Day 131 – 15th November 2010

Boy it felt cold today. The air temperature this morning at 6.30am was around 4 degrees and the sea temp was 10.9 degrees. I know that it is going to get down to half of that pretty soon, but for now this is plenty cold enough thank you.

After a few days craziness, the sea was very calm today. There was a fairly strong current from East to West and then a strong pull back to the beach once you went around the pier and were near the stairs coming back. It was a once around the pier swim with Bob and it probably took us about 25 minutes I guess; the cold does slow you down, but you want to keep moving the whole time because if you stop you really will cool down even more. The cold seems to be OK in my body when I get in; the pain for me is in my face, particularly around my temple – it really is quite painful for a few minutes. After that you pretty much get used to it and then it’s just a cold swim. The walk back up the beach is always hard on the feet and then I found driving to work afterwards I was shivering a little (just a little though). Hopefully we’ll have a couple of clear days like today so that we can get some swimming in, but I think that the waves are due to return later this week. As for the pool; if my cold goes then I’ll do a 5 hr Wednesday as usual, but if my cold persists I may well just stick to the sea and the gym this week and return next week – I really need to get this cold gone now as it’s now in week 4! I will go to the gym after work for an hour as last week I only went once in the week and then also Saturday night. My gym sessions do need to now start increasing. Hopefully Ross from Esporta will deal with that once he’s back from his hols.

On Friday afternoon Micala and I met with Rodney Lunn, the CEO of Shoreham Port. It was a really good meeting as Rodney expressed that as well as making a financial donation to the Swim4Smiles challenge, he is keen for the Port to also support me in terms of PR and events, as well as letting me swim in the Harbour whenever I want. Swimming in the harbour will be good for me as it will be yet another test in terms of swimming style and also it will make some good PR for both the Port and the Starr Trust.