MS 24 hour Mega swim

I was asked by a friend to join the school team competing in the MS 24hour Mega swim. Being school P&C President I couldn't say no could I! Add onto that being Nathan Rickard's wife and Brenton Rickard's sister in law, people had expectations!

Now I am pretty sure I haven't swum a lap since I hung up my togs over 15 years ago. I hadn't even had a pair of togs on since I finished work just before Matthew was born nearly nine years ago! So I went out an bought myself a fair of big girls togs and got on with it. I didn't do any training (it would have interfered with my 15 year taper!). I ended up swimming over 5kms! Our team was divided up so that we had a little team in the water at all times. I swam with two other swimmers and we swum a relay. We started out swimming 20 minutes sessions. At our midnight session we cut back to 500 metres each and by the final hour we knocked it back to 200 metres and finally 100 metre stints. I conned Nathan into joining the team that swum straight after us. They only had two guys and one of them had only just started swimming. So Nathan came in to add some experience! He was happy to do the 4pm til 6pm stint but a little less enthusiastic about the 2.30 til 4am one! So to all the people that sponsored me you actually got more bang for your buck by knowing that both Nathan and I killed ourselves in the pool!

I told everyone in the beginning we would all do 1 lap of fly as our last lap. At the midnight session that changed to the first lap of the final session, by the final session there was no way anyone was doing any butterfly! I did however raise a cheer on my final stint when I dove in and broke out the fly. It didn't last long though! I threw out the challenge and it was accepted by a few with a couple of wonky fly strokes thrown in randomly!

I even managed a smile after my last lap! It happened just after the swearing and rude gestures made to my husband when he suggested I do some more laps! By this stage I am not sure I was even capable of getting out of the pool!