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While some of CATHERINE MACK’s friends were off tackling marathons, she decided to get in shape by going on a swimming holiday in the Adriatic

I LOOK DOWN at my hands pushing through the turquoise water and have a weird realisation. They are exactly the same shape as my father’s. I guess we rarely watch our hands in action, but here I am, 20km off the coast of Croatia, striding through the waves, and I have this bizarre hand moment. I have been swimming for an hour, and have entered that solitary, pensive zone that only swimming helps me reach. Each stroke takes me back to early swimming days in the Irish Sea, when my dad held on tightly to my hands, teaching me not to fear the water but to let it carry me gently. “Go with the flow, and you will love it,” he would say, and how right he was.