Day 3: Relaxation!

We started the third day with breakfast and another seminar, this time on hypothermia and mental preparation for the Channel. An interesting fact that they told us was that in water of 20deg C or less a person *will* get hypothermic-it’s just a case of how long it will take. So I guess what we try to do with our cold water training is to put it off as long as we can rather than to actually prevent it. 

The talk about mental preparation was interesting-and a little scary for me. I’ve never had a time in the water where I really wanted to get out and someone had to convince me to stay in. Of course I argue with myself when I don’t feel like being in there, but so far I’ve always managed to shut up that little voice that tries to tell me that I’ve done enough and I should get out and rest. But many people have had times when that voice was just too loud and they just wanted to get out more than anything else. And I’m afraid that the first time that I’m going to experience this is on my Channel swim day. But all I can do is keep drowning that voice out so that I know how to-if I do it successfully in training then hopefully I’ll be able to do it on the day too!

After the seminar we headed down to the bay to do some stroke filming and a short swim, only about 20mins-just enough to stretch out but still stay warm! We then went to the guide’s apartment for lunch and to watch the videos. The analysis was interesting, it’s always fun to see my stroke and how different it looks to what I imagine. I didn’t really find out anything new-the couple of faults that were pointed out are things that I already knew about and that Eilis has given out to me about already! But judging by our chats after some people found it very useful.

We went for a walk with the guides for the afternoon-it was a gorgeous day (contrary to the forecast!), the sun was shining and not a cloud in the sky. So it was a really nice day to do some exploring. Of course when we came back we had to have a dip to cool off! 

After we had a short swim, we had another seminar. More advice about the Channel swim, things like crew and what their role is and lots of useful bits and pieces of information that would never have occurred to me until we were out at sea and it becomes a major issue-like having spare torch batteries.

And then it was time to eat again…dinnertime and an early night to prepare for our 6-hour swim the following morning.