after 40 years – the last 17 of them as an international…
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More on the power of pacing
I hope this isn’t beginning to sound repetitive but I want to talk about pacing, again. I have new data…
