Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast with Tim Boness - Australian Masters Swimming Pool and Open Water Champion

Today's guest is FINA Top Ten Alumni and 9 time winner of the iconic Lorne Pier to Pub ocean race, Tim Boness.  For our international listeners, Lorne is located on Victoria's surf coast about a two hour drive from Melbourne. The race is a 1.2km swim from the Lorne Pier to the sandy beach in front of the Lorne Pub.  It is the largest participant ocean race in the world, with 5,000 swimmers competing.

We chat about how Tim got involved with the Pier to Pub race, both as a competitor and as an administrator; what motivates him to keep racing from the pier to the pub, an amazing 35 times so far; and how he trains predominantly in the pool, but transfers that fitness into the ocean. 

Hear about how Tim moved on from being a top Australian age and open national swimmer in his youth; the legendary teenage hell week training camps he attended in Townsville and why he loves the 200m butterfly so much.  We also discuss what motivated him to get into Masters Swimming,  why he loves it so much and what kind of training he does?

You won't want to miss hearing about Tim's all time favourite training set - hint: it's butterfly!

Connect with Torpedo Swimtalk:
https://www.torpedoswimtalk.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello, swimmers, and welcome to Torpedo Swim Talk. I'm your host, Danielle Sperling, and my guest today is Fina, Top Ten alumni and nine-time winner of the famous lawn peer-to-pub swim, Tim Boness. Thank you everyone.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hi, Tim, and thanks for joining us on the podcast today. Where are you coming from today? Where are you talking to us from?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Actually, in my office, uh Boness Accounting and Tax. So we're a local Geelong tax agent and we work to a lot of uh accounting and tax for Geelong-based clients.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Oh, fantastic. So that's that's down on the surf coast, isn't it? In Victoria.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Well, we're we're we're in Geelong and uh yeah, we we've got a client base in Geelong all the way down through Torque, Anglesey, Lawn, Apolo Bay, and beyond.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Oh, fantastic. Um great that you mentioned Lawn because I was going to start with that. Um, I I hope most of our listeners know that that's uh Lawn is the site of one of the biggest participant ocean races in the world, the Peter Pub. Um you've won it nine times and you've raced it 35 times. What makes you keep going back to race it?

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Uh well, it's a it's it's just a great passion of mine. I I started uh back in the early 80s in in the first couple of swims. We we did uh normal surf life saving carnivals. So we we do a surf race, we do a belt race, and then at the end of the day, we'd run around to the pier, jump off the pier, and swim in as part of the initial first few pier to pubs. And from there, that that embryo, it just grew and grew, and we now have uh 5,000 swimmers competing every year across all the age groups from juniors all the way up to over 80s, and it's just an amazing spectacle. I'm also a life member of the Surf Life Saving Club and the current treasurer. So not only do I enjoy participating, but I do um enjoy uh reconciling the uh Peter Pub events because it it does make some money for the club.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah, it's an amazing event that uh Lawn Surf Club puts on. Like how many people were in it when you first started? Like what was the the number?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Well, I think the first first one was like 50 people, and then the next year it grew to about 200, and then uh it grew to about a thousand, and then from there it's just gradually gone up, but they they now limited at 5,000. So it started on a very small scale, and in the first three to four years, the the uh getting into the water was jumping off the pier. So there wasn't much thought about OHS because with with 500 people jumping in, there were that luckily nothing ever happened, but uh they soon worked out that that wasn't the right way to start well get the people in the water, so they now uh load them via a uh a boat ramp. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, I vaguely remember people jumping in off the pier back in the good old days. So that's that's good that they are starting the water now. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah, well there's a couple of great historic, there's a couple of great historic photos with people in mid-air having jumped off and swimmers in the water looking up. It's uh quite classic. We certainly could not do it today.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

No, no way. Or you wouldn't be allowed these days, would you?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

No, that's that's right.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Well, what would what's been your most memorable race um in the at the Peter pub?

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Oh well I've I've I've uh probably uh coming second to John Fox in 1987. The the event had grown ground to about three, four thousand swimmers, and uh John Fox, who was also a Lawnstaff Life Saving Club member, also a champion water polo player. So John played at uh five uh Olympic games as a water polo player in a row, but he won the event four four or five times, and the best I ever did in the open section was second to John. So that was probably uh my my highlight in the superfish. They didn't call it superfish in back in the late 80s, but that that's effectively what it was.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah. Like the la, I mean, I know Kieran Perkins has won it, Dan Dan Kowalski, Rob Woodhouse have all won it over the years. And I know in the last few years Mac Horton and um Gregor Pellet Peltonary have tried to convert from the pool to the ocean. What's the secret to being successful in all those pool swimmers coming over to the ocean and why can't Mack Horton do that?

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Do you think well it's uh it does come down to because swimming in it in its essence is still swimming, whether you're in the pool or the ocean, but ocean has extra skills you need. In a pool, you've got a black line and you've got two designated ends. In the ocean, you've got tides, you you have waves, you have to stick your head up at least every 10 to 15 strokes to make sure you're not going off course. And of course, you're not in a lane on your own. So there were swimmers who are dragging on you, and uh in in the age groups of pier to pub, they start them five minutes apart. So the fast swimmers in the um in the in in the waves are passing the slow swimmers from the wave ahead, and sometimes you're passing three or four waves through the 1.2 Ks. So there's a lot of interference that can happen in the ocean, as well as the ability to be able to catch a wave, and also the ability after swimming as hard as you can in a peer-to-pub race, you have to get up and run along the sand to the uh finish line. So it there's a whole lot of different dynamics and skill sets that a pool swimmer needs to develop to win a peer to pub. And someone like Mac Horton, who we we we we cherish as an Olympic swimmer, yeah, hasn't quite won one because Sam Shepherd's beaten him and then others have come along and just just pip pipped him. So yeah, it's an amazing, amazing thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? I mean, and I suppose it depends where the tide is at the end as to how far that run is up the beach, because it changes all the time, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 6:37

That's that's right. And so I think Daniel Kowalski has the fastest time on record that might have been beaten in the last couple of years, and he did that as a junior. So he in the year he won senior, he also won the junior, and he did the fastest time in the junior, and that was because it was a lower tide. So the tide is crucial to the overall time as well as uh the conditions.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yes, yeah. Do you do you train in um the open water as well as in the pool leading up to the pier to pub, or is it just purely in the pool training?

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Oh well, I personally uh our family has a house down at Lawn and we go down before Christmas and we we swim to the pier and back twice a day every day until pretty much pier to pub. So if pier to pub's two and a half weeks into the holiday, um yeah, we've we've done it quite a lot of times. But I I can't I can't emphasize that your fitness comes from the pool training. So it's you've got you've got to be in the pool during winter and uh spring, but uh you do need to get in the ocean to get the feel of the how the wetsuit feels because it's a totally different feel. The wet wetsuit's more buoyant, and you tend to not use your legs as much because your legs are already automatically higher, and so it is a different uh different stroke, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

And what kind of sets do you do during sort of the winter leading up to it to help with the um pewter pub?

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Uh we do a lot of uh freestyle sets. I I have historically done a lot of butterfly, but I'm in a mature age swim squad, so we do a lot of freestyle sets. So we'll do something like five, four hundreds or ten, two hundreds all on a set interval. We had we've had a great coach, uh Alan Bowman from Queensland, who's been with us for 10 years, and he he's got great sprint sets. So we'll do a sprint session on Wednesday, we'll do aerobic Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and then uh Friday is heart rate, and they're all difficult in their own ways. But so we do um on a heart rate set, we'll we'll just do 10, 200s on two minutes or something like that, but going pretty close to 90% each each each effort.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yeah, oh that's amazing. So you're training sort of four or five times a week um in the pool leading up to that sort of uh racing in Christmas. And do you do any um dry land work, like any strength training as well, or just purely in the pool?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Uh no, not really. I I I actually do a lot of snow skiing, so I do a bit of bike riding to keep my legs fit for that, but uh yeah, yeah, nothing really else.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Nothing else, no, no weightlifting or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

No, not not really, no.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

I I know you started off as a pool swimmer before all the um the ocean success as as a butterfly. Um, how did you first get into swimming when you were younger?

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Uh well the first my first effort at swimming was getting my herald for people in the in the 50-year age group, you had to get this herald. And I was at Yarrum Primary School in uh South Eaps Kippsland, and I got my uh Herald uh when I was about seven or eight, and from there I just progressed. So my dad was a pharmacist, he owned a pharmacy in Yarrum, and then he uh moved the family to Melbourne when I was about 10. And from there we went into uh Mulvern Swimming Club and I trained under Colin Pollard for many years, and there were great swimmers there, like the McNeil girls and Guy Farrow and um Michael and Peter Hands and a lot of great swimmers from the Mulvern history, and I stayed with uh Colin for quite some time.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah. And um you obviously reached um state and national competitions in your sort of junior teenage years. Was that always in 100 and 200 butterfly, or did you swim any other um events or strokes?

SPEAKER_02 10:37

No, I really focused on uh butterfly, and I wasn't a sprinter, so I I won a few Victorian junior titles in the 100, but the 200 was my strength. Uh when I was 16, I I actually came third in the uh age titles, age age titles down in Hobart. Neil Hollandsworth, a famous Victorian swimmer, won. And uh yeah, I I came third in in that event. And um, yeah, so I was very proud of that event.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yeah, that's a that's a great outcome. Did you ever go to any open nationals in your sort of teenage years?

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Yeah, so pretty much from 78 when I was in we call it year 10 now, or year nine, I went to age and open championships. Open championships, I made made a handful of finals each year. Well, not each year, but only in the 200 butterfly. I just didn't have enough speed to make it the 100 butterfly final. I made a few, what they used to call consolation finals. So nine to uh sixteen throw them off in the consolation final, and for the hundred fly, that's what I made. But for the turn of fly, I was in the in the in the the A final to so to speak each year. But the best I made, uh best in open I achieved was only fifth. So never saw any medals there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

That's a that's an awesome effort. I mean, swimming was much quieter back then in terms of people didn't know those kind of results. If you got fifth, you know, open nationals now, you'd be um, you know, on the Australian A team and getting a lot of support in that kind of way. When you were swimming, there wasn't that kind of thing to follow through with swimmers. Um did you did you um did you sort of stop swimming at any age before you got into masters, or did you go straight through? Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

I did have uh the Victorian team went to New Zealand. Uh I've got it written down here. We got went back, went to New Zealand for the New Zealand championships, and I did come third in the New Zealand titles, but they had a rule in New Zealand, which is fair enough. They can't have a clean sweep of foreigners. And Justin Lemberg and John Sieben came first and second from because the Queensland team were also there. So they got their medals, but I didn't get mine. But that's just uh the way the cookie crumbles. Yeah. And so I I sort of finished uh I trained with Bill Atkinson for many years after Colin Polar went into State Centre, and we had great swimmers there, like Linda Hanel and um the Vandergrafts, and then later on, Frank Christian was there for a bit, and um John Fox was there, and yeah, there's some great, great swimmers. The Murrity boys, Cameron Leachbull Sims, it would just the names roll off, but um, they were all great swimmers, and Acho was just a great squad. We used to go to Rockhampton over the August holidays, and then Tansville later on for three weeks of intensive training. We were doing like uh 7-8k sets in the morning and 7-8k sessions in the afternoon, and Acho's uh theory was that they'd tire us so that we wouldn't muck around at night because we're all 15, 16, 17, 18, and uh starting to learn about maybe more uh social ways, but Acho just trained the hell out of us, so we we never had much energy.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

I don't know whether you remember, but um I I mean I'm a little bit younger than you, but I lived in the country as well, and I came up and trained for a summer with ACCO, and I remember all you guys just you trained so hard. And I remember you and Cam Leach doing you know, butterfly and and swimming. Uh I was just amazed by it, and I thought I've got to, you know, we've got to move to Melbourne, so I get to have this kind of training as well. But I just I remember you know you from back then always being a very hard trainer. You obviously are now as well. Um, did you did you have I was gonna ask before sorry, you go?

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Sorry, yeah. I was gonna say I've done quite but yeah, you go. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Sorry, I was I was gonna say, did did you end up taking some time off in between those teenage years to when you started Masters?

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Yeah, so I I sort of finished when I finished uni and then I went into a big chartered accounting firm in Melbourne and I I had sort of retired, but then I went I worked I worked a couple of years and was pretty miserable. So I uh took two years off and went skiing. So I had um a couple of seasons at Mount Hotham and a season in St. Anton in Austria, and after a season, a year and a half of skiing, I came back and I was a bit chubby, so I thought I'd better better get back in the water. So I jumped in with uh PowerPoints and Anita Kilmire when I was about 26. So I'd taken a few years off. And uh yeah, I got got back into swimming with uh Anita. Anita did a great job with my butterfly. She at 27 I actually came second in the state uh state uh 200 metre butterfly little um uh Stuart Lark won. He he is a fair bit younger than me, but he won, I came second. And at a 20 as a 27-year-old, I was I was pretty pleased with with that. So that that got me my uh passion back for swimming, swimming with Anita.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, oh that's good. I didn't realise that you'd done that. That's that's great. And so you've been with PowerPoints ever ever since, but obviously you live down in in Geelong. Um you just race for them.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Yeah, so I haven't haven't yeah, well at the moment I we can't, but uh yeah, historically I've I've I've been to a lot of Masters Australian titles swimming for PowerPoints, and um I've also uh done a lot of state titles with PowerPoints, but that that's that's kind of the issue. I can't train with them because I'm in Geelong, and uh the only pool swims I do these days are either state titles or national titles or sometimes relay events and stuff like that. But yeah, at the moment we're not allowed to do any of that, so that's a bit sad.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

No, it is a bit sad. How do you cope with the whole COVID lockdown?

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Uh well I I I like to swim at least five times a week. So we with the pools closed, I was in uh Eastern Beach at Geelong in almost two and a half wetsuits that got so cold, and I I know the Brighton icebergers would laugh at me hop having two and a half wetsuits on, but it was very cold. Eastern Beach is a sea pool with a wooden promenade around it, and we had some issues. One morning there was a seal in there, and it's meant to be totally enclosed, but somehow a seal got in there, and so we we weren't allowed to swim that morning. And another morning there was a huge stingray. I don't know how that got in there because there are metal slots along. I don't know how it got in there, but it got in there. And uh even uh even on Wednesday I was there and there were some schoolies in there. I don't know what they were doing at 6 30 in the morning, but they were jumping around, and so there's all sorts of obstacles swimming down at Easton Beach.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

It sounds bad.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

We're back back we're back in at Cadinia Park now, though. So um, yeah, and uh from tomorrow we've we've had to do bookings every every time we go into the pool and swim for 45 minutes, and we've been told tomorrow is the first day where it's just open, so you can just go any time, not not with the booking. So that's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

That's good, yeah. That is exciting because we're still on bookings in Melbourne, so hopefully that'll come finished soon.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Um and have you got any um any plans to compete at any world um masters competitions, like for any world masters or world masters games, anything like that?

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yeah, well I swam uh I've swam at the World Masters Games in Sydney and uh about 2008, and I really enjoyed that. So it just depends on um where where where they are, and um yeah, I certainly would would envisage myself going to uh one or two in the next uh few years if travel opens up. But at the moment, yeah, we're sort of stuck in Victoria.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

Yes, yes. Well, they've they've said that they've pushed it out to 2022, so hopefully that's going to be in Japan, and hopefully we'll all be able to go to that. You might be able to get some skill as well.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Yeah, well, it depends on the time of year. But yeah, I go to Japan every February to ski, so yeah, I love Japan, it's a great spot.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah. Um why do you think you've been so successful in your 40s and getting into your mid-50s now? Because of your your training, or uh what else keeps you motivated to keep on training and racing?

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Well, I think it's I just love the sport, and I I think any success I've had, which is probably limited to compare to others, but um it's all based on training. Probably ability-wise, there are far more talented swimmers, but uh I've just had a passion to keep going, and I think it's a great sport for your mental health and uh physical health. So it's uh one sport where you don't get a lot of injuries. I know a lot of people my age can't run anymore because they've done their knees, and uh swimming just seems to you just seem to be able to keep going and going.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

Yeah. I mean, master swimming is a wonderful community, and I think um everyone that I've talked to so far for this podcast has all sort of, you know, they've all reiterated the same thing. They all love the training and the racing, but the sense of community around it. And then I suppose that sort of moves out to the ocean races as well, because you see a lot of um people that you swam with when you were younger, a lot of people that you come into contact with master swimming. Um, do you find that kind of thing with your involvement um in both areas in the pool and in the ocean? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yeah, and um I know that you've got lifelong friends from the pool and and surf life saving.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah. I know that you've been um putting back with your well, you're professional in your professional life, you're an accountant and you've been helping out Masters Swimming Victoria and obviously the Lawn Surf Lifesaving Club with um are you the treasurer of both of those committees or finance advisor? Yeah, and how did you get involved in those?

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Yeah, well I'm five uh well that's the issue with being an accountant. You someone asks you to take it on, and you think, oh yeah, I'll do that for a couple of years. So I've been on the Surf Club committee for 25 years, and at the moment I'm desperately trying to find someone to take it on because 25 years. It hasn't all been treasurer, I've been club captain and president as well as well. But um yeah, it's uh having a house down at Lawn, and uh that's where we spend most weekends. And um, I just love Lawn and the Surf Club and Masters Vic Victoria, Master Swimming Victoria, just finance director there. We've got a great relationship with Master Swimming Australia, where they do a lot of the process. And I'm just overseeing things from that point of view. So, but uh, we had a huge event with uh Melbourne hosting the uh national titles in 2016. That was put in a lot of work there, and um Paul Watmow did a lot of work, amazing amount of work for a volunteer organisation. Some of the work that people put in is incredible.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yeah, it's it's a wonderful organization and all the volunteers that we have around. I think um I love the fact that you're putting, you know, you're putting back into those two organizations that you've had so much so much success with. Just before we wrap up for the day, can I ask you what your all-time favourite training set is? It can be from your junior years or just recently, but what is your all-time favourite set?

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Well, I wouldn't my all-time favourite set is 10200 butterfly. I I could not do it now, but uh that's what we used to do in uh Acho's Heyday, and uh we do them on uh we'd either do them on 245 or 250, and we just had to repeat and repeat and uh oh yeah, I I couldn't even do one on that time now, but um yeah, that that that's probably what one of the things I got the most satisfaction out of uh finishing any sort of set.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah. And and what's a sort of a comparable one that you do today?

SPEAKER_02 23:21

To the uh we do a lot of um uh 10 one 10100s, yeah, 10100s or five two hundreds. We keep the the sets um pretty manageable because we've got um uh quite a wide range of swimming abilities within the group, and we we usually run with three lanes at Cadenia Park, and there are some fast swimmers in in the fast lane, the middle, middle lane, they're pretty quick, and but the the third lane they're good swimmers, but they're they need a higher interval to uh complete the job. But we like to keep together as much as we can, so that that does um keep the time intervals pretty similar.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yes. What what do you do your um your 100 free time cycle on when you're doing 10100s?

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Well, it depends if it's if if it's aerobic, we're doing them on 120s. Uh some of the faster guys in our group could do 115, or a couple could probably even do 110, but 120 is the normal time, and the middle lane would be doing 130, and the the the third lane would be doing 140. Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Well, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

And then we aimed to aim to finish each set around the same time, so they might do one or two less, and then we can start and start another set.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yes. Well, that's fabulous. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Tim, and sharing all your insights into your swimming career. It's amazing, and I wish you every success going forward. I know we're not running a um a peer to pub this year, but I'm sure you'll be down there doing the swim anyway. Um, have a wonderful Christmas and um we'll catch you soon.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Thanks very much, Danielle, and thanks for all your efforts in in uh doing all this. This is great and it'd be great for everyone at home to uh have something else to um listen to.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, fantastic. Okay, thanks, Tim. Bye. Thanks, Danielle.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

All the best. Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Okay, bye.