Sundown Swimathon

Sundown Swimathon was an event held by NTU lifesaving corp for Charity. And i was there! Yup! The swim event started out at with dinner at 8pm, and the briefing at 8.45pm. We were flagged off at 10pm for the start of the swim. Supposed to last till 7am in the morning. So it was a 9hr swim session. We registered ourselves as the Tanjong Beach Swim Team, with team members from Trifam.

Team Tanjong Beach (left to right): Chen Munn, Me, Ling Er, Andy, Toh Min

Our group was really a mix a match really. And prior to the event, we had two swimmers pull out. Luckily for us, Andy and Ling Er stepped up to the challenge if not, we would not have been able to take part at all. So the plan was for us to take turns to swim and finish as many laps as possible. Our initial target was to do 20km as a team, that means each of us were supposed to do 4km. Our primary aim was to complete the event and have fun! We were definitely not a very competitive team.
It was a first experience for all of us, swimming through the night, and doing so many laps in one session. But we're glad we completed it and all had fun.
Started out with doing 500m sets. So it was 10 laps each, before the next swimmer takes over. Munn started as the first swimmer, Ling Er carried on, then Toh Min, Myself and finally Andy. The first 10 laps was probably everyone's slowest split. But we took it as a warm up and carried on. We got better and by the time it was 00:30hrs, we had completed 69 laps between us. That worked out to about 6.9km. At that time, there was a leaderboard, and we were 3rd from below. There was a total of 16 teams that took part, so we were 14th at 00:30hrs. And as the night wore on, many were starting to tire. We were starting to get hit by the Zzzz monster when it was close to 3am. And at 3am, the next set of laps were being counted. We were still 3rd from the back and we managed to do 68 more laps in that 2 1/2 hrs. So at that time, we already knew we were on target to complete the goal which we had set for ourselves.
And i'm super proud of my team. Coz in the next 2 1/2 hrs when everyone was super tired and really struggling to keep awake, we managed to up our pace and did even more laps. We did change our strategy though, as we noticed that it was getting colder and some were being to feel more tired. So, we did sets of 400m, then 300m then 200m. And we played around with the numbers so that it would not be as boring. And finally, when 7am came, our team as a whole had completed 24.4km. Ahead of the target we had set for ourselves. Munn, Ling Er and myself had swam 5km each and Andy and Toh Min both did 4.7km. So, everyone had managed to swim more laps then when we had targeted. Our final position was 13 out of 16 teams!


Pictures courtesy of Janice our only supporter who doubled up as our photographer!

I had a great time at the swimathon. It surely was an experience for me and for some of the other team members. Swimming at night is no joke. The air was cold, especially since it has been raining for the last week. The water was cold at 2am in the morning. We were not only fighting with muscle fatigue, we had to fight the Zzzz monster off. And we still managed to do better then our set target. Great job guys!
Some things i would probably like to improve on for myself is my swim technique and also my endurance underwater. But for now, a good job well done everyone!