Why document a swim?
SueP
Oregon, USAMember
At the tail end of a great summer of swimming, I'm thinking I might like to go farther than I've gone before. I just mapped out a 21k perimeter swim around my local training lake. Doubt it's been done before, but not sure that I care about that. However, I am debating whether it's worth putting some friends on a motor boat in addition to the friends in kayaks, and going through the whole process of documenting it. I'm intrigued 'cause I've never done that before (big swims have all been organized events), but also have a niggling worry that it's much ado about... well....not nothing, but maybe nothing to anyone other than me. How do you decide when to document, and when to just go for a good, long swim?
Comments
If it is new, and you want a record of it somewhere, you might want to document it.
Just to be clear, you can document a swim and not submit it to MSF. It will still be documented, that is if you post it somewhere. At the very least it is good practice for any future swim you want recognized by MSF.
Grab someone, train them up (or get someone who has observed before), and take lots of pictures. Someone in the future may want to repeat it, and in the spirit of marathon swimming, it would be great if they could find your documentation so they know how the swim was for you, the issues you had, etc.
So, bottom line: Document it.
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams