FORTITUDE: Swimming Through Life's Challenges - How to Find Resilience and Strength in the Water
120 swimmers enter into the Blue Cave at the start of Day 3 (10.5km) of the 2023 UltraSwim33.3 - a 33.3km marathon swimming event held over 4 days and 6 stages in Montenegro 🇲🇪
Celebrating a back-2-back win in 7h32m19s with good friend Michael Lemmel and ardent Swim Smooth fan, who many of you will know as the founder of the Ötillö SwimRun
Swim Smooth Coach Sally Scaffidi (right) took an impressive 3rd in the female wetsuit in 9h24m11s between delivering a 7-day Swim Smooth Experience for 12 swimmers from around the world and then immediately diving into leading the 3-day Swim Smooth Coach Education Course at the world famous Jadran Aquatic Centre.
16 new coaches from 13 countries smiling in the sunshine at the start of Day-3 of our 3-day Swim Smooth Coach Education Course at the Jadran Aquatic Centre
I hope you have had a great week and that you felt suitably inspired by last week's blog about 87 year old John Cocks from Melbourne, Australia and his amazing 87spm cadence and 42.6s 50m swim. Your messages have been flooding in about how John has given you renewed motivation to hit the pool this week, which is great.
Racing head-2-head with the fastest wetsuit swimmers (198) and entering into the deep, dark, disused cold war submarine tunnel at the start of Day-4 and with only 2km of the 33.3km event left to race for; very much a metaphor for the dark places that swimming can often help you navigate into and out of…
Beyond Excited…
I am beyond excited to announce that after 20 weeks of dedicated, focused training of the like I haven’t achieved in over 25yrs, I managed to bring home the win at the UltraSwim33.3 for the 2nd year in a row.
This win means so much more to me than just the position - it represents the fortitude and resilience that I’ve had to rediscover in myself through the support and friendship of some of my closest friends and family, people whom I’ve drawn much inspiration and strength from over the past couple of years especially.
Sometimes in life things happen that are so utterly terrible that you never think you’ll make it through another day. But then you do. And then you do again. And slowly but surely you start to put the past behind you and focus on a much better future, one so much better than ever before for so many reasons, not least the belief that no matter how tough you find a particular race or event the reality is always choice: you choose to do this, no one is forcing a gun to your head. When you accept and embrace this in the deepest darks of mental and physical fatigue, you begin to realise that in fact all the bad stuff has prepared you above and beyond for all the good stuff that is coming your way.
Never, ever, ever give in. Find a way to keep moving forwards no matter what. Find solutions where others only see problems. Fight to keep your drive alive and you will break through. It might take an extra hour, another day, a week, month or even several years, but stay true to yourself and your values and what those values represent to others around you and you will break through.
It's all thumbs-up and smiles for Stu Brown from the Swim Smooth Perth Squad who finished 6th in the skins category in a great time of 8h31m06s to be one of only a handful of swimmers to have completed both the 2022 and 2023 events - so proud of you Stu!
So this win is not at all about the swimming - it’s got everything to do with the spirit of forging ahead, believing in yourself and drawing strength from your ability to just keep moving forwards one step at a time, or (in this case) one stroke at a time.
Just. Keep. Swimming (it accomplishes a LOT!)
