Day 186 - Thursday 10th February 2011

Long pool swim so no sea today. It’s currently 9.27am and I’m at work nursing a cappuccino and contemplating staying here! Of course that won’t happen as I am far too dedicated for that (mmmm)! I’m feeling tired today, which is a mix of working hard, exercising hard and not sleeping enough. Last night I used the gym at home and did a 45 minute run on the treadmill, a 10 minute (split into two 5 mins) on the VASA swimming machine then some weights and some boxing. It was so fab to be able to do that at home rather than have to go to the gym, which I propably wouldn’t have bothered to do last night. The VASA machine is aaaaamazing, bloomin hard, but I guess after I get used to it I’ll be able to do long sessions on it. You can really feel your shoulders working and afterwards you feel great.

Back to today though, I've got to get going in about 20 minutes and then aim to do a 4 hr in the outside pool. Currently it’s very bleak outside, rather dark and wet, which do not help my cause! Unfortunately next week I am so busy (London 3 days and Coventry 1 day and Windsor 1 day) that I can’t do a long swim, just morning and evening ones. It’s good to take a week off from a long swim as the rest period is as important as the working period, however, it means that today I feel that there is no way I can not do it as I can’t miss two weeks in a row. Oh well, must stop putting it off! Rest of blog will be after the swim; I wonder how I’ll be feeling then??

So here I am 4.00pm and back in the office; 4 hour swim done!! I swam in the outside pool for 3½ hours, but the constant heavy rain made it tougher than it needed to be and after all that time being hit on the head by falling waterfalls I decided to finish the swim with ½ hour in the inside pool. Coming inside into the building was like entering a sauna and then getting into the inside pool felt like pasta going into a boiling pot (of course never having been a piece of pasta I am making a large assumption here). I truly don’t think I could have done 4 hrs in that heat, it was immense! The swim itself, now it’s over, was ok and I’m really pleased to have done it. The first 2 hours were filled with thoughts of getting out “anytime now” ! In fact I wrestled with my brain about staying or going pretty much every 10 minutes; 10 minutes feeling like an hour. But I stuck with it and by the middle of hour 3 I was determined to finish and with just 15 minutes to go I as ready to keep it up for another again (I didn’t though as I had a meeting at the office pending!). All in all though I was proud of myself today for beating the mind and getting it done. Afterwards I headed straight for the cafe and had a huge chicken club sandwich and chips and a warming cappuccino. Gotta keep that weight loss at bay; must have used around 3000 calories at the very least today! No gym tonight as I need to rest now, but tomorrow morning a gentle sea swim will be nice.