I have a vague plan for the next few entries in my blog. I like to be organised and have a plan about what I'm doing. For example, this entry was supposed to be about my swim in Dover harbour this weekend, I was supposed to be saying that I'd swam for 4 hours and covered about 12km swimming near the ferries that take people to France. As you have no doubt realised this entry isn't about that at all.
Rather than preparing to go down to Dover on Friday night, I spent my evening with an ice pack on my shoulder listening to the thunderstorm outside. The last two weeks I have been pushing myself quite hard and my shoulder muscles have started to complain as I have overdone it. I decided that it would be beneficial for me not to attempt to swim on Saturday so there goes my blog post.
Now, I could go into more detail about the training I'm doing, but that would be quite boring for most people so I'll gloss over the fact that in the last 7 days I have swum 16km (9km of which were in Queenford lake on Sunday morning in 2h51m), run 5km and spent 3h in the gym at work on a spinning bike trying to improve my heart rate when I exercise. Instead I'm going to talk about something that happened on my previous swimming challenge to the Isle of Wight.
I was a little over halfway and I was thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't seen any large sea creatures so far on my swim. In fact, I'd seen nothing other than a few boats and a lot of water. When you have been in the sea for a while without anyone to talk to your mind plays tricks on you, so as I'd seen nothing I started to think about why I hadn't seen anything. Was it due to some large shark eating everything else, overfishing or a somewhat as yet undiscovered sea creature that had a really large appetite? Would I be next???
It was about this point I told myself to stop being stupid and to concentrate on the job in hand...
A few more strokes and I noticed something waving near my head. My kayaker was waving frantically over my head trying to catch my attention. Instantly I was on full alert wondering what was going on. When I raised my head out of the water to find out what was happening she told me to keep swimming, which I did.
Sharks I thought, then common sense kicked in and my brain rationalised the situation by telling me there was more chance of a basking shark or jelly fish than anything that would do me serious harm, either way I didn’t really want to see. I noticed on my next breath that there was a seagull flying overhead but I was more worried about what was going on underneath me. I still couldn’t see anything nearby so I picked up the pace slightly and kept swimming while my kayaker got closer and closer to me. She was still waving her paddle above my head every now and again but as she wasn’t shouting at me to get out of the water I kept swimming.
Every other breath I could still see the seagull above me, I could even make out the small patch of red on its rather large beak. It must be fish I thought, the bird is following me because there are fish nearby and there must be something about the fish that has my guide worried. A few minutes later the kayak gets a bit further away and normal service was resumed, no paddle waving over my head and I figure whatever had my escort so worked up must have disappeared. I carried on swimming and about 20 minutes later I saw something in the water below me, it was moving. Rising panic started to take effect but as the water cleared I saw it was just something growing out of the sand.
Sand! I could suddenly see the bottom. That made a change as so far I hadn’t been able to see anything other than water. I started to feel a bit more comfortable, nothing would be coming out of the gloom and taking me unawares. Shortly it got to the point where I couldn’t swim any further, my hands were scooping up sand with every stroke, I had made it! I was on the beach at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. I’d made it all the way from Fort Gilkicker to Ryde, even better, I was the first person from our group to make it to shore. I’m still proud of that.
As I was helping my kayaker pull her kayak further up the beach I asked what had happened to make her wave at me so frantically during the crossing. It turned out that while I was expecting danger to come from beneath me I was almost totally unaware of where the danger was. The seagull that I had seen spent a good five minutes swooping at me and my lovely guide was waving her paddle over my head to fend off the attacks. It just goes to show that while your mind is playing tricks, you can be oblivious to the dangers that are actually happening around you.
Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings, please visit my just giving page to donate to a wonderful charity and to kick start my fundraising. There is a link at the top of the page...
Rather than preparing to go down to Dover on Friday night, I spent my evening with an ice pack on my shoulder listening to the thunderstorm outside. The last two weeks I have been pushing myself quite hard and my shoulder muscles have started to complain as I have overdone it. I decided that it would be beneficial for me not to attempt to swim on Saturday so there goes my blog post.
Now, I could go into more detail about the training I'm doing, but that would be quite boring for most people so I'll gloss over the fact that in the last 7 days I have swum 16km (9km of which were in Queenford lake on Sunday morning in 2h51m), run 5km and spent 3h in the gym at work on a spinning bike trying to improve my heart rate when I exercise. Instead I'm going to talk about something that happened on my previous swimming challenge to the Isle of Wight.
I was a little over halfway and I was thanking my lucky stars that I hadn't seen any large sea creatures so far on my swim. In fact, I'd seen nothing other than a few boats and a lot of water. When you have been in the sea for a while without anyone to talk to your mind plays tricks on you, so as I'd seen nothing I started to think about why I hadn't seen anything. Was it due to some large shark eating everything else, overfishing or a somewhat as yet undiscovered sea creature that had a really large appetite? Would I be next???
It was about this point I told myself to stop being stupid and to concentrate on the job in hand...
A few more strokes and I noticed something waving near my head. My kayaker was waving frantically over my head trying to catch my attention. Instantly I was on full alert wondering what was going on. When I raised my head out of the water to find out what was happening she told me to keep swimming, which I did.
Sharks I thought, then common sense kicked in and my brain rationalised the situation by telling me there was more chance of a basking shark or jelly fish than anything that would do me serious harm, either way I didn’t really want to see. I noticed on my next breath that there was a seagull flying overhead but I was more worried about what was going on underneath me. I still couldn’t see anything nearby so I picked up the pace slightly and kept swimming while my kayaker got closer and closer to me. She was still waving her paddle above my head every now and again but as she wasn’t shouting at me to get out of the water I kept swimming.
Every other breath I could still see the seagull above me, I could even make out the small patch of red on its rather large beak. It must be fish I thought, the bird is following me because there are fish nearby and there must be something about the fish that has my guide worried. A few minutes later the kayak gets a bit further away and normal service was resumed, no paddle waving over my head and I figure whatever had my escort so worked up must have disappeared. I carried on swimming and about 20 minutes later I saw something in the water below me, it was moving. Rising panic started to take effect but as the water cleared I saw it was just something growing out of the sand.
Sand! I could suddenly see the bottom. That made a change as so far I hadn’t been able to see anything other than water. I started to feel a bit more comfortable, nothing would be coming out of the gloom and taking me unawares. Shortly it got to the point where I couldn’t swim any further, my hands were scooping up sand with every stroke, I had made it! I was on the beach at Ryde on the Isle of Wight. I’d made it all the way from Fort Gilkicker to Ryde, even better, I was the first person from our group to make it to shore. I’m still proud of that.
As I was helping my kayaker pull her kayak further up the beach I asked what had happened to make her wave at me so frantically during the crossing. It turned out that while I was expecting danger to come from beneath me I was almost totally unaware of where the danger was. The seagull that I had seen spent a good five minutes swooping at me and my lovely guide was waving her paddle over my head to fend off the attacks. It just goes to show that while your mind is playing tricks, you can be oblivious to the dangers that are actually happening around you.
Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings, please visit my just giving page to donate to a wonderful charity and to kick start my fundraising. There is a link at the top of the page...