Have you ever tried to swim in a straight line without the aid of the lines at the bottom of the swimming pool? It’s not as easy as you think as I have found out from the early morning dips in Lake 32 near Head Office.

Last year I persuaded Sarah and Zoe that open water swimming was a good thing, even thought I am not sure I believed it myself and the COOWS materialised.

 The Blue Mile was at the start of July and our inaugural swim which I approached with trepidation. I surprisingly enjoyed it and finished in 34 min 54 seconds.

It’s now less than 3 weeks to the Great Scottish Swim so Monday morning was another early start to “swim with the fishes” after a rude awakening by the alarm clock at 5.25am – apparently there are 2 of these times in each day not that I usually see them both, up till now that is.

I am sure that the fish are getting bigger, closer and hide in the weed and spring out at you when you are least expecting it but it is overall a good start to the day. It gets even better if there is something that resembles a straight lie between the buoys.

By my way of thinking these swims, that are supposed to be a mile each, turn into about 2 miles with the weaving so we are doing better that we think, honest.

I am going to try to knock a couple of minutes off my time in Scotland and the wetsuit is staying on – I tried the lake out this morning without it to see what it was like and it was a little on the chilly side (not the words I used) and we are 350miles further south than the Great Scottish Swim!

If you want to join in I have come to the conclusion that insanity is not mandatory but it does help.