After 'retiring' from indoor climbing I was on the hunt for another sport to get involved in. Ultimately, I decided on long distance swimming. The other candidates were: Kickboxing (Something I've done on and off since early teens) Grappling (Strong interest but never trained consistently) Running (Who wouldn't want to be involved in a casual, social Sunday run club and have a marathon to work towards every 6-8 months?) All good options. Really. But for some reason I wanted something a little bit more inconvenient, not necessarily harder because I think all of these can be extremely hard. But something a bit more contemplative, something that pushes on the boundaries of my agency. It's nice to have a sport that is so far removed from your reality that practicing it also means practicing your ability to choose something and simply go for it. To me, that is the essence of long-distance swimming. The way I want to practice this sport, is to go out in the world and find these great bodies of water, find people willing to indulge you, who can support you, train, and then go out and cross it. 5 mile swims, 10 mile swims, ultimately working up to swimming between islands, between countries. As far as I can tell, we are not built for this type of endeavour. I've heard that there is a book called "Born to Run" which is about how humans really are built to tread ground -- in fact it's likely how we hunted. Our straight postures, our ability to carry water, food, track our prey and communicate with others meant we could essentially just outrun anything over a long enough period. Unfortunately, we left the water quite some time ago. Although we are still equipped with the mammalian dive reflex, an ancient mechanism that slows our heart, keeps blood in the right places and keeps us calm when submerged underwater, we don't have much else to glide around in water. No webbing to speak of. Our only advantage is our ability to plan, and to persevere. The famous distance swimmer Diana Nyad said that swimming is a sport for people who believe in perseverance as a great human quality. What better than a sport that trains it directly? And so I made my choice. In high school I had done some open water swims and was on the team, so it's not completely out of nowhere. My first goal is a crossing of the Wannsee, an 11km (7 mile) swim from top to bottom of Berlin's most important lake. This strikes me as a good choice for two reasons. The first is that the water quality is monitored, and the second is that at any of the points above I would be able to exit if needed. I think for a first swim above marathon distance (in swimming, a marathon is 10,000 meters) this is a good idea. I feel that I'm only just beginning and so I don't have much to say on this topic right now, other than that I'm happy with my choice and hope to learn as much as I can.