The swim was downstream and I got to the start nice and early and watched some leaves floating on the Thames without moving more than a couple of centimetres in a few minutes.  No current.  But a bit later I watched a bit of weed move about 1 metre in 12 seconds.  300m an hour.  Good.

I had a wetsuit on so the water temperature was fine.  I swam to Henley Bridge and we eventually started and I swam steadily to the first lock, 4km away.  Sometimes I stayed close to the bank and got covered in weeds.  Sometimes more to the middle.  Sometimes I swam by myself.  Other times I drafted and then went by other people.  When I was near people I did my best not to bump in to them.  I thought that this would get frustrating over four or five hours.

The water was murky – I didn’t see any fish.  In fact I couldn’t see much apart from the odd weed and the bubbles of people around me.

Mentally it was easy.  I wasn’t swimming hard but I wasn’t swimming easy. But I wasn’t out of breath.

I got to the first lock in 57 minutes (4k) to be told I was in the Bronze group.  This surprised me.  Although I didn’t expect to be in the gold group, I didn’t expect to be in the last one either.  I grabbed a mini mars bar and walked around the lock and watched the silver group get ready to leave.  I probably missed the cut-off by less than a minute but decided that I would rather be a faster person in a slower group rather than the other way around.  There was then a ten minute delay while the rest of the people got ready and I was ok with this, although the skins swimmers were unhappy with this as they were getting a little cold.

The next three km was pretty uneventful.  I got a little lost and nearly went the wrong side of an island but a canoeist soon corrected me.  It is here that I started creating mental images of the people I was swimming with.  There was “Crazy Ivan” a swimmer who was a bit faster than me and who I found easy to draft.  However, every now and then Ivan decided to swim breaststroke to see what was ahead.  So I felt that I was the US sub in the Hunt For Red October.  Ivan would suddenly stop.  I’d shout to myself “Crazy Ivan” and then tried to swim to the left or right of Ivan so that I didn’t get a foot in the face.  Most of the time I succeeded!  Crazy Ivan was actually a nice woman who apologised for kicking me in the face at one of the aid station.

Then there were the terrible twins. I don’t think that they were terrible or even twins.  It’s just that they wore similar wetsuits and swam next to each other all the way around.  There was also Ms Very Angry and Ms Absolutely Freezing – both swam without wetsuits.

I was one of the first out of the water at the next aid station (7k in) but after that I changed my tactics. I waited until I was one of the last in the group to get in the water and then swam up through the group to the next aid station.  I found it mentally easier catching people than staying at the front.  But I did notice that it was very easy to change feet compared with a race.  We were all swimming below our racing speed and so it was very easy to step up the effort and catch the next set of feet.

The swim itself was pretty boring as there were not a huge number of sights to see.  Towards Marlow it got a bit more interesting as I was wondering what there was to see, where the bridge was and so on.  Some of the garden walls seemed incredibly long – I guess that houses around there must be quite big.  Eventually the bridge came and I finished, feeling pleased.

I felt fine afterwards.  The next day I was a little achy when I put my elbow above my head for some reason or put on a jacket or something.

Apparently 83 of the 85 starters finished.

I don’t think it is as hard as a marathon.  Not that I have done a proper one.  But I certainly didn’t put the effort in that I would expect to on a marathon.

Would I do it again?  If I wanted to swim a long way again then I might well enter it again.  However, I have done it now and so I think I would probably chose a different one next time.  But if the swim was the other way around, went a bit further or went on a different bit of the Thames then I probably would.

Demand was high and the Race Timing Systems website didn’t seem to cope very well (the secure checkout page hung for quite a few minutes before I had to stop it and try again).

But I am in!

This will be my fourth time: 2x have been good but once I was poorly so I just pulled people out of the water at the end.

Hurray I am in!

By 5 am I had finished the Henley swim!

2,112m on the rowing course in the Thames.  I worked hard and finished in 33 minutes. The mist made sighting very tricky. I was pleased with my drafting and moving from one pair of feet to another.  There was a bit of a battle in the 100m before the finish where I was swimming next to someone.  Swimming is definitely a body contact sport.

I think Richard Stannard won.

All-in-all, I had a great time. Well worth doing next year but you need to get your entries in quick.

But I still went to Henley and watched the start.  I still wanted to do it but I made the right decision to skip it.

I then walked down to the finish and, with another man, pulled around 170 people out of the river. I got soaked.

Next year I hope I will feel better.

Last year it took me 37:13 to do the swim.  I think I should be a little quicker this year but it will all depend on how much the Thames is moving (we swim upstream).

I’ve done relatively little exercise these past few weeks.  I am really suffering from hayfever, which is giving me an annoying cough, and a lack of sleep.  I have so many good intentions but they just do not happen.   Eating is poor as well.

This morning I took the dogs for a run off lead.  We did 50 minutes cross country and I think they enjoyed it.  I did.

• The Cotswold Triathlon, a 750m open water swim, a 20k bike and a 5k run on 6 September 2009.
• The Reading Concorde Triathlon, a 400m pool swim, 20k bike and 5k run on 30 August 2009.

I tried to get into the Henley Swim at the end of June but was too late.  So I have volunteered to help instead.

Out of interest, I got quoted in the Henley Standard.  I guess they read my blog!

Next week is the start of the Henley Royal Regatta.  I am not a rower and so don’t know much about it.  I’ve learnt that some of the best crews in the world come to Henley to race up the river.  They race along a straight course in the Thames.  The course is completely straight because they put wooden logs along the course.  It is 2,112m long and it goes up stream so it is “really” a bit longer.

I think 5 years ago some people thought it might be a good idea to swim the course.  They decided that they didn’t want to get run over by anyone training on the course and so they started at 04:30 in the morning.  Over the next three years it got bigger but was still an “informal” swim.  I first heard of it last year but could not make the date.  This year they made it “formal” and I could make the date.  So I did it.

It still starts at 4:30am.  Registration is 3:00am to 4:00am and so I planned to turn up at 3:30am.  This meant getting up at 2:00am and leaving 30 minutes later.  I did this and got there at 3:30am only to find that I had shrunk.  I’m average height but most of the men in the club house were much, much taller than me.  They were mostly rowers.  Some might have been corporate finance – they’re always tall too.

At 4:00am we left for a ten minute walk to the start.  It was a beautiful morning, a little bit of mist on the river and no wind.  Absolutely perfect conditions.  A quick race briefing (go that way, stay in the course, the finish is at the end) and we were in the water. 

Here’s a picture of the course with the Regatta is in full swim.  It was likely that except there were very few people in the crowd at this time in the morning.

We started by the island at the top and were aiming to swim towards the bridge.  There was a current but it was nowhere near as strong as Windsor.  Also, there was little opportunity to swim in shallows and the course was bounded by wooden logs, I decided just to stick to left hand side rather than to try and guess where it was best to swim.

The start was a bit of a bun fight and I swam quite hard but not all out.  People went past me.  After about 400m I started to go past the people who might have gone a bit hard at the start.  As there was no bike or run afterwards, I had decided to go harder than I did at Windsor. 

After about 1k I saw a group of people ahead and pushed a bit harder to catch up.  I then eased off a bit and drafted in the group for a bit before carrying on.  For the last part I swam with a bloke without a wetsuit.  He was a bit ahead of me and then a bit behind and then I “wobbled” into the centre of the course and I think he may have beaten me.  There was also someone who stuck to my legs/side for the last 1,000m or so.

I had no idea where the finish was and that was kind of frustrating.  Eventually I got to it.  I couldn’t do a sprint finish as I had been sprinting for most of the swim!  By the finish my side hurt with the effort I had put in and my arm muscles felt like they were running out of strength.

I finished in something like 37mins plus change.  The winner did it in 29m 30s or so.  Karen Pickering, an Olympic medallist and former world champion came 7th in about 33 mins.  I think I came 19th out of 87 or so and so I was very pleased.

My average HR (inc 2 mins before the start) was 170bpm and my max was 179bpm.  I have never swam so hard!

If dates allow, I definitely want to do this next year.