Week 6 - 20th June..

The last three weeks have been hectic on all fronts. Work has involved a lot of travelling both in New Zealand and Australia and I am getting to know the whereabouts of the good training pools in the major towns and cities of both countries! I've swum at the Ian Thorpe pool in Sydney, at the Melbourne Aquatic Centre - both great facilities, but the majority of my pool time is still in Papakura with Pedro and Jayne. I have picked my average yardage up too, from around12km per week to over 25km per week and aim to maintain this for a while as it is still around 8 months until the swim.

I had a really interesting chat with a good friend of mine, singer/songwriter Monique Rhodes, who is also a Buddhist. I had been feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the whole idea of the Cook Strait, thinking about what I needed to get done before attempting the crossing. I was even starting to worry about the huge sets we were doing in training, trying to anticipate what I needed to do next and worrying whether I would be able to finish a set strongly, or if my stroke and speed would die off before the end. Monique offered me a couple of concepts from her Zen background which I have started using:

1. Live in the now. Stop thinking about the past or the future.
2. Enjoy the journey. Focus on the process of getting there, not the end product.

I took these thoughts with me into a 50 minute set of 8 x 400m freestyle (not normally a favourite!!) and found that I felt great throughout each swim, without my usual fear or thoughts like 'help, I'm not even halfway through yet!'. Enjoying the now was a new concept for me whilst training and it's been a huge help - thank you so much Monique.

We were lucky enough to go and see Monique play last Saturday, along with Shona Laing, at Sale Street - what a fantastic evening. Check out her website - www.moniquerhodes.com - she's amazing!

Week 3 - 30th May...

This week I thought I'd tell you a little about the swim!

Week 2 - 23rd May..

Started the week by celebrating my 57th birthday - with a swim needless to say! Another good week of training, with plenty of distance and an interesting experiment conducted with Pedro, our coach - two half hour swims with 1 minutes rest inbetween at different intensities. The results: a 5% increase in distance swum and a 50% increase in fatigue and pain! The lesson learnt: With endurance events pace is everything.

Had a huge number of emails of support over the last week, which are much appreciated - even if there were too many references to sharks (thanks for the reminders of what might be lurking beneath!). Many of the messages were from people who have taken part in my goal setting programmes, pointing out that I hadn't set a reward and a consequence for my goal! Having given it some thought I've decided that my reward for achieving the goal will be a weekend away with my wife without my kids (so, are there any offers to babysit two mildly active, extremely quiet boys for a couple of days?) My consequence for failure will be to continue with the huge levels of training for another year and attempt the swim again in 2013.

Lots of you also suggested that the swim would be an ideal opportunity to raise some money for a charity and I agree so I'm mulling over some interesting options. Watch this space...

Thanks to everyone who is now following me and thanks also for the comments! My two favourite email comments this week were that it was hoped the Cook Strait would not leave me in a Crook State and that the swim should be advertised as Shack vs Shark!!

OK, back to the pool.... - more next week.