I stopped by a master’s pool team in Christchurch, and asked around if anybody knew of any local open water groups. The coach looked up on Facebook and confirmed the day and time for the local group.

I told my friend Amanda who came with me that we’d probably be in for 45 minutes to an hour? The folks we talked to seemed pretty casual about it.

Well, it ended up being 2hr9min. I didn’t bring any feeds, and luckily the water was warm enough that it wasn’t a problem.

Afterwords, we tagged along to lunch with the group in Lyttleton and I found out that one of the folks I was swimming with was Simon Olliver, a very accomplished swimmer himself.

Open water swimming really is a small world sometimes!