My Best Ocean Photo.

I had lots of ocean photos to choose from, this one is not the most spectacular but it is one of the most important to me. It is just off Greenmount Beach right at the bottom end of the Gold Coast in Queensland. It is a really good piece of Ocean because it has a big head land and is usually a bit calmer than a lot of the other open beaches nearby. Unfortunately, it was a bit choppy on this day. The suburb is Coolangatta which is a bit less hectic than the northern end of the Gold Coast on the horizon.

Most of all it is special because I am in the photo swimming! @consciouscat took it while I was building up time swimming in open water, I was training for an ironman triathlon event. I learnt to swim as a child in the local pool then never really touched it again until I did a few short triathlons in my early 20s. I quicky gave up, getting too many flat tyres on the bike and swallowing to much water during the swims.

Thirty years later I starting to get a bit more spare time and I was getting lots of running injuries so I thought I would give it another try. Long distance ironman events were becoming all the rage. A quality bicycle made the cycling easier but the swim leg always had me worried. A bad 3.8km open water swim could ruin my day before I even got to the bike or run.

This time I stuck it out and tried to do 2kms, 2 to 3 time each week even in winter, mostly in a 50-meter pool. It took years to finally really get the hang of it and glide through the water instead of fighting and thrashing about. In the end, instead of being worried about the water it ended up my favorite part.