Hello, my name is Claire. I’m a 43 year old mother of 4 teenagers and I live in Swindon with my husband Andrew.

This Girl Can

I’m passionate about open water or ‘wild’ swimming and can spend hours on end dreaming about and planning leisurely dips into local lakes and rivers.

I have been a long time lurker on the Facebook page Outdoor Swimming Society and Kate Rew’s breathtakingly beautiful book Wild Swim sits on my bedside table allowing me to dip in and out of it’s pages at leisure whenever I am in need of inspiration.

My very first foray into non-cholorinated water took place just over a year ago with the COWS (Cotswold Open Water Swimmers) in South Cerney.

I chose one of the coldest mornings possible and my chattering teeth and gasps for breath as the water slowly found its way inside my wetsuit could be heard across the other side of the quarry. The more seasoned swimmers kept a close eye on me and gave me friendly words of encouragement.

I’ll be honest though, that very first swim was not entirely successful. I struck out for the first luminous buoy about 200 meters away but was still not properly acclimatised to the cold, meaning that I hyperventilated and struggled to co-ordinate my breathing.

Oh well, it was a start, albeit a rather tentative one and I was determined to get back in and try again.

A few more swims later and a slight rise in water temperature (to the giddy heights of 10 degrees) and things did start to get a bit easier. I made it to the first buoy and then eventually the second and managed longer stretches of bilateral breathing before the inevitable brain-freeze kicked in. Progress at last!

Then unfortunately all of my swim training came to a grinding halt as my health took a turn for the worse. I became incapable of any form of physical activity for a period of about 8 months which meant that I missed out on a whole summer of swimming, I felt so frustrated and began to wonder if I would ever have the courage (once fully recovered), to get back into the water.

The lovely people who I had originally started to swim with (beginners just like me) had made so much progress over the previous summer. Could I really start from scratch again?

This Girl Can and The Henley Swim

As my health began to improve I knew that I needed to get back into the water and contemplated some gentle swims at a local pool to ease myself back into swimming.

My confidence was at an all time low however and so I kept putting off that very first swim, coming up with excuses galore as to why I wasn’t still ‘quite ready’.

Then on Facebook a friend shared a video created by Sport England as part of their This Girl Can initiative which aims to get women and girls moving, regardless of age, shape, size and ability.

As a well-nourished 43 year old with zero physical confidence, the advert certainly seemed to be speaking to me. I decided to procrastinate some more and when my husband asked if I was planning to get back in the pool I replied that I was ‘thinking about it’ 🙂

I was then introduced to the people at Henley Swim and found out that to celebrate the This Girl Can campaign, they were running a competition to give away free places on The Henley Mile swim in July. Eight lucky women would receive free entry and ongoing mentoring and training support.

I entered and was shocked to find out a few weeks later that I had been chosen as one of the eight selected women (shocked because I never win anything but also because it meant that I now really did have to stop making excuses and get back into the water).

So now here I am, just 13 weeks away from my first ever open water swimming event and this morning I am pleased to say that I finally stopped procrastinating and got into the pool. My first swim in almost 14 months and it felt amazing!!

I’m just going to focus on my pool technique for the next few weeks before venturing back into open water. It seems like another big challenge ahead but as my husband helpfully reminded me this morning, when the time comes I will have plenty of ‘natural buoyancy’ to assist me.