Sheila has helped hundreds join the craze for swimming
AS OUR weather starts to resemble something that feels like summer, people are taking to the sea and Sligo’s beaches and coves will see increased numbers in the water over the next four to eight weeks.
But for a growing number of people their sea adventures are no longer confined to the obligatory summer dip at Rosses Point or elsewhere on the Sligo coast as the boom in open water or sea swimming continues. Sheila Ryan, pictured right, who teaches people sea swimming three times a week in Sligo, is inundated with requests from people who want to enjoy the sea. From Sligo town but now living in Collooney, Sheila says she was originally teaching a few people as a favour and more and more people came to her looking for advice on sea and open water swimming.
Last year and continuing in 2021, she estimates she has taught several hundred people to swim in the sea and believes that the interest in such swimming has yet to plateau.
For those who might doubt the level of interest, if you time your visit and pay close attention to tidal conditions and the weather you will usually come across a hardy cohort of sea swimmers making their way out into the waters at Rosses Point, Easkey or Mullaghmore most mornings. This trend is replicated all along the Irish coast.
With sea water temperatures at the moment hitting a modest 14 degrees, for these hardy souls 14 degrees is almost balmy and most of them don’t bother with wetsuits. Those who do, tend to curtail their use for the winter months only, when the sea temperature slides to a chilly nine or 10 degrees.
Add in the rain, wind, snow, sleet and more of a typical winter morning in the North West, and you quickly appreciate that sea swimming here requires a certain mental and physical steel. However, for many if not all year-long sea swimmers the attraction actually is the stimulus they gain from cold water swimming – many take the plunge in winter specifically because of the powerful effect of the cold, both physically and mentally.
For the all-year-round swimmers it would seem their bodies are long acclimatised to what most of us would call a Baltic chill. As they slide effortlessly with a grin into the sea without as much as a sharp intake of breath there seems to be an inexplicable sense of connection with mother nature and the sea.
Although she’s just 42, Sheila Ryan is a veteran swimmer and, more to the point, swim instructor who is well-known in Sligo for her expertise in swim instruction.
For more than 20 years Sheila taught people of all ages how to swim in the confines of various local sporting facilities and hotel swimming pools in Sligo. She is a familiar face and voice in well-known locations varying from Mullaghmore to Rosses Point where she runs classes for sea swimmers every week.
Sheila, who also continues classes in the slightly warmer confines of Avena Leisure in Ballisodare, reflected on the continuing growth of sea swimming. She said: “It’s two years or more now since I noticed that trend. At first the numbers were not huge, but the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns saw more and more people opt for sea swimming and lake or ‘open water’ swimming.
“It really has taken off here as well as elsewhere in the country. To be honest it’s gone mad and there’s huge demand locally for the swimming gear people use while sea swimming, which is an indicator in itself of the growing popularity of sea swimming.
“The demand that businesses such as Call of The Wild here in Sligo are having from customers in itself gives a sense just how popular it has become.” Sheila said there are many reasons why this trend should be welcomed.
She said: “Apart from the physical benefits of being active, there are huge wins for people in terms of their mental health and wellbeing.
“I have no doubt about that and the people who I teach have confirmed that. There’s a buzz, a feel-good factor, a sense of achievement and in these strange times, the attraction of being part of a group.”
With a degree in sports science from Newman College in Birmingham and a diploma in fitness training and sports therapy, Sheila swam competitively for County Sligo Swimming Club and taught swimming alongside Robert and Kathleen Cadman at Sligo Swim & Life Saving School.
Her daughter Naoise, now 19, spent her early days watching and copying her mother’s swimming instruction and apart from being a successful competitive swimmer, she recently qualified as a swim instructor, clearly a source of great pride for Sheila.
But Sheila is keen to point out that while she and her daughter swam competitively, sea swimming is very much for people of all ages and abilities. It is not about elite athletes and one of the more obvious attractions for many is the importance of the social value of swimming. She said: “One of the big wins for those who take up sea swimming is that it is relatively inexpensive. There are some vital pieces of kit everyone should have, a brightly coloured swim hat and a toe float and for my classes, for insurance reasons, you must wear a wetsuit.” Pressed on the wetsuit point as many veteran year-round swimmers pride themselves in not wearing a wetsuit, Sheila explains: “Apart from the fact that I freely admit I am a wimp and have a thermal wetsuit myself, I just don’t like the cold. “The fact is that unless you are constantly moving you can’t ask someone to be in the sea for 45 minutes, which is the duration of one of my classes, without them wearing a wetsuit. “The simple truth is their bodies wouldn’t tolerate it – they would suffer with the cold. We start these classes in May, water temperatures are nine to 10 degrees, they have to protect themselves from the cold, it’s part of my insurance requirement too, it’s obligatory for good reason.”
In addition to sea swimming, many opt for lake swims, referred to as open water swimming. Two of the most popular locations are Glencar Lake and Lough Gill.
Classes at Rosses Point run on Monday and Wednesday and Mullaghmore on Thursday, while later in the season there will be sessions at Lough Gill and Glencar Lake to get swimmers more used to those environments where competitive swim events are held.
If you would like to find out more about open water or sea swimming, go to Facebook and check out the Swimming With Sheila page for more.