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Forth Bridge Swim

By CoachKev | Published 10 September 2015 | No Comments

On Sunday 6 September, my brother, Fergus and I (Cat) took part in the swim across the Forth organised by Vigour Events. We’d decided to take part back in the spring, and had resolved to do it as a charity swim to raise funds for Maggie’s Centre, who provide invaluable support to cancer patients and their families. As one of those patients in 2014, I can testify to what an amazing job they do.

One of the key lessons I learned from the event is to read the small print carefully and check the fine details (although as a lawyer I really should know this!) The race was scheduled for 9am, to coincide with the tides and closure of the shipping channel, and naively I had assumed that registration would be at 8.30am at the start point on the south side of the Forth. However, when we checked the race details late the night before, we discovered that in fact registration was at 7am in North Queensferry, at the finish point (we were then to be bussed back to the start) which meant a deeply unpopular 5.30am start.

Fortunately the weather was amazing, with not a cloud in the sky, which helped to make up for the early start, and the water wasn’t too cold either as we gathered on Hawes Pier at South Queensferry. There was a flotilla of kayaks lined up to guide us out into the Forth, and at race briefing we were warned that the race would be starting at 9.03am exactly, to catch the tide.

I don’t have huge experience of open water races, and having heard horror stories of mass starts and being swum over by other swimmers, I was pretty nervous – but with only 65 competitors (numbers were limited by the number of kayaks available) there was loads of space at the start and I got away cleanly. My brother Fergus is a member of Milngavie and Bearsden Swimming Club, and a former Scottish Masters 1500m champion so I knew there was no chance we’d be swimming together! My main aim was not to finish too near the back, but I found I was steadily passing people who had obviously gone off too fast, which was encouraging. There was very little wind, so not much swell and I only spied one lone jellyfish off to my left which I was able to avoid. As I got a bit closer to North Queensferry I realised from the positioning of the kayaks that there didn’t seem to be too many swimmers ahead of me, so I dug in and kicked for home, managing to just pull ahead of another female swimmer as I came up to the pier. The finish was a bit haphazard but in the end I was the second woman out of the water, in 33 minutes (the first was the event founder, Andrea Gellen, a veteran open water swimmer, in 32 minutes), and once I located Fergus and our team of family supporters I discovered that Fergus had romped home as the winner in 25 minutes, a whopping 3 minutes ahead of the next swimmer!!

More importantly, to date we’ve managed to raise £2130 for Maggie’s Centre which I’m immensely pleased about, and our justgiving page is still open if you’d like to donate: https://www.justgiving.com/Cat-Maclean1/