BLOG |
As some of you may know I swam a continous 5km last night to raise money for my Tanzania trip in the summer. Prior to signing up to this, I had never swam more than 2.7km at one time so this was definitely a challenge. The main struggle was staying motivated for the whole 5km because as much as I love swimming, swimming freestyle non-stop can be tedious and it is not like I could do a session.
We had to meet at the pool at 5:40pm ready to start at 6pm. This was slightly annoying as I was pretty tired and wished it had been in the morning but nevermind, I was excited. When I arrived, there was no sign of anyone else doing it, I asked reception and they were not too sure either, I started to wonder if it was actually on. I waited in the café for a bit and eventually someone came over to tell me to collect my swim hat and sign in. I waited at poolside for 15mins and talked to some of the other people who were doing it; one man has done the 5km every year and yesterday his daughter happened to be in labour at the same time as his swim (the stories you hear haha), the other people were doing the 2.5km or 1.5km. We were then called over to the pool and assigned a lane and a counter, timers at the ready and we were off. After the first few lengths I realised a number of things: 1. How much I hate swim hats 2. I had no idea how I should count this. I always halve the number of lengths (151) and then count down each time I touch the shallow end (75times). After 30 lengths I knew I would lose count so I broke it up into 3x40 lengths of what I had left to swim; counting down from 20 each time. This actually worked super well and it went much faster than I expected. An added benefit was that I had the whole lane to myself, which is a luxury. As anyone who swims will know, when the lane is quite full it can really disrupt your rhythm and crashes can occur :¦ Coming into the swim I had no idea how it was going to go; I had no plan, I wasn’t taking it as a race or trying to beat a time (although I did want to do it in under 1h45). I thought that I would need to stop for water or a quick breather half way through but when the counter told me I had already done 100lengths I didn’t feel I needed to stop. At this point I realised they had been playing music the whole time but because I was wearing a swim cap which covered my ears I couldn’t hear it in the pool (I really hate swim caps). I continued feeling pretty good until I had 25 lengths left to go, my arms started to feel quite tired and I was getting pretty thirsty I wasn’t going to stop because I was so nearly done. I was then told I hate 2 lengths left; the counter sounded pretty excited as was I…..Done!!! I was told I had done it in 1hour 30mins exactly (give or take a few seconds), I then went on and did 130m cool down of breastroke; of which my counter was very surprised about haha. Coming into the swim I thought I would be absolutely exhausted once I was done and wouldn’t be able to swim anymore however I actually felt pretty energised, I mean I wouldn’t have been able to continue much longer but definitely another 20 lengths or so. I usually swim on Monday afternoons but I have decided to give my arms a break; they don’t particularly hurt today but I think if I swim they will definitely hurt more tomorrow. I hope you enjoyed reading my ramble about my swim.
0 Comments
I have mentioned that at some point I will do a running survey for you to take part in, voila! Unfortunately I have had to put it in two parts but I hope that is not an issue :) “As you may know, I won a £500 voucher from Pro-direct runnning in their Great South Run competition. I never win competitions so when I opened the message on Instagram I was beyond excited and very surprised.” (as I said in Part 1) This blog post had been pending for a while. After spending my first voucher so well; catching the Black Friday deals, it was going to be hard to spend this next voucher so efficiently. I cannot begin to explain how lucky I was to win this voucher in the first place and I am super grateful. I spent this voucher at the end of December in the Boxing Day sales but some of the items were unavailable so I ended up with £50 store credit which I then had left to spend on another order as store credit. All in all I had three orders: We are slowly getting there. The biggest issue with this injury was not knowing what it was for so long and then giving myself false hope thinking I would be back sooner than I could be. I have had to drop out of multiple races including the BM10k next weekend; if I were to race the 10k I think I would be back to square one.
This weekend’s blog post was going to be a race recap of the Sussex road relays but seeing as I didn’t do them in the end (good decision –thanks to everyone who helped me decide) I can’t write a race recap haha. 2018 hasn’t exactly started the way I had planned; spending the past two months cross-training. 2018 kicked off with a good month of racing in January; including qualifying for English Schools but after the Southern XC championships at the end of January, I could no longer run to put it bluntly, I was gutted but thought I would be back in no time. Although it has only been 2months it has felt like forever. I am finally building it up again but still cannot run far on the roads - which sucks because I am meant to be doing the BM10k on the 15th of April and I fear I will not make it this year. However I would rather no run this race and run track season… |
RECIPES
RACE RECAPS TRAINING BESIDES RUNNING SELF CARE BACK TO SCHOOL OVERTRAINING THINGS I AM LOVING LATELY TRIATHLON NEW YEAR Month/year
August 2023
|