Mari Rabie – Blog

Stellenbosch is a stunning little university town set in the heart of the Cape Winelands (the Western Cape of South Africa). Apart from its overwhelmingly beautiful setting, it also becomes a buzzing training base for multiple international professional athletes during summer.

I was lucky enough to grow up in Stellenbosch here and guess that the exposure to exceptional athletes from a young age attracted me to pursuing an athletic career. It is not uncommon to go to the pool, track or gym and find 5-6 Olympians doing what Olympians do, ie train. It is also really inspiring to have both male and female Beijing Triathlon gold medallist training in Stellenbosch this summer.

Luckily I am healthy now and back into full training, with a 5am start to most days and so tired that I struggle to stay awake past 9pm. I am back training with my old swimming squad, alongside the current 1500m Freestyle Commonwealth Games silver medallist. Needless to say my arms are in a constant state of shock. Riding and running has just involved long miles, which is a pleasure in the warm South African sun.

At the moment we are working setting a strong solid base for the hard intensity that is awaiting me in the New Year and I am settling, mostly with protesting muscles, into my life of swim, bike, run, eat, sleep.

On Sunday 25 September I swam the English Channel with five of my friends.

We arrived at a cold Dover marina full of excitement early in the morning, but inspired very little confidence in the brawny boat crew of ocean swimmers. Our captain took one sceptical look at us said “You're very ... small. Are you sure you're ocean swimmers?" We did our best to hide our terror behind determined indignation as we assured him we would make it.

I set off from the beach at Shakespeare Bay with flashing lights affixed to my cap for visibility in the eerie morning darkness. My first leg was mostly swam in complete darkness and I regretted having read Shark attacks in Southern Africa (a book not only describing attacks in depth, but also providing detailed photographs) while at home in August.

The captain told me that I was fearless; he was obviously oblivious to my silent screams whenever I swam into seaweed. For the rest of the day I had acquired the nickname of ‘rough and toughie’, I am still trying to work out if that is a compliment or not. As my hour came to an end we were 2.2 miles from Dover, a feat declared by a crew member to be 'absolutely brilliant'. The captain joked that at this rate we'd need to make a lunch reservation in Calais.

Every team member swam for an hour at a time. We all swam a second time and I was the only one of us to swim a third time, covering a distance of 3.7km in my last hour to land us on the beach in France 12 hours and 59 minutes after we'd begun. A few of my team mates swam ashore to join me and we watched elated as the sun set behind our boat.

We huddled together on the 2.5 hour trip back to Dover, exhausted. I swam a total of about 10.5km which is not too bad for a rest day!

We returned home to discover that thanks to the wonderful generosity of friends and family we had raised £11,565 for the Acid Survivors' Foundation Pakistan, enough to provide surgery and psycho-social care for 23 victims of acid attacks (for any further updates see the JustGiving website).

My Achilles injury is improving, although it is still far from being 100 per cent. It is hard to stay patient, but I’m just trying to take it one day at a time. As Oxford starts buzzing with students getting ready for Michaelmas Term, I am preparing to head to the warmer weather of South Africa for training. The Oxford winter with mulled wine, mince pies and icy roads will have to wait until 2012.

Injury is a tough toffee some athletes unfortunately have to chew some time in their athletic career and for me it is no different. After finishing my Trinity term examinations, I traded the libraries of Oxford for the French Pyrenees with the intention of boosting my training. Instead of returning from the mountains stronger and faster, I returned injured.

Being injured, especially in a pre-Olympic season, is quite devastating. Mentally it is tough and you need to deal with the rehabilitation and recovery diligently. As my injury stopped me from running and riding, I spent an awful lot of time in the pool swimming, aqua-jogging and swimming again. I was desperately looking for something to keep me thinking about the races I was not doing. As I was spending a lot of time in the water, swimming the Channel seemed like a natural and fun challenge. However being a triathlete water below 20C is hardly ever taken on without a wetsuit and I had my doubts about surviving the cold channel on my own. I needed a team.

A couple of fellow female Rhodes Scholars casually swam at Iffley Road a few times a week and I proposed a potential team swim across the channel to them. They were all really enthusiastic about the prospect of swimming to France. Within a week the first Rhodes Women’s team had booked a date to brave ship traffic and jellyfish and plunge into the chilly waters of the English Channel.

It was great to have a new goal to focus on and some training partners in the pool. Training also involved some beautiful, albeit chilly open water swims as well as a two hour test swim which I did in 14C water back home in the South African winter. I had an ice cream headache for a day!

We have received generous sponsorship from Oxford alumnus Michael McCaffery for which we are greatly thankful.

We decided to raise money for the Acid Survivors’ Foundation in Pakistan, which provides care for victims of acid violence – a brutal form of domestic violence that is not widely publicised but all too prevalent. One of our team members, Natasha Simonsen, has worked closely with this organization. It's a fantastic group providing a wide range of medical and social services.

We are now in the final couple of weeks of training, as we are scheduled to swim at the end of September. Even though it is not the major international World Series race I was planning on doing, I am extremely excited. My injury has finally started to subside and the prospect of getting back into full training soon is a bright one! Hopefully the injury toffee will totally dissolve in the salty Channel water.

To support Mari and the other female Rhodes Schlars in the English channel swim, please visit: www.justgiving.com/teams/oxchannelswim.