The last couple of weeks have been up and down - a flu bug has seen me having to miss a few sessions as I have been just too tired and achy to make swimming a good idea. Things are returning to normal now though, so I am picking up the training again and am looking forward (in a strange sort of way) to a 12km swim with Alastair on Thursday.
There has been quite a bit in the media over the last couple of weeks about long distance swimming. The first item was about Roger Allsop who, at the age of 70, became the oldest swimmer ever to complete a crossing of the English Channel. It took him 17 hours and 51 minutes which is an awfully long time to spend in the water. By the time he reached France he was so delirious he mistook the beach for a cloud and thought he'd arrived in Heaven instead!
The second big swimming story was comedian David Walliam's sponsored swim for Sport Relief in the UK. David decided his latest marathon effort would be to swim the length of the River Thames! A distance of 140 miles that he planned to take 8 days to complete, swimming around 20 miles per day, an awesome effort even given that the current would always be assisting. Astonishingly he completed the swim on schedule - and I say astonishingly because fairly early on he was laid low by the dreaded 'Thames Tummy'. Can you imagine not being able to keep food down AND swimming?? And, even worse, having diarrhoea whilst wearing a wetsuit? They're not quick to get off! At least Al and I will know that no-one will be dumping 500,000 cubic metres of raw sewage into Cook Strait before we get in it! David raised a massive 1.1 million GBP for Sport Relief, a truly awesome effort.
So, on we go, with only a few weeks to the beginning of the open water season and our first outdoor sessions of the year - looking forward to it!
