Midmar Mile - 13 Feb 2011

The sixth swim of my Turning the Tide campaign was the Midmar Mile in South Africa, the world's biggest competitive open water swim. This 2011 line-up of entrants for the record-breaking event included a bevvy of international Olympians, a soon-to-be princess of Monaco in the form of South Africa's Charlene Wittstock along with top open water swimmers from all over the world. The swimmers converged on the Midmar Dam on 13-14 February 2011 to take on the world-renowned 'Mile'.

I was one of 17,000 swimmers tswimming the one-mile course across the Midmar Dam, an hour's drive north from Durban. Under scorching African sunshine, I made up part of the human soup completing the course in just over 35 minutes and I'd like to express huge thanks to Phil for putting me up and to Craig, Taryn and Erin for being such a great support team. I'm waiting for the full results to be posted online to find out whether I managed to thrash the future Princess of Monaco, but as a former Olympian herself, I suspect not!

On a very sad note, a 45-year-old South African went missing on Saturday whilst swimmng 'The Mile' and is presumed dead although his body had not been recovered from the Dam when I swam on Sunday morning. With so many peopletaking part of all abilities it is almost inevitable that there will be incidents, but it is tragic for a fellow swimmer to be lost in such circumstances and my thoughts are with his finacee, family and friends.

A unique feature of the race is that while the distance covered is always a mile, depending on rainfall and the water levels in the dam, the distance swum varies from year to year. In years with poor rainfall, competitors are subject to the infamous Midmar sprint start - a bedlam of bodies sprinting across the muddy lake-shore and through the shallows until the water is deep enough to swim. In order to handle the vast number of competitors, the swimmers strike out in several groups at two-minute intervals in eight batches over two days; the group division is based on a qualifying time in a previous event, with the fastest group leaving first.

Multiple winner South-Africa born Brit Keri-Anne Payne defended her title in breath-taking style in just over 18 minutes amongst a strong line-up of British, Hungarian and German swimmers.

In a preview of the event a leading open water swimming commentator from the US wrote: "The brits have arrived and they are looking lean, fit and fast." I'm assuming he wasn't referring to me as I was in a rather stylish Morrocan bar in Durban at the time working my way down the happy hour cocktail list working my way down from the watermelon daiquiris to the apple and lychee mojitos!