Day 236 - Wednesday 20th April 2011

Let’s begin with yesterday after work shall we; I ran from my office to the Brighton Marina, through the marina to the top road and then back to the office. Total distance 16.6 kilometres, 21 degrees heat, no water (must stop that!) and total time taken 1hr 05min 49 seconds. Considering I had swum the pier in the morning and then worked all day I was pleased with that time. I do need to be doing this at least once a week and improving my time; I should be able to get under the hour to be honest; I think water and food would help with that as I was getting tired at the end which slowed me down. Luckily when I got back to the office I had the water machine waiting for me with ice cold water and I managed to find an Easter Egg in the Trust room and gulped it down in one. I did feel a bit bad afterwards as it was probably a donation, so I really must get to the shops today and replace it super fast!! But I needed the sugar and it was sitting there just begging me to unwrap it!!

Onto today! A decent night’s sleep as no visitors until Jesse appeared at 5.00am and he jumped into our bed and went straight to sleep. Just like Monday I wasn’t completely sure I would make the pool today as I was still achy from all the exercise from Sunday onwards, but by 6.20am I was up and at it. I was in the outside pool by 6.55am (very handy living so close to the gym) and was swimming by 6.56am! The aim was 3 hrs, but like Monday when I got to the 3 hr point I decided to keep going for the 4 hr, which I did with little problem. The first 90 minutes actually flew by, in fact I didn’t even stop for a drink it went so quick. The next 90 minutes wasn’t as quick, but still; not actually a problem. The last hour did drag a little, so I broke it down into two 30 minutes slots and had a banana in the first and water in the last. The thing about the pool swimming is that the thought of doing it is usually worse than the doing it and if you get your mind clear from the start and make sure you are in a very “positive” frame of mind it can actually be enjoyable to a point (can’t believe I am actually saying that!). So now with two 4 hr swims, 2 sea swims, an 8k run and a 16k run since Sunday I am feeling like I’ve had a good training week this week. As for the rest of the week, I will do a 40 minute sea swim in the morning before heading to London and then will do a 1 hr speed pool swim in the evening. Then Friday (bank holiday) I will just do a sea swim in the morning. As I haven’t done a gym yet this week I hope to get Ross to give me an hour on Saturday on my core; then I think that will be that.

Having looked back over my blog just now I noticed that my first sea swim training was on 26th April 2010; basically in 6 days time it will be a whole year since my first dip in the big blue. The 26th is next Tuesday, first day back after the bank holidays and I have a 7.30am meeting. But no-way I can miss a sea swim that day, my full year, so it will have to be a 6.30am dip; that was a quick year.