Day 170 - 17th January 2011

Bit of a busy day today; 7.00am sea, 8.00am Physio, 9.00am Pool, 11.00am Office for first meeting; then it’ll be work until 7.30pm meeting then home to just see kids go to bed then start packing up house for move in a couple if weeks. It’s enough to make one feel tired!

The Sea swim this morning was a little uncomfortable! I got to the Arch at 6.50am and Shoichi, Paul & Mark had just come out. They’d gone in on the girly beach rather than ours; a more sensible person than I would have listened to that. As I had to see Kim at 8am I decided to go straight in on my own and I went down to our beach as I thought the waves looked not too bad. It was very dark still and the rain was teeming down. Getting in was fine, but as Little Bob said to me when I saw him later “getting in is easy, it’s the getting out that worries me”!!

I swam out near the silver ball and then headed back. The temperature was 6.4 degrees, so it was easy to stay in; in fact staying in was way easier than getting out. The waves, whilst not massive, were still strong and they were turning just at the dip in the beach, which means that you really have to time it right not to be dumped in a dip and then sucked back out to sea. This is exactly why the earlier boys (and then the ones after me) all went to the girly beach as there is no dip there. What also compounded the situation was that it was too dark which made it hard to really see the waves or the beach, the rain which also made visibility less and the flipping goggles that kept steaming up. The only way I could do it was to be brave and just swim in, keeping a constant look over my shoulder for the waves. Nearer the shore I had to pull my goggles down as I just couldn’t see enough, which was fine, apart from my eyes stinging a little. I caught a wall of water as it was heading in and just went for it, but as expected I landed in the dip just as the wave withdrew and another one appeared. Within seconds I was upside down under the water and being swished round on the bottom. Luckily I was close enough to shore to be able to push up from the bottom and then stand, albeit on shaky legs. Once standing I quickly climbed out the dip and ran onto the beach. Walking up to the Arch I was a little light headed and also annoyed at myself for being so silly and not taking notice of what the others did. I strongly advised Bob and the gang to not swim on our beach and of course they sensibly did the right thing. Lessons lessons lessons!

After my swim I visited Kim for my physio; just half an hour on my hip flexer. As usual she was a star and the pain is now completely gone. Then after that I hit the pool at Falmer and did a quick hour of lengths.

Now I’m work, coffee in hand, and ready to face the day of meetings that now await me!