Winter is here

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.