Chlorine

Oooh I really struggle to get out of bed in the morning so thank you to my lovely friend Julian Bunce who inspired me to get up and go for a swim by sending me a lovely supportive message about my blog.  I managed to get to the pool with my everything I needed; cossie, goggles, swimcap and stopwatch for a time trial.  25 lengths (500m).  12.45 minutes which I know isn't going to challenge any of the British swim team for the Olympics - if I'm honest it won't challenge the Equatorial Guinea's Swim team but I don't care - as long as it means I will make it through the cut off time for the Triathlon swim which is 30 minutes for 750m.  

So hurrah - it looks as if I should at least manage the first hurdle.   I did realise I had forgotten one thing when I went for my swim - my pants.  Now I think there is a subconscious explanation for my unwillingness to take pants with me when I go swimming - I still remember the blood curdling humiliation of turning up at school swimming lessons with my pants on over my swimming costume and getting into the pool  and you know how mean little girls can be!

I forgot to mention that I lost 2 lbs last week - I have to admit I was a bit miffed because I thought after all my effort I should have lost at least half a stone, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.  Not sure I'll get the same result next week what with the Army v Navy rugby to contend with but we shall see :-D.
I decided that I would stick with a swimming theme this week due to my malfunctioning achilles so Thursday was again a beast session in the pool with Mark from createfit.  This time only 3 of us were brave enough to turn up - well that's what I'm telling myself - they gave some pretty plausible excuses but I'm not convinced ;-).  So I paddled along behind everyone else keeping to my 30 seconds per 2 length pace for the endurance pyramid bit (10,8,6,4,2 and back up again) although I made the rookie mistake of doing one set 15 seconds quicker than the original set which might have let Mark know I wasn't trying quite as hard as I might have been.  It's always good to have a trainer who is optimistic as to what you can achieve but his hope that we would then be able to achieve an interval pyramid of 10x2, 6x2, 4x2 etc and back up again, was beyond idealistic.  So we did 5x2 and then cried with relief when the big hand told us that our hour was up.
I was so enthused by my swimming experience this week that I managed one final session in the week - I left it so late in the day that I only had 30 minutes and so I had to renegotiate my initial plan of doing the interval pyramid that I hadn't finished the day before - I decided that I'd stick with 10 x2, 5x2, 2x2 and back up again but after 10x2 I decided I'd done more than enough and as I could no longer breathe I headed out for a girlie lunch at the Lido (see how I'm sticking with the aqua theme). 
One small problem with the dedication to swimming is that I have discovered that I'm allergic to chlorine and have done nothing but sneeze since I got out of the pool.