Swims: experience and laps categories

The Carpe swim club met today for a winter swim at the Hotel Intercontintal on Michigan Avenue. The Fitness Center floor there is really lovely, and we were able to swim laps and do a bit of hanging out in the “junior olympic” sized pool. And afterwards we had some good chaise longue time where we discussed the kinds of topics that in summer we’d cover on the beach: local politics, TV shows, and recent adventures.

So, to expand on some of our recent adventures, Colette and John have done such a thorough job of detailing our trip to Australia, this may be a bit repetitive. But I wanted to give a shout out to some themes of our stay in Sydney, starting with a project I undertook while there – exploring as many swim options as I could fit in. The final count was 14 swim experiences, or “swims”. I counted swims as a plunge in a particular, named body of water or location. Rockpools with adjacent beaches were counted separately. Jumping in waves at a beach counts.

I’ve classified the swims as being in one of 4 categories: experiences, swimming laps, rockpools and beaches. (Much of the thinking on this was done on our return flight! When I had some time to think a lot about this stuff!) Today I’ll review and rate the experiences and laps categories. Note the callback to today’s swim at Intercontinental, which I think could count as laps AND an experience!

Experiences: Number 1 – area between Manly and Shelley beaches. This area is full of fish and all kinds of sea flora. It’s tricky to even get in the water from the pier but I had an amazing swim support team there with Colette and Rory! We hung around for a while watching how other swimmers used some well positioned grips to get in and out. Major bonus points for the fact that snorkeling in a world class city is pretty unique! This experience also got a bit of a post-swim “wow that was good timing” bump because a) Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were spotted in Manly the day before and b) about a week later a bull shark attacked a dolphin at Manly!

Close second on the experience category was swimming in the harbor near Chowder Bay, from Gordon’s boat. The whole day was super delightful – Gordon picked us up from Rose Bay and we went across the harbor to near Chowder Bay and dropped anchor there. Then he made us an amazing lunch with salmon – all cooked in the boat’s kitchen! And we got a couple of swims in, including some lounging on the foam carpet floaty thing that’s attached to the boat. There was some concern about sharks even though apparently sharks in the harbor don’t have teeth??? Did I fall for that? The water was really nice, and just being out there rather than by the coast made the swim itself very special. It was also great to see Gordon and Heathcliff (the fluffy dog) again, meet Steph and the two girls (who didn’t get into the photos here!) and see Sydney from the water.

Laps: Bondi Icebergs number one, hands down. 50 meter rock pool but set up for lane swimming (hence the laps category) with a stunningly gorgeous view. Excellent facilities too, $8 to swim, hot showers, lockers, obligatory Sydney cafe on site. Huge thanks to Colette for keeping this on my agenda even until the last morning of our trip and Colman for an early morning drive to make this happen!

Sometimes projects like this turn up some real surprises. Online reviews of best pools in Sydney rave about the MacCallum pool on the harbor near Cremorne Reserve. I took the ferry there to check it out and while it has a lovely view of the city and is cutesy for sure, there was no changing area I could see and also it’s just so small I didn’t think worth getting in! Instead I caught the next ferry back to Circular Quay and walked to Andrew Boy Charleton.

Locations mentioned above shown here (except Gunyama and Bondi) and labelled in red.