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“One Man, Ten Lakes, One Day” Swim Challenge
Local swimmer, Paul Duffield set himself the goal to swim ten Okanagan lakes in one day – a challenge he successfully completed on Saturday Sept 22nd. Starting the day in complete darkness at 6am, the first lake he crossed off the list was Shannon Lake in West Kelowna. With the support of his wife, Angelique, he travelled through the region swimming at eight other lakes: Rose Valley, Wood Lake, Kalamalka Lake, Swan Lake, Tuc el Nuit Lake, Gallagher Lake, Vaseux Lake and Skaha Lake before finishing the fifteen hour day with a swim across Gellatly Bay, Lake Okanagan at 8.53pm.
Paul is part of a local team, the OMSC Lake Monsters currently training for an attempt to swim across the English Channel next summer. With the Lake Monsters, he recently swam a 35 km relay across the Salish Sea from Davis Bay to Nanaimo. A swim which took the team almost 11 hrs to complete. Paul said “With the Salish Sea swim behind me and the team’s ultimate goal of swimming across the English Channel ten months away I was looking to set myself a new challenge.”
When he mentioned his plan to Leora Dahl, one of his English Channel teammates, her response was “Hahaha. You're too damned ambitious!” Paul continued “The day was not about setting any time or distance records but raising awareness, and hopefully some money, for the Lake Monsters’ YMCA Strong Kids Campaign, while giving me the opportunity to swim surrounded by some of the region’s amazing scenery. I’m lucky my wife is a photographer, so she documented the whole day for me.” Paul has blogged about the challenge, and will be adding a video of the day soon.
Friends and teammates sent Paul good luck messages throughout the day and this helped him to keep going even when he began to tire later in the day. “It was great to see everybody following my progress on Facebook. Their support was amazing. It helped to make the long day lots of fun.”
The Lake Monsters have set themselves the target to raise $6000 over the next year, which will enable more than twenty kids to participate in the YMCA’s leisure programmes.
An online donation page has been set up and can be found here: http://campaign.ymcastrongkids.ca/paulduffield
More information about the charity and regular updates on the swim team’s training can be found on blogs being kept by Paul (www.NothingGreatIsEasy.com) and Leora (www.LeoraEnglishChannel.com).
Photo Credit: Angelique Duffield, Bright Spark Media
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