Marathon swim momentos

I have just opened up a new page on my research website, showcasing marathon swim momentos. At the moment, it's got some swim tattoos, including this one from Julie Farrell, plus a lovely block of wood housing pebbles collected from Channel swims.

I'm going to be adding more as they come in - do get in touch if you have an interesting picture to add.

From an aesthetic perspective, I think they're beautiful and fun; from a research perspective, I think they're significant because they show not only how meaningful how marathon swims are to some individuals, but also that the swims (and their momentos) have a wide range of meanings and are deeply personal.

Calling all Channel swimmers...

Have you swum the English Channel? Or another marathon swim? Did you memorialise it in some way? If so, I'd love to hear from you.

As part of my research, I'm working on a paper about what marathon swims mean to people, and am looking for examples of different kinds of swim memorialisation and commemoration. I'd love to hear about (and get pictures of, if possible) tattoos marking successful swims. I know that some people have bought jewellery or had pieces made - I'd love to see them, and hear about why you chose that design etc.

Also, what did you do with the pebble you collected from the beach? And your swim chart?

Are there other forms of commemoration that I've not thought of?

You can e-mail me at k.throsby@warwick.ac.uk, or post comments below. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Moving and shaking

The Long Swim has been in hibernation for a month or so, but is now back! I'm not quite sure what happened and why I stopped blogging, except that I went away for a glorious week in Lanzarote over Christmas, then locked myself away to get some research writing done until term started again last week. The consequence of this was that the blog went quiet, but I have just submitted my first article from the swimming research to the journal, Feminist Review, which feels like definite progress. There's absolutely no guarantee of publication at this stage, and the usual practice is that papers are sent out for peer review and then based on the feedback, it will either be rejected (I hope not, but always possible....), accepted with various degrees of changes, or accepted as it is (never happens...or not to me, anyway). So, fingers crossed.

On the training front, things have been a little hit and miss, but ticking along. Following Ian's tragic death, I had sort of decided to go it alone on the stroke correction, drilling in what he had taught me, but then in Lanzarote, I managed to do a lot of sea swimming and realised that my stroke collapsed almost immediately into my old habits as soon as I started doing any distance. So, last week, I went to see Keith at the Swimshed, and am back on the case. Plus the running is ticking along nicely - I'm up to a weekend long run (well, when I say 'long'....) of 4 miles, and am signed up to run a 10k in March. So some progress there too, however unspectacular.

The other point of note was the recent publication by Steve Munatones of a men and women's list of 101 'movers and shakers' in open water swimming....and who would have thought it, but there I am. A mover and shaker, apparently. Of course, these kinds of lists are always arbitrary, but what I thought was great about them is that they demonstrate the breadth of involvement in open water swimming in all aspects of the sport, without necessarily focusing only on the elite end of things. It was nice to be included, though, and prompted a lot interest in the project and website, which was very encouraging for me. Of course, given my hiberating blog and my very poor show with training recently, there's not been much in the way of either moving or shaking from me of late. Must do better.

Joining the club.... fantastic video

I love this new video, made by my friend, Jamie Goodhead, who has to go down as one of the unluckiest aspiring Channel swimmers out there - if you listen to the narrative about his different attempts, you'll see what I mean. Plus, he's put his finger perfectly on the splendid irrationality of Channel swimming, as well as the compulsive lure of it.

Enjoy.

Sports Personality of the Year

So today, the shortlist of 10 candidates for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award was announced....shortly followed by a big media flurry about the news that there were no women on the list. Don't get me wrong - I think it's offensive and stupid that women's sport has been so egregiously excluded. But it's really not that surprising, and nor is it the worst offence against women in sport at the current time.

Firstly - let's think about how the shortlist is drawn up....by sports journalists from publications including Zoo, Nuts and the Sun - all with excellent credentials for including women (as long as they don't have any clothes on at the time and are performing sexual availability to their predominantly male readerships). Secondly, let's look at sports reporting itself, only a tiny proportion of which covers women in sport (c. 5% according to the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation). Just as an example, the Guardian was quick to join the debate about the shortlist, but a quick look at its sports pages shows that it includes a human interest story on Taekwondo world champion Sarah Stevenson (reflecting on the challenge of the upcoming London Olympics in the light of the recent tragic deaths of both her parents from cancer), and two further articles relating to the shortlist story (one using an image of Keri-Ann Payne, and the other showing Crissie Wellington). There are no stories on the webpage that actually report on women's sporting events and performances - not a single one that I could find. Is it any wonder, then, that the journalist "experts" that were invited to nominate sports people for the award could muster so few women for their nominations when women's sport is so far off their radar in the first place?

That a bunch of sexist editors excluded women from their nominations, then, is a news story, I suppose, but not a very interesting one; what's more important is what it signifies - that women's sport is consistently marginalised, not only in the media, but also in terms of the distribution of both public and commercial resources. For example, women's elite sport receives only 0.5% of the sponsorship market, making a professional sporting career impossible for many women in many sports which are awash with funding for men, especially if they are unwilling or unable to trade on their sexualisation within mainstream sporting and commercial culture. The effect of this to deter women and girls from engaging in sport because they are figured within the sporting world at best as visitors, and at worst as impostors.

The desperate attempts by the media today to demonstrate their outrage at the men-only shortlist through shocked opinion pieces and alternative women-only shortlists is all very well, but this fails to recognise the broader and more serious problem of the marginalisation of women and girls in sport at all levels - something which is much more serious, and depressing, than their exclusion from this particular popularity contest. There are some tremendous sportswomen out there, but there should be more, and we should hear about them more.

Sleeping like a swimmer....

I've never been a great sleeper, and my insomniac tendencies always get worse during the academic term when it becomes harder to contain teaching and writing responsibilities within a reasonable working day. Consequently, in spite of a carefully managed routine of hot drinks, light reading, herbal sleeping pills and a light that simulates the sunset in an attempt to trick my body into sleep, I am often awake in the early hours, my mind racing and my body fidgety and unsettled. As anyone who has trouble sleeping knows, it's a vicious cycle once it starts - feeling tired during the day makes you anxious about getting a good night's sleep, which makes it harder to get to sleep.

But then along came the distance swimming, which completely transformed the quality of my sleep. I've done other endurance sports - marathon, triathlon - but while I've found these exhausting, I've never really found them restful. But swimming....well, that's a different thing altogether. As my openwater training escalated in 2009, I noticed a distinct dropping off in my novel reading, going from reading several books a week in bed before sleep, to barely a few pages each night before falling asleep, often with book in hand. I knocked my sunset light off the bedside table accidentally one day and it broke, but I didn't replace it - I was no longer awake for long enough to even remember to switch it on. After long sea swims, I started to experience an utterly delicious, fully-body tiredness that made every surface look like I could curl up on it for a nap. Even in the middle of the intensifying pressures of work, I slept more profoundly than I could ever remember.

Fast-forward to the present. The stroke correction programme I've been following has been engaging and productive, but it's not "swimming" - not enough to produce the lovely easy sleep of long distance training. And I've been running, but only 3-4 miles a few times a week, and in any case, running just doesn't work in the same way for me. And so, as the stresses of term have intensified, my quality of sleep has declined; the herbal sleeping pills are back, and I had to buy a new sunset light. But then, last week, I decided that it was time to reintroduce swimming (as opposed to just drilling) into my training, and have started doing sets on top of my daily drills - only 2-3km at a time for now, and always trying to swim mindful of my stroke corrections, but swimming, nevertheless. And lo and behold...my swim-sleep has returned - something which has been aided by my fairly poor swim-specific fitness, meaning that I get nicely tired even at relatively low distances. Bad news for my hopes of keeping up with contemporary fiction; but great news for my general well-being. Here's to sleeping like a swimmer.

Farewell to Ian Smith

I was shocked to receive the terrible news this morning that Total Immersion swim coach, Ian Smith, passed away on Monday. As regular readers of the blog will know, I've been working with Ian over the past few months to improve the efficiency of my stroke. These most recent sessions continued a coaching relationship that extends back several years, over which Ian has helped me to tame my wayward stroke and maximise my skills as a swimmer. Ian was a consumate professional - focused and knowledgeable, with an incisive eye for efficiency-damaging swimming quirks and an armoury of drills and strategies to sort them out. Ian communicated a passion for the sport through his coaching, regardless of whether he was dealing with a speedy youngster with competitive ambitions, or a plodding long-distance swimmer like myself.

My heart goes out to his family, whose loss is unimaginable. For myself, I will miss him enormously.