Day 184 – Tuesday 7th February 2011

Usually Tuesday is sea in morning and then evening swim, but instead Bob joined me at 6.30am at Falmer for an early morning pool. Very nice it was too.

Having gone to bed at about 10.30pm last night, I fell asleep about midnight and then was woken by Jesse climbing in bed with me at 1am. I took him back to his room at 2.30am just as Mia was walking down the hall into our room, passing me in a sleepy daze as I was taking Jesse back. By the time I got back to bed she was firmly asleep with Sharon and laying across the bed on my side! So there I was right on the edge of the bed from 2.30am until 3.30am (when Sharon took her back). Then I managed to squeeze 2 hrs sleep before my 5.30am alarm decided it was time for me to wake up (I think that my alarm clock just assumes I get a good night sleep, if only it knew the truth!). By 5.45am I was dressed and in the kitchen with 2 pieces of toast (yes I made breakfast; good boy me) and a glass of orange juice and then by 6.15am I was in the Falmer car park awaiting the opening.

The air temperature was 0 degrees in the air and in fact my windscreen was totally iced up when I left home. Bob was there dead on 6.30am and we were in then outside pool by 6.40am. Even thought the air temp was freezing, the pool was a decent temperature (probably around 15 degrees I guess?) and we did a very good 90 minute non-stop swim. What was surprising was the number of people in the outside pool (maybe 6 at one point); it seems that there are other hardened swimmers out there after all. Certainly doing a 90 minute swim meant that Bob and I saw them all off. What was really nice this morning was getting into the pool in the dark and swimming as the sun rose and the sky went from black to blue; a seriously nice way to start the day. Coming out of the pool and holding onto the step ladder it was funny to feel the ice on the handle; actual thick ice coating it!

So no swimming tonight as that’s a lot so far this week, but excitingly I will be swimming in my gym tonight? How you may ask? Well I shall tell you – on my VASA Ergomometer - http://www.vasatrainer.com/index.php?page=Swim%20Training%20with%20Vasa%20Trainer%20Vasa%20Ergometer
Click on this link and watch the training video.

I brought this about 4 months ago and up until the weekend it was still in the box. However on Saturday I officially finished setting uo my home gym and this included building the Vasa; a very cool piece of equipment that you can only buy in the USA. So tonight will be my first official Vasa training experiment; quite excited about that!!