Mid-Channel....

Mid-Channel....

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Playing the waiting game........

So post-Double I had a few more achievements I wanted to tick off before I wrapped up the season. The first was my second cross-Channel relay which was to be a 6-man team this time. Our tide was due to start on the 17th August and would run until the 24th. We were number three position on the tide. Basically for every tide period (around a week) the boat pilot will book four swims (soloists tend to book up the first two slots). When the is a weather gap he calls the first person due to swim and asks if they want to swim. If they like the look of the weather they swim, if they don't, the second person is called etc.

Well the weather has been terrible all tide. It is now the last day of our tide and there doesn't look like there will be a break until the weekend. Eddie Spelling, our boat pilot and my boat pilot for next year's A2A attempt has said there is a slim chance of a swim tomorrow but realistically it looks like Friday is the earliest. We will thus be swimming on a Spring tide which isn't too much of a problem except that the tides will be much stronger and could push us more easily away from the French coast. Also, it is complicated by one of our team members having to return home to Ireland tomorrow for work and other of our team members having a holiday booked to Sweden over the Bank Holiday weekend!

So we play the waiting game. I was planning to do no further exercise between the Double and the swim to let my body recover totally and have a bit of a break but dragging no training into three weeks would be a bit daft so I resumed training on Friday with an easy swim. On Saturday I did a killer cardio conditioning session for 90mins in the gym and I woke on Sunday not being able to move. My quads and shoulders felt worse that post-Double! That will teach me for getting back into it too quickly! A gentle 50 lengths of the pool on Sunday helped loosen things a bit but I took a welcome rest day yesterday as well. I will continue ticking over this week with some running, spin and swimming but nothing too major as we may be called to swim at any time.

I have also confirmed my cross-Solent swim with Keith Plumridge for 17th September which should be another tick in the experience bank and my longest OW swim to date. It is just over three miles across the Solent and so I will hopefully complete each direction in between 90mins - 2hrs dependent on the tide which we swim perpendicular to. So a total of 3-4hours in the water - great training! :)

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