102 Days remaining.

102 days left

Wow, just been looking at this blog and there are a couple of alarming Facts. Let me start with the first one. It has been over two months since I last blogged. It is quite scary how time just seems to evaporate when you get on with living. In those two months I have had a wonderful time with a truly amazing way to see in my 40th year on this planet. A once in a lifetime Safari to Africa with some very good friends saw me break a personal record of Flying on some sort of flying machine everyday for 6 days, that on top of flying THROUGH Canyons and over Dam Walls and Spotting Wildlife over a safari park and walking through some of the most wild terrain I have walked through in a long time, saw my first 40 years out. Thank you Greg, Ali, Audra, Craig and last but not least my Parents for putting up with me flitting in for food and washing then disappearing again. On this trip, Little swimming was done, for a multitude of reasons but the main one being the pools were a little bit small for a good workout or populated by the local wildlife.

The Second Fact is the heading of this blog. 102 days!!!!!  A bit scary. Hotels are now booked and all that remains is to get the flights and we are all good to go --- Oh, hang on?  I feel there is something I have forgotten? Something quite important!! 

AAGGHH!!!  It has just come to me. Apparently, if you going to be swimming 40 odd miles it is quite a good idea to train!!!  Who would have Guessed?  it seems that it is in the small print somewhere.

Never Fear, We still have 102 days, Surely, If the past is anything to go by, should be a piece of cake.

No, in all seriousness, I have been back in the pool since the beginning of January and My distances are coming up slowly. I am taking a slightly different approach this year and instead of swimming Monday Wednesday and Saturday, with Saturday being a longer swim. I now anticipate to swim 4 consecutive days a week, one of those days will be about double the distance that I swim on the Rest. I am choosing this as that is exactly what I will have to do in Arizona.  

There are many ways to skin this cat, I could read loads of blogs of marathon swimmers, and, like when I swam the channel, get very despondent that I am not doing nearly enough - in comparison to EVERYONE else. Or I can do my own thing which HAS worked for me very successfully in the past. Do as much as I can feasibly do in the pool and spend more time concentrating on getting my Mind in the right place.

There is a lot of discussion on one of the Sites about how to train for distances and I still believe that there is no real need to do anywhere near the actual distance that I eventually aim to do in one session. I will most likely not get above 60% f the longest distance that I will be swimming. So effectively my longest training swim will be 14 km.

Two other challenges that I am having to deal with are the obvious one of swimming upwards of 10km 4 days in a row, making sure that my body, shoulders and hips are ready for that sort of punishment. All my past big swims are just one day and then you can rest but consecutive days of long swims is still a daunting undertaking. I do not have a problem with the distance, even the longest day of 26 km does not really hold that much apprehension for me. Getting up the following day and doing it again, however, is a slightly more problematic scenario. Either way I am sure it will be fine and I will figure out a way to do it.

The other challenge, and by far my greatest hurdle right now, is to get my head around doing MOST of my training in a Pool. believe me, 400 lengths in a heated pool is a bit monotonous. I also tend to get very hot when in the indoor pools. I am trying to mix it up with a bit of cold water swimming, I took part in the PHISH cold water Championships last weekend. I will also do some  swimming in longer pools with other SCAR Applicants and other long distance swimmers. It still gets a bit boring doing it on my own, in a heated pool. 

If this game was easy then everyone would be doing it! The benefits far outweigh the costs of time and effort input so I am still on a winner.

So where are we at Currently?

As for my training so far, I am not too unhappy with it. I am generally swimming 3 - 4 km every session and that will be increasing as time goes by. Time permitting, I will be up to 6 - 7 km at least 4 times a week with one of those swims being slightly longer. Up to about 8 - 9 km. I am a bit sad to say that I have had to remove some parts of my training that include breaststroke legs as I get a pretty annoying pain on the insides of both knees when kicking out sideways. Luckily I do not have that problem when I am kicking for freestyle, butterfly or backstroke. Training will continue to build, just have to take care of my tree trunk legs. Fortunately in this game, I do not use my legs for propulsion that much. I normally just use leg workouts to break up my sets a bit

As the days get longer and the open water heats up a bit I might try a few River swims with my Support kayaker to get them used to someone swimming beside them and also let them realise that I will not be going as fast as they can kayak. If and when that happens, I do not anticipate doing more than about 2 km in the cold. 

As for the sets that I do,  sets generally involve intervals with the longest distance that I do in one hit being 1000m. Currently I am doing that in 14 minutes. I am relatively happy with that time for now. I do not anticipate getting much quicker as I am not really training for Speed, although I did a small amount of it last night and got a personal best of 1 min 9 seconds for my 100m time. In reality, my sustainable speed is about 1 min 30 seconds over the longer distances. Baring in mind that this is in the pool so I would anticipate about 3700m per hour in open water

Now to the support Crew. it is a bit rude of me to ask someone who has never kayaked before to be my support crew. Audra has supported me before but that was on a nice motor boat with drinks and a sundeck. But She has taken up the challenge and is making great strides. 

           1 - She knows what a kayak looks like. 

           2 - She can tell which is the front (bow) and which is the back (stern).

           3 - She knows which way up it should be

           4 - She even knows how to fall out of them. (Gutted I was not there to see that.)

           5 - She knows what a paddle is for. Sadly she also knows that it can be used to

                beat her poor defenceless swimmer. A habit I need to get her out of.

Audra, like me is also on the fitness forage. I really appreciate her stepping up to this and Like my challenge, I think her challenge of kayaking  all that way is possibly more daunting for her than my challenge of having to swim it, is for me. I at least have a bit of an idea of what I am letting myself in for. This trip will be a big Challenge for both her and I. Let us hope she enjoys it as I will most likely need a support crew in the future. Any support that you can give her will go a long way for her moral. Hats off to her for agreeing to do this.

I very quickly learnt in this game, The training and a lot of the preparation may be done in solitude but to make a successful swim requires many friends, Family and sponsors giving up a lot just so that I can go and wallow around some of the most picturesque places I have laid eyes on. A huge thank you to EVERYONE who has been part of my journey so far.

Onwards and Upwards.

As I bring this blog to a close, the enormity of the task ahead is starting to sink in, It is by no means beyond my capability. My focus is returning and I am getting stronger (and maybe a bit fatter) every week. The hardest part is trying to juggle the funds to be able to make it all happen and I have some very good people around me who are willing to help out. I will in the next couple of weeks finalise what charity I will be swimming for. lets just hope that all my friends out there help me to make a difference to people that would love to do what I do but cannot for Whatever reason.

Happy winter all, if you need me I will be in a pool somewhere