Rapidly approaching 42 and frustrated with knee and back injuries every time I just begin to get into shape, I buckled down the last 5 months and started going to the World Class Gym and swimming at the Csazar Baths with Kevin Jackson. Kevin had this crazy idea to do the Balaton Swim as our fitness goal. I am about 8kg over weight, and though I used to be a championship swimmer, it was 30 years ago. When we started swimming, I thought I would pass out after just a few 25m laps. Slowly, as I became more fit, the Balaton Swim idea grew on me. Simon Saunders, formerly director of Gold's Gym in Budapest immediately offered himself as our free personal trainer, and helped me a lot with some stretching exercises.  One day in the pool I remembered that as part of the YMCA Hockomock Hammerheads (now Hay Lightning), we used fundraise by doing a Mile Swim for pledges. Why not try this in Hungary ? Kevin and I agreed to raise money for the Fair Trade Campaign, and began advertising our swim.  We raised over 90000 forint! Next year we want to put a team of swimmers together to take pledges for Fair Trade – “Good Strokes for Good Folks.”

The Balaton Swim is one of the better organized events in Hungary. Even so, there could be some improvements. One of the things you can do to save yourself a few minutes is to pre-register on the webpage and bring the print-out with the barcode with you. This saves you one stop in the registration process. We started in Balaton Boglar and took the free ferry across to Revfulop with Kevin’s family, who then took the ferry back across with our shoes and things to meet us when we came out of the water, Thanks Szlivi! We ended up paying for the ferry, but it is “free” if you check-in a bag. This is supposedly to prevent people from non-participants from taking advantage of the free ferry ride, but it was an enormously frustrating start for me after waiting in line for our free ferry ticket for nothing, since we had nothing to check-in.  However, what I learned early on in the pool was that it is all a mind game – everything, the arch cramps to the idiotic rules just have to be swum through.  The next stage was a blood pressure check, 120/80 for the both of us.  After a roundabout route we found our way to the starting gate. With a quick scan of the barcode on our wrist bracelets we hit the water! And I immediately sunk knee-deep into mud and slime.  

Boats are strung all across the 5.2km stretch so it gives you something to navigate by. Even so, I found myself weaving from side to side and as a result god-only-knows how many kilometers I really did. Buoys mark off the kilometers, but for some reason the small buoys are 500m ahead of the real distance marked by the large buoys. When I got to 3.5km (according to the small buoy) , I felt that I was doing well, and only a bit to go…until I hit the big buoy and saw to my confusion that I had only gone 3km. The middle of the lake was quite choppy, but big waves that we could at least swim through. Unlike last week when they rightfully cancelled the race – when the waves were small but so close together it felt like you were getting pummeled in the face by a boxer on a punching bag. I felt it was slow going until I hit the 4km mark, but then the fifth kilometer seemed to fly by. The last 400m never seemed to end, and the last 200m had to be walked because the lake was so shallow. With rubbery legs I walked through the finishing gate and completed the swim in 2 hours 8 minutes freestyle, while Kevin did it in 2 hours 33 minutes breaststroke. The fastest of the 9200 swimmers this year completed the swim in 1 hour 8 minutes. Kevin and I really appreciate your support, and thank you for your contributions to the Fair Trade Campaign. I also want to thank Kevin for getting me to go to the gym, start swimming again, and compete in this fun event. Looking forward to next year, a few kilos lighter and a few minutes faster!