Almost there........

I can't believe that it's so close now. There is less than four weeks to the start of my tides! Since 1st January this year I have swam 940km, and will begin to taper in the next two weeks when I reach the 1,000km mark; that's One Million Metres... I am starting to cut down now to only doing one or two hour swims up in the resevoir. At this stage I am really itching to swim!

So far I have raised almost €4,000 for the Irsh Cancer Society. Please help me hit the €5,000 mark before we leave for England. You can donate online at www.mycharity.ie/event/ec4cancer or if you're living around Fermoy, call into The Bookshop in Pearse Square where they have a sponsorship card instore.

This year has been a great year for Channel swimming in Cork. So far six locals have made it and there are four more to go. This ties with 2005 which was the record year for successes from Cork. Also, out of the Distance Camp back in June, eight out of eight have made it so far, and there are more to come. I think all of us who are left to go are feeling the pressure not to break the 100% success rate so far this year.

That's it for the moment... I will do another post around the end of the month.

Irish 17km Championships 2009

This was my first year taking part in the Irish 17km Championships, held in Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh. Yes, Co. Fermanagh is over the border in Northern Ireland but swimming in Ireland is an "all island" afair so both the Republic and the North are included in Championships. The swim was run by Martin Cullen of The Irish Long Distance Swimming Association (ILDSA).

This was also my first proper swim after a two week holiday and a total journey of more than 10hrs to get to the start line! So, I really wasn'e expecting to do particularly well. The water was on ok temperature. It wasn't very comfortable but it could have been alot colder... I finished the swim in 4:10:36. I was hoping to do it in under 4hrs but that wasn't too bad for my first time doing it. I finished in third place overall. The winner was Lisa Broadfield of the USA and second was Simon Lee of Great Britain. Even though it was the Irish Championships, they gave the trophy to the English guy. He had been winning the event for the last 10yrs but they always awarded the trophy to the Irish Champion... It would have to be the one year that they decide to change it!

I did enjoy the event though. It felt very long and was very boring.....exactly as a swim should be. Maybe next year I will go back and do it slightly better! Sorry about the lack of pictures... My Dad wasn't there! Unfortunately I can't seem to get eny so we'll just have to imagine it.....

Lee Swim 18th July 2009

This year proved to be another fantastic Lee Swim. The swim was first held in 1914 but was later relocated and eventually suspended due to the bad water quality in Cork City and the outer Harbour. It was resurected in 2005 when Cork celebrated it's year as the European Capital of Culture. Everybody was amazed at the great improvement in water quality since the City's new drainage system was put in place and now the swim has become the largest open-water event in the country, with people travelling from all over the world to participate. This year a record number of 279 people took part.

I first did the swim in 2006. It was my first big open-water event and I was only 13 years old. Myself and my friend Bryan Dillon had spent the first half of the summer training for this swim which we thought was very long and was going to be really scary. That year we placed reasonably well and got hooked on open-water swimming, doing the Sandycove Island Challenge that September. In 2007 I was taking swimming fairly seriously and set myself the challenge of beating Ned in the Lee. I did beat him then but lost out on the Island Challenge that year. That September Ned and Danny Coholan (EC Soloist) took me on my first Speckled Door to Sandycove 5km swim. Being the youngest to ever do it it got alot of attention and gave me great confidence. Within a month I had booked my English Channel Swim.

In 2008 I was determined to do as well as I could. I beat Ned in the Lee and finished 4th overall. I also did the Lizard Point swim, Loch Allua, Crosshaven to Blackrock and Blackorock to Cóbh in that year and came second in the Island Challenge. Oops, I started rambling... Let's get back to the Lee Swim!

This year was another fantastic Lee Swim, even if it was rainig for most of the day! After a bit of a slow start, I surprised myself and managed to climb back up to finish in second place. I never would have thought in 2006 that I would be coming 2nd in the Lee Swim. I finished in 23mins 17secs which I was absolutely delighted with, I was thinking that 25mins would have been very good. As usual everybody really enjoyed the day. There was a great surprise afterwards when there was a real game of proper water-polo played in the River infront of the Clarion Hotel. At least this kept us some way occupied while the results were being done manually due to a technical fault with the electronic timing!


Joe Donnelly has to be crongratulated for his excellent work for resurecting this swim and making it such a great success every year. It is not easy running an event like this with so many participants and spectators! Thanks Joe........!!! Also, well done to the overall winner, Shane Drumm of Aer Lingus SC and the winner of the women's race Maeve Linahen fo Mallow Swans SC, also well done to Harry Cohen, 12yo, who travelled from London and was the youngest participant in the swim.

I really can't wait for next year's Lee Swim!

Last weekend's races......mixed results!

Last weekend we had our first ever event in Co. Waterford. It was a 2.2km swim in Baile na nGall which is in Gaeltacht na Rinne. The swim was organised by Maura Murphy and there were about 20 swimmers in attendence. I finished first in just over a half an hour and Chris Mintern from Sunday's Well wasn't far behind in second. Ned Denison was a bit later in third place, he was helped from the water by Chris and I... How embarassing!!! He proclaimed to be the real winner as he was the first "driver" home. Things are realing getting bad when you have to use your age as an excuse! This was a great first swim in Waterford and thanks to Maura for organising it.


On Saturday we had Nick Mulcahy's annual swim in Caherdaniel, Co. Kerry. Due to the bad weather we couldn't do the usual swim so we had to do a shorter course just around the beach. It was a very fun and exciting event. I would like to thank Ned for knocking my goggles off in a battle less than 100m from the finish! Due to me having no goggles I went way off course and finished further back in the race. The swim was really great fun and I had a great day on Sunday surk-kayaking off the beach. Thanks as usual to Nick for another great event.

Cork City to Myrtleville

My longest swim in terms of distance to date... 26km or just over 16miles. Although this was my longest swim distance-wise, it was only my second longest in terms of time-in-the-water... 5hrs 47mins.

Ned and I started ours swim in the pitch dark at 4:09am underneath the Port of Cork sign in Cork City Centre. This was my first ever night swim and I have to say I found it very relaxing... Apart from a few bits of floatsome and jetsome, which is to be expected in the River Lee. For safety we had all our light-sticks on and the boat had their navigation lights on. On the boat was Dave Mulcahy and Kieran O'Sullivan, both did a fantastic job at keeping us on course in the difficult conditions.

As we swam past Blackrock Castle it was starting to get bright... It also however started to get a bit choppy and started to lash rain on Dave and Kieran on the boat. The water was warm and I was feeling very comfortable so actually felt sorry for the boat crew getting drenched, I'm not really sure how Ned was feeling. After a few feeds we had passed Glenbrook and Ned said that he was getting out at Monkstown... There was no arguing and he exited the water at 2hrs 54mins and then crewed for the rest of the swim.

Passing infront of Hawlbowline Island, the Irish Naval HQ, and Spike Island, former prison, it started lashing rain again. After that it got a bit calmer and a fog rolled in. On our way from Cóbh to the Mouth of the Harbour, we ran into some trouble with the Port Authorities which we won't mention. Apparently all of our names went on to some report! It wasn't really our fault though......out-dated technology.

The water was still warm as we exited Cork Harbour. Now instead of a choppy surface, I had a large rolling swell to contend with. Aside from sore shoulders from fighting the waves for the last 5hrs and one jellyfish sting, I was feeling very confident and upped the pace a bit because I knew the end wasn't too far away. For a while I kept looking up for some reason but Ned stepped in and corrected that!

After the boat ran out of orange flavoured High5 to give me they gave me an unflavoured one and mixed it with blackcurrant juice... It wasn't too bad. After that Ned said that it was the last feed and I had 1km to go (although I'm sure it was more than that). At 9:56am I walked up the beach in Myrtleville feeling very happy with myself. I had estimated that the swim would take about 7hrs but I beat that by over an hour so I was delighted.

Here is a picture of the swim course:

Sorry about the delay in posting it properly...!

Irish Age Groups Division 2, University of Limerick

Since I have absolutely no intention of doing anything for the next few hours I might as well write about the gala at the weekend, which surprisingly enough wasn't actually that bad!

Ok so it's been a while since I have been able to perform well at galas... I've been doing pretty good in training, finishing every set and hitting nearly all of my 85% times and all that technical stuff, but it just doesn'e reflect itself at meets. I think it's probably a psycholigical thing as much as anything else, I mean, if I can do the work in trainig then surely I can do it in competetion. Well this weekend, it all finally paid off. By that I mean that I actually got good PBs and even got pleaced well...

All through the week I had been doing very little. Firstly because I didn't want to be too tired going into the meet and also because I kind of needed to recover after the alst weekend. It was just all easy short swims, the alst one was Thursday night in Knockanannig where it was 21degC! On Friday I was incrediblt bored so I got a spin up to Limerick so I could support the people who were swimming on that day.

Saturday morning I was entered for the 100m Butterfly, don't ask why I entered this, I think it was because you had to enter 200m Freestyle and 200m I.M. plus two other 100m events and I certainly didn't want to do Backstroke or Breaststroke! I swam well enough, I think I may have got a 1:12 or someting like that... It was a PB anyway and my previous time was a 1:16 so a reasonably good improvement there. I was just outside the finals so was a "reservist".

In the evening I had the 200m Freestyle, apparently this was going to be my event so my coach insisted that I should do a few at 85% before going to line up. This was to get me into the mindset of swimming fast. And you know what, it really worked.. I do infact swim better after doing some fast work before the race. I took nearly 3secs off my old time to get a 2:11.84 which put me in 3rd place.

The next morning was the really important one, 100m Freestyle. The three of us who train in the middle lane together were all in this event. I was going in on a 1:02.15, Rory on 1:01.97 (that was the only time he ever beat me and is always reminding me), and James was going in on something well below the minute. In the heats James got the fastest with 59.40 but unfortunately got a big DQ for breaking! I got 1:00.79 and Rory got 1:00.51 so he was still marginally ahead. It was going to be a great final, the seeded times were 1:00.49, 1:00.50, 1:00.51, 1:00.51, 1:00.79 ans so on.. I was going in 5th and Rory 3rd. Lining up on the blocks I had three goals, beat Rory No. 1, break the minute No. 2 and get in the medals No. 3...

It was a great race. I can't remember who the winner was but he won in 59.55. Myself and Dylan Ryan from Ennis were joint 2nd in 1:00.10, Rory was 4th in 1:00.50. So goals 1 and 3 acheived and almost No. 2. Now it's just a case of losing that extra few kilos I'm carrying for the Channel and that 10th of a second is history. It feels great to be so close to that minute which I have been chasing for so long!

My last event for this year was the 200m I.M., not exactly my favourite event but it is compulsory so there's no point complainig about it... I'm not interested in this event at all so I didn't even know my PB. I found out later that it was 2:38, I just lined up and did the best I could. I took 3secs off to get a 2:35 which put me in 4th place s I got a nice certificate. Not too bad for somebody who doesn't do I.M. though. I think it was my Backstroke which let me down. It used to be my #1 stroke, not anymore!

I really enjoyed the whole weekend and to be honest I'm a bit disappointed that it's over for another year. My friend Chris Mintern from Sunday's Well did brilliantly, winning the swimmer of the meet award. Fermoy did very well overall, I don't have the exact number of medals and certificates but there wer loads anyway. Karen Sheehan cleaned up winning practically everything she entered, and she entered everything! Last week she came 3rd in 100m Breaststroke in the Inter-Provincials in Dublin and next week she is going to the Division 1s. Karaen is only 11 years old. Stacey Hegarty is also going to the Division 1s next week. Good Luck Karen and Stacey! We will also be missing Danielle O'Flynn next year. Dan decided to leave this year so it was her last ever outing with the Club, Bye Dan...!

So that's it for the moment. This Saturday, I am swimming from Cork City Hall to the Ocean, should take about 6 or 7hrs. We are starting at 4am. That's all I know so far so will updae on that later...

Some good progress...

The last week has been taken up with the International Long Distance Training Camp and a few other things... The camp started in Sandycove last Saturday 13th June. There were swimmers from the USA, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany and Sweden.

It is mostly two swims each day; a longer swim in the morning and a shorter swim in the evening. I wasn't able to make Monday morning but we did have the evening swim in the Blackwater. Tuesday I had Club Training in the morning and we went to Inishcarra for the evening swim. Inishcara was really nice, I can't believe I had never swam there before! Wednesday was a horrible 5am start in Sandycove. The tide was out and it was cold and stormy so we only did about 40mins. In the evening the river was too high to swim so we all did 2hrs in Knockanannig Resevoir in Fermoy and it was beautful.

I took Thursday and Friday off. Thursday I woke at 3:50am to be on the bus for 4:00am. This was for the Swimming Club trip to Oakwood in Pembrokeshire, Wales. We had a brilliant day. From the ferry in the middle of Saint George's Channel, it was easier to tell people what the English Channel would be like. I think that they were a little surprised at swimming in the open sea... It was very tiring though, two of the alds went back the next day with CBS Mitchelstown! I don't know how they did it. Friday I had a complete rest.

Saturday was very interesting... It was the 9mile Champion of Champions race in Sandycove. It consists of 5miles at 9am, 3miles at 2pm and a sprint mile at 5pm. The first leg from the Speckled Door was hard but I got there eventually. I finished third in both the second and third races. Overall I was 3hrs 48mins or something like that and in fourth place (first from outside the USA)...!The water was cold but I was looking forward to a slightly warmer day Sunday.

Saturday night I stayed at Ned's house, as did the Channel General/Queen Mother, Freda Streeter, who was brilliant to have around for the weekend. The next mornig we headed down to Sandycove for the 7hr swim. The tide was way out so there was no water to swim in, and what little water there was was freezing! But there was no point in complainig so we just had to grin and bare it... Our first feed was after 2hrs and God did I need it. I still hadn't managed to warm up at this point, it was only 11 or 12 Celsius. After that I fed every half our until5hrs 15mins... Then Ned said that we were going to only do 6hrs, that was welcome. So My last swim was a wide inside triangle and into the slipway at 6hrs 26secs. I had Qualified for the Channel! I would like to thank Noel (sorry don't know surname) who stayed with me for the last 90mins, I wouldn't have finished without you...

Also, today I went to Teach na Leanaí, a Montesorri school where I went before starting school. The children raised €200 for my swim through a charity walk we went on back in April sometime. Thanks a million everybody! I have now almost reached my fundraising target... Also, sorry for the lack of pictures, I don't think I want to remember my very cold 6hr. I will updae again next week after the Irish Age Groups Division 2 Gala in UL.

Martin Duggan Memorial Swim 2009

Last Saturday 6th June, we had the second annual Martin Duggan Memorial Swim in the River Blackwater in Fermoy. This year the swim was held under Swim Ireland insurance, so we had a good incentive to make it a great event for everyone. Apart from the record turn-out of 45 swimmers, we had a fantastic effort from a large number of volunteers.

We had 5 main boats, with two crew members each and radios, so many kayaks I lost count, 5 river-siade marshals, about 10 people who were making sandwiches, cakes, tea, coffee and many more who were just willing to help. A special thanks fo course is owed to Fermoy Rowing Club for the full use of their facilities on the day.

All the swimmers and volunteers were early so we were able to have the safety briefing on-time and have all the swimmers in the water by 2pm. But of course, at 2 o'clock on the dot, in typical Irish fashion, it started raining and all the sheets were destroyed which made things even more difficult for our brave time-keepers.

The first swimmers home were Stephen Brooks and Conor O'Brien, both 12 from Mitchelstown, who did the 1km swim. Going over the results of previous swims, we discovered that Stephen was not only the youngest participant, but also the fastest swimmer over the 1km distance. Well done lads! Both Stephen and Conor train 7hrs per week with Fermoy SC.

After a long stint out in the wind and rain, our timekeepers were finally able to go and get warmed up inside when the last swimmer home, Finbarr Heddderman, finished up after 2hrs 46mins. Last year Fin swam the English Channel in 13 and a half hours at the same temerature... Yes it was only 13.5 Celsius!

Aswell as all the refreshments, the swimmers and volunteers were also treated to a selection of my Dad's photos of Fermoy and the Blackwater and some photos of the swim on the big screen upstairs in the Rowing Club. There were a few unexpected guests who walked in thinking that this was the venue for the count of votes for the Urban Council Elections. It had been here in previous years but was moved 100m down the quay to the Youth Centre...

I would just like to thank all of the following people for their help on the day: Danny Higgins and Ken Barry of Fermoy Rowing Club for the use of the Clubhouse and the piloting of the two launches, Blackwater Sub-Aqua Club S&R Unit for their presence in a safety capacity both in the RIB and on the bank, Tony Hally for giving up his day to bring his own boat out on the river, Dónal Clancy for rounding up all the kayakers from Pheonix Kayak Club who dod such a great job and for providing the car-park of Quinn-healthcare, my Mam and Brigid Noonan and everyone else who made sandwiches and cakes etc. and finally Pádraig Barry who took hundreds of excellent photographs. Appologies to anyone who I have forgotten to mention.

I would also like to thank the Duggan family for their presence and for donating a shield which will be awarded to a swimmer every year in future...