Your summer swimming challenge is here!

This year’s WaterAid Swim Marathon takes place 1 August to 24 October. Sign up today and take on this fun challenge over 12 weeks

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Are you looking for a bespoke swimming challenge?

The WaterAid Swim Marathon is ideal if you’re looking to tackle a big distance over a set period of time, fitting your swims around work and other commitments and swimming wherever you choose, whether it be your local indoor pool or your favourite wild swimming spot.

Every summer, the WaterAid Swim Marathon invites people to swim a half marathon (13 miles) or a full marathon (26 miles) over 12 weeks. This is to raise money for the one in 10 people who don’t have access to clean water close to home.

This year’s WaterAid Swim Marathon takes place 1 August to 24 October.

I got a head start on the challenge and began my Swim Marathon back in April. I opted to go for the full marathon of 26 miles over 12 weeks.

I’m a busy working mum so I had to have a good think about how to divide the distance into manageable chunks. I planned to do three swims a week – split between my local pool and my favourite wild swimming spots. I aimed to swim 1.2km each swim, which is 3.6km per week. At the end of the 12 weeks that’s roughly 43km, which is just over 26 miles!

I’ve been swim training for over a year now and still consider myself a beginner, so I was excited to get stuck in and use the challenge to work on my front crawl technique.

Watch Abi’s video diaries about her 26-mile challenge

PART 1: One month into my swim challenge I reveal how I’ve been coping with my wonky front crawl!

PART 2: Here I share how I’ve noticed an improvement in my crawl with a simple tweak of my catch and pull.

PART 3: In the final week of my Swim Marathon I do a 2-mile swim in my local river.

Clean water for all

Being a mum, I was particularly drawn to a story of a young woman that recently benefited from a WaterAid project. Her name is Anja, a mother, a schoolteacher and a farmer in Madagascar.

Previously, even while heavily pregnant and still working, she was having to fetch water three times a day from a small pond far away from home, which was unsafe to use.

Now thanks to the support of WaterAid, there is safe drinking water in her village – her son Dylan and other children now have more time to play and study because they have running water at their school.

It’s stories like this that kept me motivated during my challenge. There were definitely moments when I felt tired and demotivated, thinking ‘Why am I doing this?’, but I remembered that stories like Anja’s are the reason why!

How to sign up

Signing up couldn’t be easier. Simply head to swimmarathon.wateraid.org, click ‘Sign up’ and use your existing JustGiving account details to log in or set up a new account.

Choose from the half marathon or full marathon distance and your personalised fundraising page will be created upon completion. You can use this page to log your swims, fundraise and keep your friends and family up to date with your challenge!

Other info

Pick your spot: Whether it’s a leisure centre, open-air lido, a safe natural spot or a mixture of different places, work out where you’ll be completing your swims.

Plan your swims: Make sure you can cover your chosen distance by planning out your swims. From 1 August you can start splashing out those miles.

What you’ll get: WaterAid will send you a Swim Marathon swim-hat as soon as you raise over £20. If you reach your target distance and raise over £100 you’ll get an exclusive 2025 Swim Marathon finisher medal. You’ll also be invited to join WaterAid’s wonderful Facebook community who’ll support you through the challenge. You’ll also get a chance to win extra prizes through their photo competition.

“I loved my Swim Marathon. It was so useful to put some structure into my swims, have something to aim for and notice an improvement in my front crawl.”