March

This has got to be my best month of training so far, in fact I would have to say, ever!  After a couple of months of focusing on the 5km sets and doing a lot of pace work, my times have come down significantly over a number of distances.  I have knocked 30secs off of my 400m time, over 45 secs off of my 1km time and more than a couple of minutes off of my 4km time…… this just shows how effective my current training is.  During the middle of the month, every time I got out of the pool, I had set a new PB.  I had to double check the times to makes sure I wasn’t making a mistake.

This has been a fantastic boost to my mental training and has really helped to keep me motivated in the pool for every session.  My positive state of mind was reinforced at the end of the month at an amazing Channel training camp held by Nick and Sakura at Eton.  We did a series of benchmark tests as well as the dreaded 100x100m on 100secs and I was right up there with the faster swimmers and able to comfortably hold the pace for those sessions.  It was a very good weekend full of plenty of swimming, a massive amount of information from those that had succeeded in swimming the Channel and a lot of food….I did my best to pile on the pounds in those 2 days eating every sugary snack available!

On the weight front, I had been gaining weight nice and steadily by eating lots and often, but I started to tail off the eating once the pounds started to pile on.  At the ‘Camp Eton’ we were given a number of examples of people that had run out of fuel when they got close to France and had to give up, because they had not fattened up enough.  The phrase, 'don’t be too vain to gain', was used a lot over the weekend.  This has renewed my motivation to put on the pounds and I am eating with vigour again…My target is to try and break the 88kg barrier by the end of April….Easter should help!

The only downside to this month of training is that I have still not done any open water swimming, the Serpentine is hovering around 0-1C which is just too cold to do a descent set.  I’d rather not sacrifice the option of a quality set in the pool for a few mins trying to get through a couple of hundred metres whilst swimming in an ice bath of duck poo… The plan was to start doing sets in the Serps once it hit 10C, which was supposed to be around the end of Feb, over a month on and that is still not the case. 

My biggest concern at the moment is the weather.  If we don’t get some sun soon it’s going to be a very cold training season in Dover, not to mention the crossing itself!