A swim with benefits

Last Saturday "Team Stevens" competed in an(other) ocean swim event, this time at Mt Maunganui. It was a good weekend away with another family who were also swimming.

The girls entered the 200m Ocean Kids event. Ruby was actually just outside the age cut-off but I tweaked her birth date on the entry as I didn't think she was confident to swim in the 300m Give It A Go event without any practice runs. It wasn't so much the distance but the fact they actually have to swim out to deep water. As it turned out, the 200m kids event was quite a challenge. On the day, the surf was really dumping on the shore which meant the kids had to swim through them and out to deeper water anyway. This  was enough to put some kids (and parents off) and I must say I was a bit nervous too until Steve decided to swim it with them. I still half expected that they might pull out half way through the swim but they didn't.

The girls then had the rest of the morning to play on the beach and wait for Steve and I to do our swims. They managed to score a cap, towel and drink bottle from one of the sponsors and have their photo taken for the local newspaper which they were pretty chuffed about.

Next up it was Helen and I. We did the 1000km Step It Up event. The conditions were quite deceiving. I thought it would be quite a nice swim once we got through the breakers but I wasn't prepared for the swell. Half way through the swim I rolled over onto my back to have a bit of a break which made my head spin and my stomach churn. It was quite a hard slog and I questioned why I was doing it several times throughout the swim. But of course, when you've finished and recovered it is quite a good feeling and then you start thinking about maybe doing another one.

Everyone knows Steve is the veteran swimmer in our family. He always enters the I'm Going Long event without giving it a second thought. This time it was 2.6km. He finished well.

With everyone's events finished, we headed back to our unit for some lunch before the results presentation. Even though I knew I didn't get a place, I was feeling lucky and was keen to get to the presentation for my chance at a spot prize. And would you believe my name was called out! I won a 12 month subscription to North and South magazine. I was pretty happy with that, until... Eadie's name was called out. She won a wetsuit! The spot prize I'd been longing for. I tried trading my magazine subscription for the wetsuit but she didn't seem too enthusiastic. The wetsuit is worth about NZ$800 – quite a significant prize and not necessarily one that a kid is going to get the most value from. So... Steve and I discussed it and we came up with this win-win-win option:

• Steve will get the new wetsuit as he is going to get the most use out of it
• I will get his old wetsuit (I have worn it before and it fits well enough)
• We will buy Eadie a new bike which she will get more use from than a wetsuit (and just in time for the Weet-bix Tryathlon next week).

All in all, I think it was a very worthwhile swim.