It went suprisingly quickly and dare I say I even enjoyed it. The body held up okay, I seem to have the constitution of a mountain goat whilst pool swimming, and had coffee, ham sandwiches, jellies, hot chocolate as well as my 2:1 High 5 drink. It seemed to work in that I had a fairly consistent output of power until my left shoulder got a bit sore around 5am.
I did an overnight swim this time last year so was aware that there would be a mental & physical dip in the middle of the session. Things are also a bit more difficult to comprehend with sometimes funny consequences - I asked a swimmer how they were getting on - their reply of "Fine until the kick in the goolies" made me laugh until my brain processed it to "fine until i ate the blueberries". I also found the ripped togs of another swimmer quite giggle inducing - I revert to the sensibilities of my 4 year olds when tired apparently.
At one stage I just couldn't be arsed swimming any more. So I just let my arms keep turning while I switched off and went for a walk with this pair
Paraic and I tend to bandy a few inspirational quotes about - his of last night was from the Rolling Stones. To paraphrase Lucious Lips (Jagger not Paraic) "You can't always get what you want ... but sometimes you get what you need".
Mine was "We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore excellence is not an act but a habit" While Aristotle was not actually present last night, that idea helped when you're doing 21km of 100m on 1.50 - maybe just maybe we'll be able to swim at 3.3km per hour during our English Channel crossing. Now that would be excellent.
Post Script - it's Monday and it's tired I'm getting! Yesterday's sea swim was sore enough and I was frozen after 34mins in 10deg but since the air temp was 14 or so it shouldn't have affected me as much. This morning's pool session was akin to swimming in an old style diving suit through molasses. Here's to tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment