dock2dock

five thousand metres across the royal docks, saturday 2026-09-12. rolling start, eighteen degree water, four legs, no wall to push off once. about an hour and thirty six minutes, and no official time, because the tag tore off my ankle on the third leg. i have decided to find that funny.

the numbers, the photographs, and the eight things i wrote down as unknown in august so they could be checked afterwards rather than quietly dropped.

the mills, and the field going past. fourteen seconds, on a loop.

the numbers

A swimmer in a wetsuit and orange cap under a red inflatable finish arch, holding up a medal, other finishers behind. — under the arch. medal on, no time: the tag came off on the third leg.

distance: 5,000 m, four legs
time: about 1:36. unofficial: the timing tag came off on leg three
water: 18 °c, a new wetsuit, no warmup
start: rolling. you walk in when your wave is called and the clock is already going
first turn: left foot cramp. rolled onto my back, stretched it out, carried on
last kilometre: the hardest water of the day: the most open stretch, into the wind, with nothing left to fuel it
level water: £500 raised of a £500 target. real one-to-one lesson time for children who would otherwise not be taught

A person in a club polo shirt leaning on a dock railing under a clear sky, the water and the far bank behind, before the swim.

Grey dock water in front of the Millennium Mills, a string of orange and yellow tow floats marking swimmers in the distance.

A long stretch of grey dock water under a heavy sky, apartment blocks on the left, cranes far off on the right.

the morning of. shuffling in from pontoon dock, still dry, still in the club shirt.

a line of floats where the swimmers are.

the water, the morning of. no wall at either end of it.

what the dock answered

seven were open on friday. the dock answered five, left two, and turned one into a different question.

answered

1 how often to sight, and what it costs the stroke. far more often than i planned. a dock has no black line and the buoys are small, so the head came up a lot, and every look is a half stroke of hips dropping. sighting less is not available on a dock. sighting better is a skill, and i do not have it yet.
2 whether to wear a wetsuit. yes. bought one rather than hired one, and swam the whole thing in it. eighteen degrees for an hour and a half is not a skins question for me yet.
3 how to feed on the move, or whether it is needed over 5km. once, at halfway, two electrolyte gels, treading water. then nothing. that carried the third leg and most of its pace. it did not carry the fourth, which is a fuelling answer as much as a wind one.
4 what a rolling start does to pacing. there is no warmup. the race is the warmup. the first kilometre gets paid for by a shoulder that wanted ten more minutes on the band, and it was the worst kilometre of the day for exactly that reason.
6 how far off line i drift when nothing corrects me. the one i did not write down: a course has four legs and wind has a direction. legs two and three were assisted. i spent both of them believing i was fitter than i am. leg four was the bill: the most open water of the day, into the wind, on empty, and the hardest kilometre i have swum.

the wrong question

5 how cold a september dock is at the ninety minute mark. by ninety minutes the water is a fact about the day. the question that mattered was ninety seconds: that is when the cold decides whether your breathing is yours.

still open

both of these were written for a longer, colder swim than the one that happened. an hour and thirty six tested neither, and neither is being marked answered because the day went well.

7what my stroke does after two hours without a push-off to hide in.
8what four hours of cut-off feels like to someone whose races last twenty six seconds.

A crowd of swimmers in wetsuits and orange caps standing on the dockside waiting, a road bridge behind them.

Swimmers in wetsuits and orange caps standing in a loose group on the dockside, goggles up, tow floats clipped on.

A yellow start flag on the dockside, swimmers in orange caps filing towards the water past a marshal.

the field, in orange caps, waiting to be called.

goggles up, floats on, nobody in yet.

rolling start. you walk in when your wave is called and the clock is already going.

what carried it

three things held on saturday, and none of them were fitness.

i the unknowns were written down before they could be answered. eight of them, published in august with a date on. that is why saturday produced a finding and not a story.
ii the record survived the plan failing. the four-act live drop from the camp collapsed on both will and means. the debrief shipped anyway, three weeks late, saying so. a log that only records successes is a brochure.
iii the constraints were enforced by something other than intention. the guardrails on this site caught copy no person had read. when the checks turned out to be blind to a whole route, that went in the log too.

A swimmer with a medal round their neck, wetsuit peeled to the waist, one thumb up and the medal held in the other hand, in front of a white Dock2Dock banner under a concrete flyover. — the banner shot. wetsuit half off, medal on, cold.

write down what you do not know before you test it. keep the record when the plan fails. let the checks be something other than good intentions. a swim teacher needs the same three habits, and this journal has had almost no teaching in it.

next, then: how people are taught to swim, and why the order is the whole thing. no swim in it.

The derelict Millennium Mills building across grey dock water, a scattered line of swimmers and orange tow floats crossing the foreground.

the mills, and the field going past them.