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I’m not letting on a big secret when I say that the Ślo-Crikvenica Swim Marathon, held every August 15th, has become the core swimming event of my year. With beautiful surroundings, friendly and professional organization and a very good returning swimming “team”, it is one of the most frequently organized traditional “coast to coast” swims in the world. This was my third time this year and – admittedly, only quietly – I set the goal of reducing my time on the 3,500m “bay” distance to under an hour.
Already in early spring, I had arranged everything so that at a quarter past eight on the morning of the 15th, I had only one kilometer to go from the starting point. Of course, I missed breakfast and instead refueled with two granola bars. After receiving the starting number, I met several Italian swimmers who had participated in the previous competition in Istres and talked to them. There was also talk of swimming across Lake Balaton, and they were dumbfounded to hear that more than 5,000 people often participated. Indeed, in terms of speed, the average was far below that of the swimmers in the CRO-CUP (Croatian Cup) competition.
Around nine o’clock, as the boat was heading to the other side, I made some final changes to my gear: I asked a fellow athlete for some Vaseline so the salt water wouldn’t corrode my armpits, I adjusted the placement of the chips on my hands (inside out) so the edges of the Velcro wouldn’t cut my skin, and I wore a blue hat because I knew most of the heat was lost through the head and I didn’t want to “freeze” like I had two days before.
At the beginning I met the growing Hungarian team who entered this wonderful competition with the Úszni Kék blog. I hope you still have followers!
After jumping into the water, I felt that the water would not be so cold, and I swam to the starting point confidently, where a real crowd had already gathered. The referee tried to control the swimmers temporarily, but at ten o’clock the race began. I knew I should not start too much, lest my muscles stiffen after five hundred meters.
Even so, I was already ahead of many swimmers when we reached the protruding rock steps and walked towards the Crikvenica church tower. By the way, the water transparency was a little worse than in previous years, but you could still see 5-6 meters underwater.
There is another benefit to having a lot of people starting a race like this at the same time. Just like road cycling, puddles of water form here and you can even cool off by swimming in the “foot water” of other swimmers. I did the same thing on the turn: I moved forward and sandwiched myself between two swimmers.
As I was swimming in the open water, I noticed that the swimmers in front of me were starting to break away from the buoys, so I started to overtake them. This was risky because it took more effort than sticking with the breakaway, and the group was already 20-30 meters ahead of me, but I knew I had to catch up if I didn’t want to fall further behind. After about a 3-4 minute “sprint”, I reached the bowl so I could rest again.
My cap slipped off my head a few times due to the pace of the feet swimming in front of me (and probably the Vaseline), so in the end I decided to take it off and hide the silicone cap in my pants. The insulating capabilities weren’t needed anyway. The boys dragged horribly again during the operation, but I pulled myself together. I started to overtake twice, but I didn’t feel I could get a big lead, so now I swam with them to the finish. My time actually came in under an hour: 59:55, which was an incredible joy for me. I felt that finally, for the first time, I was able to compete BroadCast Unitedligently and “earn a spot” and I wasn’t just trying to survive.
After the race we were served some bean stew and what’s more: free white wine awaited the swimmers. Let’s just say that they didn’t stand it much except for me, the Italians even gave me a disapproving look, but I think it was more of a joke. The Crikvenica swim also went well this year and was a lot of fun!
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