Day 172 - 19th January 2011

Having exhausted itself from a week of storms the sea finally decided to give itself and us a rest this morning. The air temperature had plummeted overnight, which meant a thick frost on the ground and a temperature of around 2 degrees. The sea, whilst finally calm, had also dropped quite dramatically from a high at the beginning of the week of around 6.4 degrees to a much colder 4.9 degrees this morning. Despite this, and despite tough training sessions yesterday, I joined Big Bob for a 12 minute swim; this is the longest sea swim I’ve done in months. We swam to the West groin and on passed that to the next beach along, then turned and swam back to our beach and over to the groin by the Pier then turned and back to the middle of our beach and in. We kept a fairly constant speed throughout and it made it a fun and decent swim. Having spent 12 minutes in under 5 degrees it did take a lot longer than usual to get my hands and feet pain free, but a nice cappuccino in the Red Roaster after the swim certainly helped it along.

As for yesterday, apart from the gym session with Ross, which by the way was about 50% harder than usual as he has really upped what I’m doing, I also went back to Falmer at 9.00pm for my evening swim with Fiona and Big Bob. This was a first for us all and something we will now try to do every Tuesday. We did just over an hour on speed training; freestyle, breaststroke, legs, butterfly – back and forth back and forth, 100 metres, two hundred metres, three sets of 50 metres and repeat! It was a lot of hard work, especially after a long day and having almost fallen asleep in the lounge between 7.30pm-8.30pm. But somehow getting back to exercise at that time of night really does wake you up and make you feel like the day earlier didn’t even happen. After our session we headed to the outside pool and did a few lengths to just cool down; being outside in the pool at 10.30pm was fantastic, absolutely loved it. Then it was a quick drink in the bar and home for 11.15pm and in bed for a couple of hours before Jesse did his usual 2am visit to me! All that aside, getting up this morning for the sea was not a problem and really did the job.

In a moment I’m off to Watford for a late afternoon and evening meeting and then staying overnight for another early morning meeting, so no sea tomorrow unfortunately. However the Hotel I’m staying in has a pool complex next door to it; slightly uglier and less attractive than Falmer, however it is 25 metres so before my 4pm meeting I am going to aim for a 5 hour swim; however it is likely to be only 4 hours as I may run out of time (hopefully it won’t be just 3 hours due to laziness!).