Catch and pull

Good progress on stroke technique over the past few days. A great website has been of real help in finessing the open water stroke which is very different to the standard pool technique most of us have learnt. The 'catch' is the crucial bit which defines how you feel when you 'catch' the water at the very front of your stroke and the 'pull' (rather unsurprisingly) is the retraction of your arm back to your body.

Little adjustments to technique on these two areas make a huge difference. I reckon I have been putting down a slightly faster speed with 10-15% less effort. If you want to see more and download their stroke visualisation model (with virtual swimming legend - Mr Smooth) then visit http://www.swimsmooth.com/ .

First sea swim now set for 21st March - aagh ! Cold showers are helping with acclimatisation (now up to 4 mins post swimming of skin numbing water) but I don't really think anything will prepare me for 6-7 degrees celsius - so much for the gulfstream. Have a look at the sea where I'll be swimming on http://weathercam.camstreams.com/ though you might want to make sure you've got a mug of warm tea in your hand first !!

Highs and lows

Good and bad week last week with me setting a brand new PB of 1hr 32mins for 5km pool swim, but also having a very busy week which meant I was only able to get a total of 15km of training done.

Have not been feeling great with something going on in my sinuses (which no doubt comes from our kiddies' nursery via their noses !) so not getting too many miles in is probably the sensible course of action anyway.

Last Saturday (7th Feb) I did a good 10km swim and felt fine afterwards which is a good sign this early on. Only nagging issue was soreness deep within my shoulder joints, but again I have no doubt that I will get used to this over time.

Heavy training this week coming with 5km Monday morning and the same again on Monday evening. Have been told about a few alternative pools round here that are a bit longer than the current 18m pool I train in. Turning loses it novelty after a while.

Am looking to tackle the shooting pains I've been getting down my muscles by factoring in some protein powder to my post swim gobble. Hopefully it will help and if not then the Cookies and Cream flavour my lovely wife chose for me should perk me up a bit anyway !!

Sports massage - Ouch !

Having felt my muscles become increasingly tight and noticed a longer and longer warm up time during my swim training I went for a Sports Massage last night.

Severe pain is probably the best way to describe it, but really positive pain if that makes sense. Massage started off with her working up and down my (rather strained !) shoulder muscles. I lay their comfortably chatting about not very much and thinking that this was all rather nice. Was also deciding just how wimpy everyone else was who had told me to expect some pain !

Halfway through this though process she started working on my knots...yes, knots. These are made up of muscle fibres that, under strain, have stuck together in order to build a form of 'emergency' strength to counteract the strain they are being put under. Over time, they build up to become harder and harder lumps of muscle tissue and it appears the only way to get rid of them is a damn good pounding !

Slept like a baby afterwards (though our littlest baby woke at 4.30 !!!) and today I feel like I've been fitted with a new set of shoulders. Booked in again next week and will then start to go each fortnight until muscles are in better shape.

10k swim tomorrow morning (urgh - 5.45 alarm on a Saturday morning) so will see what difference it makes to my swimming !

Website now up and running !

I've finally managed to get a functioning website together. Thank you so much to all of you who have requested a more regular way of keeping up to date with training progress, fundraising events etc. I hope this keeps you interested !!

Thanks
Charlie