I signed up for the Noosa Open Day Swim Series back in March, when I was still recovering from the near-death experience of my Mooloolaba Swimming Race DNF (which stands for Did Not Finish, just in case you missed my triathlon dictionary post a while back)
I have never been under any illusions about the dangers of someone who can’t swim very well (IE me!) entering a real-life ocean. I’ve maintained a healthy fear of drowning in The Deep Blue since the day I first signed myself up for this triathlon career. The DNF didn’t actually change that at all: I was as frightened afterwards as I was before, but no more so.
If you cast your mind back, you may remember that I returned to the sea with sharks and jellyfish and seaweed and stuff at Bribie, just a couple of weeks after the Mooloolaba failure. Then I did some more Grimsey sessions. I even managed the Straddie Salute Tri,where I did not panic and drown myself. So I think we can agree that I haven’t developed a phobia of ocean swimming. Things have been progressing well.
But – yes there is a but! – I haven’t been back to Mooloolaba for swimming. At all. Shane and I did go for breakfast one weekend and it was a beautiful day with not a wave in sight… And I couldn’t bring myself to even dip my feet into the water.
So maybe I have a thing going on with the ocean at Mooloolaba. And what I realised after the DNF is that Noosa is really close to Mooloolaba. It’s practically the same slice of ocean.
And if you haven’t been following along at home, I’ve already signed myself up for The Bloody Noosa Triathlon 2016, which kind of requires me to swim 1500m in the ocean there. Continue reading