Queen of Hideous Swims #1

Who are they?

One of the founding members of Hideous Co, Tee spent her early life swimming peaceful breaststroke in the lakes of her native Finland, before committing to learning to swim in 2017. A natural at butterfly, she’s also the mastermind behind Flyday, a drop-in session aimed at sharing the joy of fly and breaking down the fears around it. Whilst her ever-ready “it’ll be great” could land you in an adventure you hadn’t yet realised you wanted, Tee imbues all her great ideas with consideration and kindness, so you won’t find her chasing accolades that don’t bring something good to the lives of the people involved.

Looking back at the swim

My Hideous Swim – and this was the start of the Hideous Swims – was a 200m fly in the Gay Games, an international swimming competition in Paris 2018.

Some would say 200 fly is inherently hideous, the most hideous of all perhaps. But I knew nothing of that. The 200 hundred was simply hideous, because when I signed up for the competition, the total distance of fly I could swim in one go was an entire 25m – and I only had 6 weeks to go to complete a 200m of the same.

I had joined the lessons program with Out to Swim swimming club in London only a year earlier, and learned the basics of butterfly stroke only some months prior to signing up for this competition. There was a logic behind the madness. I learned about the competition quite late, and when I went to see which four events I could sign up for, there were only 5 left: 400 free, 100 back, 100 breast, 1500 free, and 200 fly.
Why I thought 200 fly could happen I am not entirely sure. 6 weeks to go, I’m sure I can stretch it from 25 to 200. It seemed like a reasonably good idea, and a solid plan.
Everyone told me it can’t be done, that I’m an idiot and a fool. The Head Coach would not give me permission to compete on the fly.
I was too busy doing fly kick, underwater undulation, fly drill over and over, to pay any attention. And true enough, I had no real idea of how hard 200 fly would or could be.
One of my favourite exchanges on the way to the competition was with my sister, who is a hard baked nurse:

⁃ “I’m doing 200 fly and I’m a bit worried I might die in front of an audience.”
⁃ “Well sister, you know they do say that nobody should have to die alone.”

What I haven’t mentioned above is that part of the reason I joined a swimming club was to explore and make friends with my fear of water. When I started with the club, I was unable to even put my face in the water. I never expected I would become a swimmer, never thought that I would ever make it anywhere beyond swimming the whole length from the wall to the safety of the other wall.
Preparing for the fly was a battle against fear, panic attacks, dissociation, nightmares. But once I had committed – it was a mad enough idea to sufficiently grasp my interest – no amount of mental anguish or pain was going to stop me. I was doing it, if I had to forge my way through rock to get to the other side.

There is a second part to the story. A year later, when we were booking our flights to go to the 2019 IGLA New York, the event list we (myself and the lovely Steph) had signed up to do was something akin to this:
⁃ 400 IM
⁃ 200 fly
⁃ 1500 free
Steph stared at the list and muttered “Wow… that’s a long way to go to do a few hideous swims!”

And the Hideous Swim Society was born.