Swimming the 2013 Kapas-Marang Swimathon

My friend asked, a few months ago, if I’d like to join him at this year’s Kapas-Marang Swimathon on March 24, an annual event when hundreds of swimmers thrash, splash and swim the 6.5km from the Pulau Kapas to the mainland.  The event was first held in 1997 and this would be the 14^th time the event was held.  

There’s nothing like commitment to focus the mind. As soon as registration opened, I registered, paid the fee and made travel arrangements. With a couple of months to go, I had committed myself, that I was going to do the event or my darn best, anyway, before I had time to mull it over and chicken out.

My aim was very simple. I wanted to complete the event in reasonably good form, within the cut-off time, without bringing disgrace to my ancestors.

Swimming is a solitary sport. There’s just the endless procession of laps in the pool,  and after a while, I became good friends with the cracked or off-colour tile at the bottom of the pool, from ploughing to and fro, lap after lap, while training.

The greatest fears are always fears of the unknown – what it would actually be like swimming for an extended distance in the sea, cramps, dehydration, jellyfish, currents, and so on, but you can go on agonizing so long about these things, or you can, to pliagiarise a well-known tagline, just go out there and do it.

The day before the event, I caught an early flight out to Kuala Terengganu.  While it was muggy in KL, it was wonderfully clear on the Terengganu coast, and hot enough to cook an egg on the cement sidewalk.

Pulau Kapas shimmered like a tropical mirage floating on the sea beneath a burning blue sky.  It looked like one of those pin-up pictures of a tropical idyll that make Europeans go crazy in the middle of their dreary winter.

At the briefing that evening, the race director, Chan Chee Seng – “Uncle Chan” to everyone, including himself -  informed us that there were 427 participants, a new record. 

Night ebbed from the sky, day flowed in and it was race day. It was going to be an absolutely gorgeous day, with the dawn light softly suffusing the sky.  Early in the morning, there was already a frisson of excitement, starting with the early breakfast and body marking, with the swimmers lining up to have their participant number stamped onto the upper arms. 

The finish line at Marang was clearly visible, a cluster of tents on the beach. In between there was a more or less straight line of 18 buoys that had been laid out earlier that morning.  There were 70 kayaks, 3 sea-scooters and a half-dozen rescue boats looking out for our safety, and in Uncle Chan’s words, to ensure he didn’t get a heart attack from swimmers disappearing at sea. The sea was calm, there was no wind and the sky was cloudless.  It was going to be a perfect day for getting cooked in the sun, and a perfect day for the event. 

As starting time approached, the excitement built up, with swimmers warming up at sea, and some showing off the sort of bodies that could have earned them a place on the cover of a men’s magazine.  There was a diverse range of participants, from a mere sapling of a child, to a game 66-year old man, and everybody else in between.    

At 8am, the starting gun went off, and there was a surge of bodies like a wave spilling into the sea. We all wore orange swim-caps, so it must have looked like chap goh meh when unmarried women throw oranges on the 15^th day of the Chinese New Year when we were all at sea. 

My strategy of starting off slow at the back was completely shot as I was drawn with the rest of the crowd like a lemming to a cliff.  The fear of being swum over from behind was enough to propel me into the melee of thrashing arms and legs, a great thrum of humans flailing away in the shallows of the beach of Pulau Kapas.

As the crowd dispersed, it became easier to swim at my pace, looking at the bottom between breaths.  The bottom was sandy, and the visibility was so good that even about 2 km into the swim, I could easily see the seabed.  It must have been at least 10 meters deep at that point. 

I developed a rhythm, raising my head to the noise and visual clutter to breathe and sight the next buoy, followed by a silent lull underwater, followed by raising my head again to the noisy messiness above water to catch my breath, followed by the next lull, ad infinitum.

It was very peaceful below water; the shafts of sunlight penetrating the water to form a fan-shaped pattern, and when it was too deep to see the sea bed below, I looked at these shimmering shafts of sunlight, with flecks of light reflected from suspended specks of material in the sea. Occasionally, there was the temporary sting on my face, or arms, from minute sea creatures.

The slight swell meant the occasional slap of water into the face when I opened my mouth to breathe, and current did push me a little off course.  I’d switch between strokes to break the monotony of maintaining a single stroke.  The front crawl didn’t allow sighting, which meant breaking the stroke every now and then to see if I had gone off course – and I usually had.  There was occasionally another swimmer nearby, and although there were 400-plus swimmers, we were so widely dispersed that most of the time it was a lonely swim.

As I raised my head, I could make out the giant orange arch at the finish line, the blue marker balloon, and the glint of reflected light from cars passing by on the road, but the proximity was illusory and progress in the sea was agonizingly slow.

I knew from the direction of the anchor lines of the buoys that we were swimming against the current, and it turned out later that we swam against an ebb tide. There was fatigue, but it was mainly mental fatigue.

Towards the end, I was beginning to feel the incipient symptoms of seasickness from the swell, or perhaps it was simply a combination of dehydration, physical fatigue and caloric depletion.

Eventually I saw sand below me again, and it became shallow enough to stand. I heard the music from the speakers at the finish line, and walked out unsteadily from the surf. Someone handed me a Finisher T-shirt, a Finisher medal and a cold towel wrapped around a bottle of water and an isotonic drink. 

After a shower at the finish area, I drank both bottles of fluid, and began to start thinking properly again. Plenty of swimmers were still thrashing their way to the finish.  As cut-off time approached, the giant speakers blared “The Final Countdown” by the Scorpions. Someone had a wicked sense of humour. 

There was a lovely breeze, the sea was an aquamarine blue, and it shimmered like a silken sheet under the sun, punctuated by the buoys, the boats and orange heads bobbing in the sea.  On that day, this must surely have been one of the most scenic swimathons anywhere in the world.  If we all did our best as swimmers, Terengganu lived up to its side of the bargain with the setting. 

After the cut-off time, rescue boats ‘scooped up’ swimmers still at sea, and collected the buoys. There was the collection of certificates, and then speeches followed by the prize-giving ceremony. Ceremonies were followed by a buffet lunch, sitting in the shade of marquee tents, above the incredibly scenic beach and sea.  

As for me, I had swum my swim, across my strait of uncertainty, against the current of doubt and landed on the shore of resolution.  And in the process, I’d had a wonderful time.  

 Copyright © 2014 Lee Yu Kit