Day 178 - 31st January 2011

Last week I could only swim Mon-Wed as I had to drive to Cardiff for a meeting on Wednesday and then stay over for another meeting on Thursday morning and then drive back ready for an office meeting in Hove Thursday afternoon. I think that was enough dashing about to justify a lack of training! I did manage to squeeze in a short 2½ hour pool swim on Thursday, so all was not lost!! As for Friday, I was in the office at 6.30am until 11.00am and then had to head back home as we moved house! My poor wife had to deal with the removal people all on her own on Thursday and then Friday morning, so the least I could do was get home late Friday morning and start unpacking. We farmed the kiddies off to our parents on Friday until Sunday night and then basically spent every second of the next two days unpacking and getting the house in order for their return. To say moving house is stressful is an understatement; what I would say though is that from an “exercise” point of view spending nearly 3 days and nights unpacking boxes over 4 floors is Olympian!

Back to today; Monday 31st January, last day of the first month already – madness! I certainly did not want to get up this morning as being in my new bed in my new room in my new house was just too comfortable! The fact that the three kids also slept all the way through was a fantastic bonus. However, up I got at 6.15am and was down the beach by 7.00am and ready (not) to swim. Usual suspects were there doing their thing, whilst Big Bob and I headed out to the cafe a third along the pier, then back to the groin and then back in. Not sure how long it took but I would guess at around 15 minutes. The air temperature had dropped to a silly 1 degrees and the sea was stupidly cold once again. My watch said it was only 3.4 degrees, and it certainly hurt a lot, but I would guess it would probably have been more like 5 degrees? But then one has to ask why my watch would lie about a thing like that!!

The swim, once I got into it, was fine and in fact enjoyable enough, but boy did it hurt. Once I was back in the shower my hands really ached from the severe cold followed by the hot water, it’s something I stil can’t get used to no matter how many times I do it. Will it stop me tomorrow?? Course not!

Apart from the swim I also had a very hard gym session with Ross; once again stepping up the weights and reps on every exercise. My arms , shoulders, back, legs; in fact everything, feels like it’s been given a bashing today. It has to be said though that aching from exercise is a great feeling; I challenge anyone to say otherwise!

On the fundraising front I have another piece of great news. One of my clients, a fantastic company called Execution Noble, have pledged £10,000 in sponsorship for my swim! What an amazing amazing thing to do. I feel blown away by their generosity, it’s a whopping 10% of our total goal! I am not sure exactly where we are with regards our target, but we are really forging ahead now. I’ll get the Trust to let me know how much we’ve raised so far and will blog it later this week. It has to be said though that our target is huge and despite amazing gifts like this we still have a long way to go; so please if anyone reading this feels like making a donation, no matter how big or small, it will all go towards us Helping Children Smile – think on and please dig deep!!!!