stephan mantler

Bad Radkersburg 24 hour swim

As mentioned before, I supported Nicole at the 24 hour swim event at the Parktherme Bad Radkersburg. Which happened to be on her birthday.

All in all, I must say that I am very happy (and proud) how everything worked out, especially since this was Nicole’s first 24 hour swim event. That made it a bit difficult to predict what would happen and schedule everything, but she settled into a nice rhythm very quickly, and after a little while also started to drink as often as she should. People often forget to drink when they are swimming, which can lead to cramps fairly quickly – as happened to Maria, another 24h solo swimmer that I ‘adopted’ after it turned out that she didn’t have any support staff.

The usual mess in the crowded pool was better with the solo swimmers than in the relay lanes.. but after a while people started to switch lanes, and the chaos spread to all the other lanes. Our plan was to try to swim without long breaks, and enjoy the relative peace between 2 and 5am before having a longer pause in the morning.

We also followed that plan fairly well; of course muscular and mental fatigue set in after a while – also with me – but until 5am everything was going along very nicely… however, then things started to deteriorate fairly quickly; I started taking mini-naps (even between taking lap splits, sleeping for a minute or two!) whenever possible, and Nicoles shoulder started to develop sharp pains due to swimming with a wetsuit (which she wasn’t used to). All in all, the swimming intervals grew shorted and the recovery breaks more frequent, until we decided that about 20 hours and almost 580 lengths – so close to 30km! – were enough. There wasn’t really a reason for Nicole to ruin herself entirely to maybe keep her 6th place, so we called it quits a few hours early.

All told, it was a terrific event.. even though I’ll admit that supporting a solo swimmer isn’t really a walk in the park and almost as hard as swimming myself. Especially when trying to shoot a few photos as well…

I am an open water swimming reporter from Huntington Beach, California, U.S.A. I have never heard about this 24-hour race, but I would like to know more. I am interested in both how Nicole prepared for the race and what were the hardest parts of her swim — and how difficult it is for a trainer/coach. I would like to share this information with the readers of http://www.10Kswimmer.com and http://www.10Kswim.com. Thank you very much for sharing this information.