Post Swim thoughts....

My first post swim thought was, 'Thank God I signed up for the Arch 2 Arc prior to this swim coz I would NEVER sign up for it if this was my first Channel experience!' However, it has now been a week or so since the swim and all the negative thoughts have been replaced (as they always are) with positive thoughts and the belief that it wasn't really that bad! This is what my Mum says childbirth is like!

When I dredge the thoughts back I can remember that it was hard and it was cold. The swimming was never that tiring, probably coz I was so busy fighting the waves to think about it but I do remember being cold. Thus, step one is to do loads and loads of acclimitisation. As I didn't do any prior to this relay I am hoping I can take a big step forward with this. There is also mental preparation to do as I remember some of the hours going fast and others slow and being bored and counting the minutes. I need to have a very strong mental focus and positive attitude and a regime to fall back on when any of the demons start to surface. This will need as much practice as the physical training I am going to undertake.

In summary, the swim was invaluable for helping me to appreciate the complexities of Channel swimming and to help open my eyes to quite how huge the challenge really is. I know I need to do more night swims, acclimitise to the cold, learn what foods work well for me and improve my bilateral breathing. What is great is that I don't feel any of these issues are insurmountable and that completing the relay was a great little deposit in the bank of experience and will definitely help come race day in 2 years time!

Naturally I took the Tuesday off following the swim but then I was panicked about missing the first week of my Ironman schedule and it being a sign of this to come so I proceeded to train three times on the Wednesday! Naturally this caused a pretty extreme tiredness by Thursday morning so after my morning session I abandoned both the afternoon session and Friday mornings, to get a proper rest. By Friday afternoon I was ready to get some more training in and completed a nice brick session. Saturday morning saw Ad and I out on the bikes for 90minutes before a quick change and heading to the airport.

We spent a long weekend with my parents in France, returning Tuesday afternoon. I did one run session but mainly enjoyed having a few days off as now it is full steam ahead for training, pretty much for two years straight, eek! Think it is definitely going to be a case of one day at a time otherwise I can see that just thinking about the vast amount of training required will mentally swamp me!

After a thwarted session this morning where everything I wanted to do had to be abandoned because of mechanical faults, closed pools etc and a single strength session had to suffice, I am off for a nice brick to get Base 1, Week 2 finally underway!