Team Vigour - And They're Off.........

Team Vigour are all set to go for this weekend for their swim.....have a look to see how their final week of training has been.

The challenge:   2Swim4Life www.2swim4life.com/next-event

Date & Location: 22/23 April 2017 in Guildford

Doing what?  Swim 24 miles in 24 hours, starting a new mile on each hour

For?  To raise funds for the children’s mental health charity Place2Be www.place2be.org.uk/

Who?  4 swimmers: Paul McNair, Robert Hamilton, Pamela Flett and Phia Steyn 1 swim buddy: Robin Law 

What can you do?      Donate, if you can, what you can, to our fundraising effort on Just Giving. Simply follow this link:  www.justgiving.com/fundraising/teamvigour1

It is finally time for 2Swim4Life! After being overly excited and obsessed with this event for months, we're all finally leaving Scotland for Guildford on Friday by Plane, Train and Automobile – we hope to have better success than Steve Martin in the movie. In true Paul form he announced himself yesterday in a text to me stating: ‘This is Paul from the most awesome swim team ever to have graced the tiles at Guildford Lido… The mighty, indefatigable and downright marvellous Team Vigour!” I really do not think Guildford has any idea what a crazy team is heading its way!

You can all follow our progress this weekend on Facebook – I am sure all four of us swimmers will be posting on FB throughout the weekend. For those who would like to come say hi at the event – please do! We would love to have you and entertain you with a lot of swim stories. We will be swimming in Lane 8 and start swimming on the half hour – this means that we start at 09:30 on Saturday and finish at 09:30 on Sunday. There is probably little chance of any of us going to bed through the night, so late night visits are also welcome. But, if you do come, please leave your pets at home – they will not be granted entry, and the event tells us that it is not quite the place for kids. Parents have to supervise kids at all times. And lastly, please remember to donate if you can as much as you can for the worthy cause Place2Be. We are just over the halfway mark in terms of raising the ￡500 we have set as a goal and would very much like to meet that target. Do remember that you can also put in special requests for extra fast swims from the guys in our team – Robert and Paul will be happy to have a go at reasonable faster times than they have managed so far in the pool in their training. Simply leave the dare in FB or with your donation message, and us girls will check up on them and report back.

Robin is the last team member I am focusing on in our blog (yes, I have conveniently forgotten about myself). He will be performing the crucial function of Team Vigour Swim Buddy at 2Swim4Life which means that he needs to be present when one of our swimmers is in the water to count their completed laps and make sure the whole mile is completed every hour, and to watch out for hypothermia and any other problems that any of us swimmers can develop in the water. Robin is one of those wonderful people who have a zero interest in swimming, yet he has been by my side from the start acting as my shore watch when I go open water swimming, and performing the role of communications manager when I do a big swim. He never complains about the cold weather he has to endure on the shore, do not tell me off for being unsatisfied with the hotness of my feeds during long cold open water training sessions, and he does not question me when I get out a bit before the planned time because I am simply cold. It is lovely and quite a privilege to share my open water swim journeys with one of my closest friends!

With Robin having a zero interest in swimming, you are probably wondering why on earth did he agree to act as our swim buddy? Well, truth is he did not. As he recalls he is ‘not sure that I [volunteered], I think it was assumed, since I have been one of your ‘on-shore’ supporters in your swimming ventures for 4 years, and am happy to continue in this role’. This perhaps also explains why he is perhaps not as overly excited about this role as the rest of the Team Vigour members - mostly he is a tad apprehensive ‘given that my ‘buddy’ role will only become critical if something goes wrong…’ Ever the academic (Robin is an emeritus professor of pre-colonial West Africa) he refuses to ponder on how it would feel to be a swim buddy simply answering that he chooses to ‘fall back on the Herodotus/Croesus story – I’ll know when it’s finished’. Well, the rest of Team Vigour is very happy and thankful to have Robin on board and look forward to engaging him in long conversations about the Loch Ness monster. For someone with a professorial status, Robin knows that tad too much about this mythical creature!