Sea Swimming in Asturias
This summer I took part in an open water swimming race called Travesía del Este in Gijón, Asturias. It's a relatively short 2.3km swim around the bay of San Lorenzo beach. One hundred and eight swimmers took part. The sea was choppy on the first long stretch across the bay, but then calmer as we turned towards the shoreline. I finished with a time of 45.12 min.
Route map of the Travesía del Este sea swim in Gijón.
Just out of the water after finishing the Travesía del Este
I’ve been swimming my entire life. As a child growing up in Dublin in the 1970’s I was taught to swim - along with thousands of other kids - by the much loved Mr. O'Connell in the CRC swimming pool in Clontarf. I then joined the Guinness swimming club in Saint James's Gate and swam with them for a few years. I stopped swimming competitively when I was about thirteen. At that time I had entered Mount Temple Comprehensive School where I was playing on the rugby and field hockey teams.
Yet swimming remained a part of me, and I got back into it when I was in my twenties, training in the Piscina Universitaria in Oviedo, where I was living at the time.
I started sea swimming while working as a lifeguard on Caravia beach in Asturias in the summer of 1997. That year I did my first Travesía del Musel in Gijón. This is a tough 3.8km swim in the bay of Gijón, starting at the Musel dock then out across the open harbour where the water is cold and can be very rough, until reaching the shelter of the marina and the finish line at the old fish market. Competitors wear short swimsuits. Neoprene suits are permitted but are frowned upon, and swimmers wearing them are ineligible for prizes. I used to do the race every year while I lived in Asturias, and have gone back to do it numerous times since moving to Barcelona in 2001.
The Caravia lifeguard service, summer 1997.
After the 2007 Travesía del Musel with Frank Delgado, owner of Ca Beleño pub and my proud sponsor.
Other races I've done include the Travesía de San Lorenzo, the Travesía de las Playas and the Travesía de Poniente.
However the longest and hardest by far is the now legendary Candás to Gijón swimming race. Candás is a fishing village to the west of Gijón. The 13km race involved swimming from Candás beach out across open sea for 8km roughly parallel to the coastline, then rounding the tip of the long west pier before crossing Gijón harbour and reaching the old fish market. At the time it was the longest race on the Spanish open water circuit. I did it in the year 1998.
It was a windy, cloudy day and the first 8km were brutally hard, with rough, choppy water and the current against us. With no sun on our backs it got harder and harder to stay warm. I had coated myself with pig fat but could feel the hypothermia creeping through my body, my fingers and hands going slowly numb. One by one competitors began to abandon the race, climbing aboard the safety boats. This was by far my biggest ever endurance event and I discovered a stubborn determination and mental resilience which I didn’t know I possessed. As the evening drew on and the sea conditions worsened - at one stretch the waves reached two metres - the organisers approached those of us still in the water and suggested that the race be called off. I said that unless they cancelled it I was going to continue. I hadn't come that far and gone through that much hardship to throw it all away.
After three and a half hours of swimming (mostly alone), I rounded the tip of the west pier and began crossing the harbour. At this point I knew the worst was over and I was going to make it. An hour and a half later I reached the finish line, in second place with a time of 4hrs45min. Of the thirty three swimmers who started, only six of us finished, the last one arriving at nightfall. A few years later the race was discontinued.
Second place in the 1998 Candás to Gijón swimming race.
Of all my sporting achievements this is the one I am most proud of. It also taught me two valuable lessons. One about myself - that I possess mental resilience and determination. One about training - in preparation for Candás-Gijón I had swum distances of up to 5km in open water, but what I had to swim on the day was vastly superior and I was not well prepared. The punishment I put my body through in order to finish the race left me with a damaged shoulder that took months to recover. Determination and grit are all very well on the day, but there is no substitute for thorough preparation. This is a bit of wisdom that I always pass on to my clients.