Today was supposed to be the big day. Sunday, December 6 was the day Barry and I had planned to swim from Palm Beach to Manly. This was goal no 3 in my rehab program. Alas. it was not to be. Anyway, everything has a bight side. I swam on Wednesday at Manly with flippers and snorkel, Thursday at BBC and again on Saturday at BBC. Most swims were about 2kms. Slowly getting stronger each time. But I’ve noticed the flippers are starting to make my broken knee ache. This happened when I first got back in the water after surgery. Flippers seem to be a lever that exerts pressure on your knees. Anyone using them in a rehab program after a tibial plateau fracture should be extremely careful.
Anyway, Sunday morning I decided to ditch the flippers and make an honest man of myself. Well almost, as I still have to use the snorkel. It was a great swim, although only 1km. I almost caught my nemesis, Mike Munro, but ran out of gas over the last 25 m. I only felt a little bit ashamed walking up the beach with my snorkel. I am seriously unfit. Understandable as I missed the entirety of the autumn swimming in Sydney and so far I’ve missed most of spring, so I haven’t had a serious swim for the better part of a year. Still I’m not whingeing. It was great to be in the water which was warm and clear.
What might have been. Looking north to Long Reef from Manly, Sunday afternoon December 6 about 5.30pm. This was the time we would have swum into Manly, nevertheless the conditions were probably not good enough to attempt it anyway.
Late afternoon, I went for a walk out to Fairy Bower and couldn’t help feeling wistful as I looked up the coast towards Long Reef. Beyond that lay Palm Beach. It was about 5.30pm which is roughly the time Barry and I would have been swimming in to Manly if we had successfully made the journey. Nevermind. It was pretty blowy, coming from the south, with a fair swell running over the Bower and into Manly. We probably wouldn’t have been able to do it today in those conditions. I would have postponed it. For a 30 km swim from Palm Beach we need a westerly or north-westerly wind to make it feasible. Anything from the east or south would make it way too hard.
Life goes on. I try and remember Epicurus: Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
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