Dancing with the water – SL015 - a podcast by Karen Parry outdoor swimming

This week’s podcast guest blew my mind.

She has completed some epic swims – which to me, at my stage in my swimming, seem like superhuman feats of awe inspiring magnitude.

By anyone’s standards, Sylvia’s swimming achievements are impressive.

And yet.

She is humble. Self deprecating. Generous.

But most importantly, she’s just a normal person.

Like me!

I can’t emphasise enough the significance of this. What this means.

It means that I’m also capable of such swims. Not right now, obviously. But that I have that potential. If I choose to pursue it with enough commitment. Not that I have any desire to do a swim such as the Catalina channel any time soon. But what I do want to be capable of is 3km in skins in July. And at the minute I’m only just managing to complete a single length of front crawl. In a small pool.

Which is exactly where Sylvia started. In her thirties.

And the way to achieve your goals? Just keep turning up. And help other people along the way. Because everyone is struggling.

Sylvia shares with raw honesty what it is like to train for and complete long distance swims. She also shares what it is like to be unable to complete a challenge. She strips away the romanticism and is just very honest about the cold, the boredom, the hunger. The hours of pool work required - which I know is enough to put off plenty of open water swimmers.

And despite the raw honesty about how grim it can be, she also describes swimming as dancing with the water. As meditation.

This is someone who can tolerate the hours in the pool, but is clearly an open water swimmer at heart. She is as much about the dipping, the social side and the cake as she is about the big swims.

She tells a very funny story about her English Channel relay swim – five women over forty just going for it and having a great time. It makes me think of my four swim sisters who I’ve recently spent a week in the Cumbrian lakes with – visualising us doing something similar. Not the English Channel. But Corsica to Sardinia? Catalina? Alcatraz. Before we all turn fifty?

'No half measures' is how I characterised Sylvia. It’s not a bad maxim to live by.

This week I’ll definitely be being more Sylvia!

Things we talked about

San Francisco Bay, Lake Tahoe, Pacific Open Water Swim Company, English Channel swim, Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge to Bay Bridge, North Channel swim, Catalina Channel, Boston Light swim, Gibraltar Strait crossing, Cork, Kinsale, Dover Channel Training Group, Suzie Dods, Ranie Pearce, Chloe McCardel, Ned Denison, Kelly Gentry

       

Further episodes of Swim Wild Podcast

Further podcasts by Karen Parry outdoor swimming

Website of Karen Parry outdoor swimming