Sad News....Varne Ridge Holiday Park, Honor Organization, Great Britain, 2015

It was sold in 2021 and all the plaques were removed and lost. Many will feel a big loss.

Facebook post Mark Ransom (20021-09-18). View the original post to see the pictures!

A few days ago our attempt at a six person relay swim to the Isles of Scilly was almost called off due to stormy weather travelling across the Atlantic and threatening to put a stop to our plans of achieving a world first open water swim. Luckily as the days passed, the forecast started to change for the better and before we knew it we were down in Penzance awaiting the biggest challenge of our lives.

There are innumerable ways to optimally train for an open water swim. Here is a brief how-to of the open water swimming world:

The first step is to ask yourself several questions and determine the answers as specifically as you can:

1. What type of open water swim do you plan to do?
2. Where is your open water swim?
3. What are the expected conditions of your swim?
4. Can you expect to encounter marine life?
5. Will you have a support team helping you?
6. What kind of swim will be do?
7. Where can you train?
8. How motivated are you?

The first person to swim the English Channel was not Captain Webb. It was an American adventurer called Captain Paul Boyton three months earlier. But because he wore a life preserving inflatable suit he could not be classed as swimming unaided so history now honours Captain Webb as the first.Boyton crossed from Boulogne to Fan Bay, St Margaret's-at-Cliffe, in May 1875, taking 23-and-a-half hours and meeting a porpoise four miles from Dover. Details are in a permanent exhibition recently opened at Dover Museum, charting the history of Channel swimming.

A brief guide to James Clear’s Atomic Habits for outdoor swimmers

n Atomic Habits, James Clear explains how progress in anything is made through the accumulation of small gains. In essence, your habits, how you act day to day, determines where you end up. Atomic Habits is a guide to making it easy to adopt and stick to good habits, and eliminate bad ones.

After reading the book recently, I wondered how you might apply James’s ideas to outdoor swimming.

2020 International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame Induction Virtual Ceremonies 

Almost one in five people lack the protein α-aktinin-3 in their muscle fiber. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now show that more of the skeletal muscle of these individuals comprises slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are more durable and energy-efficient and provide better tolerance to low temperatures than fast-twitch muscle fibers. The results are published in the scientific journal The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Skeletal muscle comprises fast-twitch (white) fibers that fatigue quickly and slow-twitch (red) fibers that are more resistant to fatigue. The protein α-aktinin-3, which is found only in fast-twitch fibers, is absent in almost 20 percent of people – almost 1.5 billion individuals – due to a mutation in the gene that codes for it. In evolutionary terms, the presence of the mutated gene increased when humans migrated from Africa to the colder climates of central and northern Europe.