Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Windermere: 10,000 swimmers of the neoprene nation will descend upon you!

Windermere lake: "...is the largest natural lake in England. It is a ribbon lake formed in a glacial trough after the retreat of ice at the start of the current interglacial. It has been one of the country’s most popular places for holidays and summer homes since 1847..."

10,000 open water swimmers will descend upon the lake in staggered waves of humanity, 300 for each wave, at least 28-waves total. The race starts on Friday afternoon with the final wave on the Sunday.

Someone needs to contact the promoter of this event, have a sit down, and fine out what these guys did right! England is not known for being an "industrial assembly-line" of hyper dedicated swimmers. In fact you can probably count all the 50-meter pools in London on one hand. The fact that thousands have applied and will show up means the promoters got something right for a niche demographic.

The races have been organised as a series of waves of up to a maximum of 300 swimmers each, and amount to a combined mileage of around 10,600 miles – the distance between London and Sydney in Australia.

Things get under way with three two-mile waves on Friday afternoon from 3pm, while there is a single half-mile wave on Sunday morning.

There will be no fewer than 28 one-mile waves from Saturday morning right through until Sunday afternoon.

[Link]


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Open water swimming has a higher profile in the UK at the moment because they've done surprisingly well at the top level (two silvers and one bronze at Beijing, while the girl in your picture got a gold at the world championships). There was a highly publicised and televised open water swimming event in Manchester recently as well.