Slow week

Well, despite joining a swimming club and also having a nice long 3,600 metres swim on Saturday morning, it's still been a pretty slow week for my training. I only managed to get in 3 workouts with a total of 7,100 metres over the week. A big part of the problem is that my car is off the road for good and so I'm relying on lifts and borrowing a car and buses to get everywhere, which means that I don't have as much ability to squeeze in a trip to the pool between things. Once I get a car sorted I should have a bit more flexability...or at least less of an excuse anyway!

The workouts themselves are going well, I'm finding that I'm a little faster than I was and I'm getting used to timing myself and pushing myself to get a distance done in a particular time. I really enjoyed the longer swim on Saturday too, I think that at least until I start getting into the sea I'm going to try to put in at least one of those per week. And speaking of the sea...I think that I'm going to aim for the Easter holidays to start getting in there...it will still be very cold at that stage but at least it will only be getting warmer from then on!!

Swimming club

Since I started looking into Channel swimming I've had lots of people ask me what club I swam with. And when they heard that I don't swim with a club, their big piece of advice was..."join one"! It's good for making sure that you don't get bored of swimming on your own, it's good for giving you a push...even if you never want to swim competitively...and it's nice to not have to figure out a workout a couple of times a week.

So I went along to the Sunday's Well Master's swimming tonight and really enjoyed it. After swimming on my own the last while it was nice to be in with lots of others who were all doing the same program and not getting in my way!! And it's good to make me realise that there are 3 other strokes out there too!! I HATE backstroke, so I tend to keep away from it and when I swim breaststroke on my own I take it way too easy. And butterfly kills me!!! So this will be a challenge for me to keep up with the others on those strokes.

I can't ever see myself swimming competitively (I'm too slow!!), but I think that I'm really going to enjoy the training. A couple of sessions a week that I don't have to plan myself...lovely!

Rant...

It's been a very busy week, lots going on with college and other things...I still managed to put in a decent number of metres though, a little under my target but I'm happy enough with it for my first week back swimming properly. It's been nice to get back into the pool and push myself...the whole lane swimming thing is driving me crazy already though...I have yet to find a quiet time at the pool that works well for me. It's really annoying when I'm trying to get lengths done in a particular time and people are in the way!! And I'm certainly not a particularly fast swimmer by any means...but I know that and I make sure to let people who are faster than me go ahead of me whenever they catch up with me. Why can't everyone just do that?!! There's nothing more annoying than a person swimming breaststroke slowly up the fast lane and blocking up the whole thing for people who are trying to put in a training session. And I'm finding that my college swimming pool quite often takes over the slow lane for swimming lessons or aqua aerobics so that means that the other two are even busier than usual. Oh well...enough of my rant, I guess I just need to find a quieter time in the day to put in my lengths. A task for this week!

Back to normality

Christmas is over, it's 2008, I'm back to college and Thor has gone home. So now it's time to really get into a routine where I'm managing to put in a decent amount of metres in every week. I put in a couple of short sessions this week but no hard training. I need to put together at least a couple of weeks worth of training programmes so that I'm not doing the same thing over and over again each session.

I'm adding a list at the bottom of the blog for each week and the number of metres that I've done that week (my goal is about 10,000 metres a week at the moment) so that I'm more motivated to keep up the training...having to admit publically that I've had a lazy week is good motivation for not having one!

Booked =o)

So looking at my lack of structured training so far, I've decided that 2010 isn't the best idea, it's too far away and too hard to get motivated for. So I decided to ask Ned about my options for 2009, at least then if there was nothing available my decision would be made one way or the other. So he very kindly emailed Mike Oram (one of the best Channel pilots) for me and asked if he had slots on either his boat or his son's boat in 2009. And he responded with some dates in September 2009 :) So I'm now booked in with a 3rd place slot for the 11th-16th of September, 2009!!! So what that means is that there are two people ahead of me for that timeframe, and when both of those have swam then it's my turn. I have a pretty good chance of getting to swim with a 3rd place slot and it's a good time of year because the water will be warmer than earlier in the summer. Just fingers crossed for the weather!!

I don't think that it's actually sunk in yet that I'm after making a committment to do this. But I'm sure that it will eventually.

So I guess that my New Year's resolution is going to have to be to get into a proper swimming training programme...at least it's one that I can't afford to break!

Long break

So I haven't posted in a long time, but then again I haven't been swimming much either! I've had a chest infection for the last 4 weeks and eventually got an antibiotic last week for it. So I decided to go for a swim on Monday, I was staying in Dublin in a lovely hotel and figured that I wouldn't waste the facilites! Bad idea. I swam for about 45 minutes, maybe too long after a long break, but I felt fine. However, the cough that seemed to have been just about gone has been back since then. So I think that I need to rest a bit longer before getting back into things. Which is a pity because I was planning to get into the sea this weekend, I'm going down to Sandycove on Saturday and then for a seminar after that Ned Denison is holding for us channel aspirants on Saturday afternoon. Still, I'll head down anyway, meet some more people.

Sandycove is a little coastal area near Kinsale in West Cork for those of you who don't know. There's a group of people who swim there all year round (some wearing wetsuits!) so once I'm enough to, I can swim with them. I went down there about 2 weeks ago to see what was going on and meet some people, I couldn't swim though since I was sick. It was a windy day, the sea was rough, it was freezing cold (even for me with my layers of clothes on) and 4 people still got in to swim, 2 with wesuits, 2 without. Afterwards then (and this is the part of the plan that I like!) they went back into Kinsale and went to a leisure centre to use the hot tub for a while. Sounds like a good plan after swimming in about 11degree C (52degrees F) water for over half an hour!

Anyway, while it all seems rather crazy, I'm still looking forward to getting in to the sea! Or even back into the pool would be good at this stage!! Another week or so and I'll try again....

Some more info...

Well, today I swam a mile (that's 64lengths in a 25metre pool)....not that that's particularly interesting really! I need to start getting into a training routine, I need to be swimming most days but doing some weight training too. Life is starting to get back to normal now so it will be easier to get into a proper routine.

So...for those of you who have no idea about this....the shortest distance across the Channel (from Shakespeare Beach, Dover to Cap Gris Nez near Calais) is about 21 miles. However, with tides and boats and weather and all those other things to take into account, it can end up being over a 30-mile swim! It usually takes somewhere between 12-16hours to complete, with the record being just under 7 hours. The water temperature is usually 15-18degrees Celcius (that's cold!!!!). The main reasons for people not completing the swim are bad weather and the cold.

There's also the issue of course of all of the weird and not-so-wonderful things that can be found floating in Channel waters...here's a paragraph from one of the training articles:
"Whilst you may have a completely uneventful day other swimmers may report jellyfish, some oil, tar, seaweed, plastic bags, pallets, fridges(!!!), floating timber and even pink elephants".

While I'm not not so worried about the elephants, the thoughts of jellyfish freak me out, I guess on the day you just keep on going though. Also...
"Our observers frequently report seeing shoals of fish, seals and dolphins, turtles have also been reported and there is always the remote possibility of sharks, swordfish and whales, all of which are seen from time to time in UK waters."

Now...fish don't bother me, and I actually think that the dolphins and turtles would be kinda cool...but sharks??? I thought that they only liked warm water...and warm it definitely isn't!! And I'd imagine that it would be pretty scary coming across a whale too...

Anyway....even with all of that I still want to do it....it all adds to the challenge! Any other volunteers?!!