It can only get better from here...

2009 hasn't gotten off to a great start for me.

On New Year's Day I went down for my first sea swim of the year to find waves breaking over the slip and very rough conditions even inside the island...definitely not conditions that we wanted to be swimming in. 

A choppy New Year's Day at Sandycove

I expected it to be rough down there because it's been very windy for the past week, but I thought that we'd at least manage to swim to the corner or do an inside triangle for our first swim of the year, but it wasn't to be. A total wasted journey after 4 hours of sleep...I had been to a concert in Killarney for New Year's Eve and had driven back and gotten to bed around 4am. So I really didn't appreciate the waste of a trip...I could have (and should have!) stayed in bed!! It did work out well in one way though-I was trying to decide which day this week I'd take as my day off since I hadn't taken one yet, so my decision was made there and then!

So then on Friday I headed to the pool, did my swim and gym session and went back up for a shower....and slipped on the wet floor in the dressing room. My own fault, I should have been wearing flip flops and I wasn't. I basically fell on my backside, thankfully I managed to not hit my head...or even worse, break an arm or something...but I fell pretty hard and it was quite difficult to walk when I got up. My lower back, basically my tailbone, was very sore all day yesterday and I was terrified that I'd done some damage besides it just being bruised and sore. I was not loooking forward to whatever pain was facing me when I woke up this morning! But thankfully it was a bit better and I had no pain anywhere else either.

The plan was to head to the sea today for my delayed new year swim, but the wind was still howling when I was going to bed last night and I figured that the last thing I needed to be doing with a sore back was to be heading into the rough sea. So the pool it was. It was a good thing too-when I got into the pool I did my first two lengths and realised that I couldn't kick my legs without being in severe pain. I had thought that tumble-turning would be my biggest problem but that was actually fine once I made sure to push off the wall really gently. So I got out my pullbuoy and band to make sure that I didn't kick and did a nice slow 4,500 metres with Imelda. The swim really helped too, I found that the stretching out relieved some of the pain and I felt much better getting out than I did getting in. So  the plan is to do the same for the next few days until I know that it's better.

So it wasn't the best of starts to the 2009...but hopefully that's my clumsiness out of the way for the year now :)