On the 18th July I will be swimming 5km (3.1 miles) in the lake at Belvoir Castle in Grantham - no wetsuit! 🏊‍♀️🥶

This will be the longest distance I've ever swam! Having swam a lot as a teenager, I picked it up again 20 years later when I started swimming at my local lake March last year with WholeHealth at Colwick Country Park. Last September I got up to 3.4km in 2 hours 🏅.

To complete this event I will need to increase my distance by a kilometre a month, having been unable to swim safely for more than 30 min during the winter. Plus I need to swim front crawl for at least half the distance! It's terrifying 🫣 - if I can't complete the event in 3.5 hours then I won't be allowed to finish!

This is the first time I've done an event that needs real training. It's my first time keeping up with regular exercise 😱. So please keep me going with the guilt of raising money for charity 😁.

Thanks to completing this swim as part of the Castle Race series, I've had the opportunity to take a charity place to raise money for Alzheimer's Research UK.

1 in 2 of us will be directly impacted by dementia either by caring for someone with the condition, developing it ourselves, or, tragically, both.

It's a disease that takes away who we are as people, and while breakthrough treatments are finally on the horizon, there are currently no drugs available in the UK that can slow or stop dementia.

🟣 £180 could fund a whole day of groundbreaking research

🟣 £500 could pay for a brain scan to help scientists track dementia as it progresses

🟣 £1,000 could help fund vital clinical trials