Powered by figs....!

So the swims continue! Over the last few days it has been very weird swimming in the pool on camp as a lifesaving course is also being held there. On Thursday I was swimming along minding my own business when I noticed a prone plastic figure submerged on the bottom of the pool. Obviously it was apparent that is wasn't real but it was a bit disconcerting (especially given my weirdness about things under the water) to have to swim back and forth over this little drowned figure!

I was going to save a post on lessons learnt from the swim challenge month until after the conclusion of the big swim on Sunday and I will come back to the topic then but I realised today that endurance events are slowly but surely teaching me to be more 'present'. I am constantly planning, organising and scheduling future events that I hardly take the time to be happy in the moment and appreciate my life NOW! I find this is very pronounced when I am doing long sessions especially in the pool. During long runs it usually hurts too much for me to have much time contemplating but during these longs swims I have found myself always trying to rush through the training to get to the next thing on my list. I'm not scared of really long training sessions, in fact I really enjoy the challenge of 'going long' but I view the time spent training for such events in a peculiar manner. It's not resentful of the time spent as such but like I said I am always focusing so much on what's next, what other things I need to accomplish in the day, that I am not really concentrating and thinking about the training I am doing then and wishing that 5kms took only 10mins to do not 90!

Some people would see doing a 3hr swim say as a real challenge, I don't view it like that at all - the training doesn't both me, it is the time spent doing it that does. And I don't even mean I resent the time spent because I could be using it to do better things like clean the house, spend time with my fiance, catch up with a friend, I mean I 'resent' (not quite the right word) it because it is stopping me from getting on with the next thing on my list. Weird eh?! Anyway, doing these events is help me to develop my patience and to appreciate what I am doing in the here and now instead of always rushing off to the next thing in my day!

Two more big days of swimming to go. Figs got me through the days today, strange though they are. I got some dried figs in the supermarket the other week because I love dried fruit but if I get apricots I can literally eat a whole bag of them in one go which has literally hundreds of calories and a lot of sugar. I don't quite like figs as much and they are pretty filling so I am satisfied after about three which is a normal snack size. Anyway, had a few before my lunchtime swim of 4,250m and then had a fig roll (the endurance biscuit of champions for cyclists out on a long ride) before my evening 3,000m. No unpleasant side effects as of yet! ;)

Two days to go........!!