2012 English Channel Swim
7 - 14 September 2012
After having cycled through Africa, completed 5 Ironman Triathlons, run the Comrades Ultra Marathon, Climbed Kili ... I have decided to take on a slightly tougher option ...
... 34km of cold, open water swimming ... leaving the coast of the eternal "wanna-be" soccer nation, over to the "frogs" on the other side ...
Well, winter has arrived in Cape Town ... cold, wet, windy and red wine weather. The latest weather and sea conditions limit major open water swimming options: Silvermine has become rather cold and the sea is rather rough these days. But ... we have found a real pleasant 50m indoor swimming pool in Strand - about 40 minutes outside of Cape Town itself.
Friday morning (Freedom Day, public holiday in South Africa) we went for a good long training session. 15km ... tedious 300 lengths up and down ... swimming. Actually quite enjoyable. I followed this up with a short 3km swim on Saturday and a little 4km swim Sunday ... All in all a good weekend.
Overall the training is going well. A slightly unproductive week two weeks ago - suffering from a high fever and high pulse, accompanied by body aches ... but that dissipated quickly and now been feeling very good again. My gym trainer is putting me through my paces once a week with a thorough core and upper body session and I am aiming for at least 25km per week in the water.
Sitting in the office right now, looking outside at the cloudy sky and pumping wind, it is difficult to imagine I was enjoying a really great swim four hours ago.
Cape Town must be the best place to be training for the English Channel!
A slightly chilly morning at 07h00. Left Robben Island at about 07h45, heading on a good 11/12km swim to Three Anchor Bay. 13 degrees in the water; with outside temperatures topping out in the thirties. My progress was monitored by an early morning police boat, a mid-morning seal and a late morning dolphin parade ... all round, an entertaining morning :-)
A steady swim throughout ... continuous stroke rate of about 68 ... feeling strong and enjoying my swimming immensely.
Now that was good :-) ... a very productive long weekend. Work, training and catching up with family and friends ...
The feeling of processing through a full email inbox and ending a weekend with it totally empty is just fabulous. The only problem is that one has processed, replied, attended to all the mails ... and now inevitably I shall receive endless new responses or follow-up issues to mails processed ... the never ending admin trail in life ...
On the swimming side I managed a good 25km this last week. with a decent 6km on each day Friday, Saturday and Sunday ... followed by pleasant stiffness and tiredness which can best be treated with a really nice glass of wine. A rest day yesterday and a nice 3km session this morning.
It is a good feeling to have put in a truly productive swim week again ... and maybe I can top it off with a good long open water swim in the next week or two.
