It is 3 weeks till the hog roast and race night, please book your tickets and email your food choices to [email protected]. Please come along and support me, as well as coming for a fun evening with the chance of winning some prizes.
A few days ago marked the 1 year anniversary of my blog. 30 posts and, according to my website statistics, 3000 individual website hits. That means that there is an average of 100 people reading each post so to whomever you all are: thank you. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings. This post may well be a bit disjointed as there is a lot going on at the moment.
Those of you who swim will probably have seen more of me than my wife. The warmer weather has arrived and it has meant that I have to make the most of it while it is here. A few weeks have gone past since I was chased into the river by a bullock and a lot has happened since then. I went on a fantastic trip with openwaterclubs to Durdle Door, many thanks to Kate for arranging and Andrew for the safety support on the stand up paddle board! It was a fantastic day, a good 3km swim in the wetsuit up the coast and through the "door". We then spent a little while messing around in Lulworth cove in the sun and I was finally able to ditch the suit.
A few days ago marked the 1 year anniversary of my blog. 30 posts and, according to my website statistics, 3000 individual website hits. That means that there is an average of 100 people reading each post so to whomever you all are: thank you. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings. This post may well be a bit disjointed as there is a lot going on at the moment.
Those of you who swim will probably have seen more of me than my wife. The warmer weather has arrived and it has meant that I have to make the most of it while it is here. A few weeks have gone past since I was chased into the river by a bullock and a lot has happened since then. I went on a fantastic trip with openwaterclubs to Durdle Door, many thanks to Kate for arranging and Andrew for the safety support on the stand up paddle board! It was a fantastic day, a good 3km swim in the wetsuit up the coast and through the "door". We then spent a little while messing around in Lulworth cove in the sun and I was finally able to ditch the suit.
Since then I've been concentrating on upping the distances that I cover to start preparing myself for the crazy length that I have to swim. The day after Durdle Door was spent in the Thames; this time no swan attacks. A friend had very kindly agreed to kayak down the river and I must say I felt quite guilty as the weather was awful! The rain doesn't really bother you as a swimmer but if you are in a kayak for 3 hours it can't be pleasant. Karen, if you are reading this thank you! It was a nice swim and a reasonable distance: 8.6km to be exact.
The weekend after I was able to make the most of an extra long session at the local lake. It was the first time I'd swum for 5h (14km for those who are interested), not a bad effort considering I'd managed to give myself food poisoning at the beginning of the week.
The weekend after I was able to make the most of an extra long session at the local lake. It was the first time I'd swum for 5h (14km for those who are interested), not a bad effort considering I'd managed to give myself food poisoning at the beginning of the week.
Last Saturday saw me return to Dover harbour, I was able to meet the rest of the Polar Bears with whom I shall be racing across the English Channel this August. It is a great opportunity for me as I'll get to experience what it is like before I attempt my solo swim next year. As well as meeting my fellow team mates we also had to do our qualifying swim in the harbour for 2 hours. It sounds easy but it was really choppy and quite windy. I'm happy to report that we all made it, and about an hour afterwards all went back in for another swim. I also got to go and have a look at the boat that is going to be supporting us on the relay. This is a different boat to the one that I'll be doing my solo channel swim on but it gives you an idea of what it will be like for my support crew!
As you have probably noticed, my weekends are pretty much taken up with swimming and last Sunday was the same but also slightly different. As you are probably aware from previous posts I'm lucky enough to work for a Formula One team and on Sunday 9 relay teams were pitted against each other in the Blenheim triathlon. I'll let you know how we got on in my next blog post...