Swim Training this morning.

I did get up bright as a button this morning, dressed myself and was almost ready as Steve sat sipping his tea (Dilmah Rose with Vanilla luxury tea bags dipped quickly no more that three times). First thing in the morning I hit the coffee immediately (Clipper Organic Latin American instant) with a heaped spoonful of creamer and a heaped teaspoon of Manuka 10+ Honey, stirred vigorously until completely mixed, I hate it when the top is not at all sweet and the last few mouthfuls are very sweet; I have to make it myself for perfection, you can not get the servants these days.

The swim schedules for today are the ones I posted Wednesday, when the pool was out of order due to slightly off chlorine levels.

My friend Bekka was a no show today and so I started the schedule on my own just outside the animals lane. It was quiet in the pool this morning on my side and of course, I am not complaining about that. Steve handed me my schedule and I tried to say that I would just do a long swim on my own since Bex was not there. He said simply “Here’s your schedule”.

I was not long into my set when I realised that my arms were not working as well as usual because I was only getting in a second or so before the next ‘Go’ time. This went downhill from there until I opted for just going on the next quarter on the clock from when I got in.

My husband, who at these sessions is better known as my coach, was swimming in the lane next to me with his boys (well men). His name should be Argos because he sees everything, whether it be in the pool, in an open water practice or a race, even when he is racing himself; He will still see everything, nothing escapes him. Argos of the hundred eyes.

So when I got to the end on one occasion he was standing there with an expression somewhere between curiosity and the classic death ray. He said nothing, so I quickly explained that I had ‘Scrubbers Arms’ due to my efforts at trying to vigorously clean some grubby places on our carpet at home on a previous day. I continued my swim opting to swim to the sound in my head of Hadley Fraser singing ‘Hey There’ from The Pyjama Game. This is a song I usually only swim to in my head for warm up or swim down since it is fairly slow and steady so that confirmed that my arms were tired.

During this set I noticed that one of Steve’s swimmers was doing something weird between the pull and push phase of the stroke but only with his right hand. It reminded me of one of my Facebook friends, Ian Douglas Sweet’s charming fishing blog videos, when the fisherman finally gets the fish, still on the line but out of the water and it flaps around. I can only think that this is caused by dropping the elbow at that point (Swimming not fishing). I told Steve about it when I had finished my set and he said he would look out for that since I didn’t know which one of his swimmers it was since I only caught it now and again during my long axis rotation.

When I got through my schedule I added 200 mtrs back stroke, still with Hadley singing in my head but counting the 1-2-3-4-5-6 of my kick which may sound interesting to anybody who has tried counting 1-2-3-4-5-6 to 4/4 time music but actually it does fit.

 

After our swim we drove the Costa Coffee in Rustington, picked up a few bits of shopping in Waitrose opposite and came home.  I checked up on the cinema times, in case we had chance to skive off this afternoon but there was nothing that we wanted to see that was on at a time that was acceptable to us; we don’t go to late shows, and since we have three theatre outings during the rest of this month we decided not to be greedy.

Steve at the start of Ironman Austria when it was a no wet-suit swim a couple of years ago. He has no nerves what so ever.

Steve and our friend Anthony on holiday in Austria

where the swimming is just heavenly.