17,109.8 km to belfast
Forty lengths. 1.2 km.
I've swum at Bronte most mornings since 1994 and never counted anything except bluebottles. Lachie gave me one of his old exercise books for it, red cover, his name crossed out on the front. Page one:
13/3/17 40 1.2 17,109.8
It's an old pool, cut into the rocks in the 1880s. They say the Australian crawl got its name here, from a boy called Alick Wickham thrashing up and down it. Nobody will be naming a stroke after mine.
The water was 22. That's according to Vic, who is seventy-eight and lowers a thermometer on a string off the wall every morning like he's fishing for something. Nobody asked him to. Nobody would dare ask him to stop.
He wanted to know what I was writing in the book. I said the distance to Belfast.
"Long way to go for a pint," Vic said.