#bookaid

I came to the conclusion the other day that I really need to learn to shut my mouth sometimes, or at least think before I open it and reply to people. At 43 you’d think I’d have learned that by now, but it seems not.

You see, the reason this comes to being now is that about six months ago a friend of mine, Tracey Wilkinson, said to me ‘do you fancy doing a 24 hour swim with me? As a team?’. Without even pausing, or putting my coffee cup down I replied ‘yeah, why not?’

One of my first open water swims.

I suppose the seriousness of the event should’ve dawned on me when filling out the mountain of paperwork, medical questionnaire, found two ‘buddies’ to support us - one for land and one for water - and signed a disclaimer saying I will be doing this at my own risk. But, y’know I’ve done other stuff - a half ironman, run 52 miles in 12 hours - so really, how much harder can this be? And there’s aaaages to train. And it’ll be much warmer then.

Won’t it?

Won’t it?

SURE it won’t be as cold as this though. January 3rd in a friend’s pond. Non-wetsuit, 6.5 degrees. Raining. Photo c/o Working Class Triathlete.

There are eight weeks to go and out of the window at the moment, spring weather - let alone summer - seems a long, long way away. It’s sleeting.

I’ve stopped thinking if this is going to be harder, or easier, than events I’ve done before - it’s going to be challenging in a whole different way. 

The event is held at Activities Away in Lincoln, it will begin at 7pm on Tuesday 21st June and finish 7pm on Wednesday 22nd June. The aim is to complete one mile (which is two laps of this lake) every hour, beginning on the hour. As there are two of us, we’ll each be doing one mile every other hour, so if we succeed both of us will swim 12 miles. The rest of the time you can do what you like - rest, eat, toilet, sleep - but the advice that keeps echoing is about warmth.

Activities Away on a warm day. Beautiful clear water. 

‘Twelve miles?!’ my agent, Jane Willis, said to me. ‘In 24 hours?’

‘Yeah,’ I replied, ‘I’m only doing half of it.’

Only. Doing. Half. 

Only 12 miles.

Right now, I’m thinking ‘only twelve?’ And there are lots of swear words in my head. 

I popped down to Activities Away on Sunday. The surface temperature was 9 degrees and the water temperature 11.7. A friend of mine is doing the 12 hour version of this next Saturday and she’s doing it solo. The thought of getting back in that cold water hour after hour is truly horrific to me - I’m one of her buddies for this and frankly bloody glad I’m not doing it! 

Coffee and cake. Absolutely necessary to help warm up. 

When I’ve done events in the past, people have often asked if I’m doing it for charity, I never have before but this time I’ve decided to raise money for Book Aid International. This is a charity which works within African countries helping fund and support (amongst others things) mobile libraries, books in classrooms, for refugee camps, medical and health care books for education and provide training for librarians there. 

Do pop over to their website and read about their work and projects they support.

Mobile library in Ethiopia. Photo c/o Book Aid website.

This is taken from their site - 

The need for our work

Across Africa, millions of people are unable to fulfil their potential because of a basic lack of books and reading resources.

Literacy and access to information have been shown to reduce poverty, providing opportunities for work, increasing household income, even improving the health of children. A child born to a mother who can read is 50% more likely to survive past the age of five.

We understand the pleasure and opportunities that reading can bring and we believe everyone should have the opportunity to read. Through reading, people can change their own lives for the better and shape their own futures.

School library in Zanzibar. Photo c/o Book Aid website

There are lots of demands on people’s finances - I get that and don’t expect much - but if you could spare just a pound that would be fantastic. Pounds all add up and all make a difference. 

My Just Giving page is here. 

To stress that ALL money donated goes directly to Book Aid International. Any expenses related to the event (entry, training, equipment, etc, etc) I’m funding myself.

I shall be down at the lake again this Sunday so fingers crossed for some sunshine! I’ll keep you posted and talk more about the work Book Aid do, in the next post.