I can swim that far... I think

Have you ever stood on a beach and had that thought? I can swim that far... I think. Being a swimmer and growing up right on the South Coast of Denmark, I most certainty have. And UWC students are supposed to be risk takers, right! This summer I decided that instead of just looking and wondering, I would do it. So I signed up for something I have never done before; an open water swimming competition.

The viking swim is a annual event, where swimmers from all over Denmark cross the the intake that divides the city of Roskilde in two. It is 2500 meters of freestyle in cold, salty ocean water. I had never heard about this before, but an idea and a few minutes on Google can easily get you in over your head. Literally. So for a little more than a month, I would cycle through Copenhagen every morning to punch the local swimming pool for an hour or two. My summer break was not quite as busy and challenging as my life here in Norway is, so it was very nice to have some kind of a concrete goal that I could channel my energy into. Even if that goal involved me leaving my warm and dry apartment every morning to face the Copenhagen morning traffic in wind and rain.

2500 meters in open water is a lot more than 2500 meters in a pool! I quickly realized that. The water smells different, feels different and tastes different. Not to mention the slimy sense of your hand sliding through a jellyfish. The words from 13 years of swimming instruction were forgotten in a moment when I first dived into the cold waves. Now I understood why this sport wasn't such a success in the Nordic region. Luckily it all came sneaking back after a few hounded meters. One thing amazed me all the way though. Most of my activities involve working with others, and I was expecting that this would be a solo project for a change. But all the way from the arrival at the beach and to the finishing line, there seemed to be this consensus that we were all doing this together. I think that is the way open water differs the most from any kind of swimming I have ever done before: Even though it was an individual competition, it was still a team effort. Like a floating marathon!

I still have my first swimming diploma from when I was five years old: 25 meters of freestyle. I beat that by 99 lanes this summer. In ocean water! Swimming has always been my favorite form of exercise, and I do quite a lot of swimming related stuff here in Norway. In fact, I am on volunteer lifeguard duty at the campus swimming pool as I am writing this (Don't worry. There are no one here). I also teach skin-diving every week to kids that come for sumer camp, and last year I was a swimming instructor with the swim team. But this time I wanted to write about something that I did outside of Norway. And about how RCN has taught me the value of testing the hypothesis of just how far I can actually go.


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