I wish I could find my training diary from last year to see how I am doing in comparison to this time last year... I think I'm about the same, but not sure. I know I'm not sleeping as well or eating as well. I know I'm drinking too much still.
And last week I had to practically take a whole week off from swimming - too much to think about and worry about with my work interviews and decisions to make about future of my work. I couldn't cope with swimming as well.
Picking it up again this week, though. I need to work hard and get some miles in. Maybe I'll try to schedule a long swim on Sunday this week - I'd really like to get a good 10k swim in sometime. But where and when? All the public sessions are so useless. It just stresses me out having to dodge other people.
Today the week started well with a good hour's swim tonight at Golden Lane. A lovely pool athough it's only 20m, it's pretty deserted. The standard of swimmer isn't that good so often I'm the fastest person there and everyone gets out of the fast lane because I'm intimidating. Ha! I was the only one in the lane for about 40 minutes. Am enjoying doing a good lot of paddle work - can really feel the pulling in the back of my arms. Must be doing good. Mustn't it?
I'm still not getting enough sleep though. Every day I'm knackered when I wake up. Must go to bed earlier.
The good news is that the planning for the Scottish swim is coming together. I've ordered the charts on the Internet so that I can really see what I'm up against. I'll chat to Mike Oram on the phone again before going to meet my pilot in Dundee in a couple of weeks. Already though Mike has given me conflicting advice to my Dundee boat pilot about how I should tackle the swim. I'll really have to think it through properly. The tides, the route, the timing.
I had to email back Bob in Dundee about changing the provisional date for the swim. I have to go either earlier in August or later, as I need to be in England so that I can go on Annie's Channel swim scheduled for the last week in August. Annie is an American prospective Channel swimmer who is making her attempt this year. We've been emailing back and forth and she's asked if I'll be on her boat. Very exciting. I'm going to do it but that means I need to go to do my swim an earlier tide in August. Anyway, I emailed Bob asking him about tides early in August - he wants to start the swim a couple of hours after low tide and said that that would be around 4pm. He was concerned that this would mean swimming till late into the evening. I mailed him back suggesting that we start at 4am - and start in the dark. I explained to him how it would work - that we would have light sticks and so on. I wondered if he'd be nervous or worried. Not at all. He emailed back very enthusiastically! It's great to have such enthusiasm. I really feel like it's a joint project, an adventure for both of us. We're meeting up in a couple of weeks to discuss everything.
Andrea Gellan - a very good Scottish masters open water swimmer - came back to me this week with some water temperatures for the sea up there. She did a big swim along the Firth of Forth last year, so I asked her about the temperatures. It would be ideal to have a buoy gathering water temperatures to refer to, but there aren't any close to where I'll be swimming unfortunately. Anyway, Andrea said that it gets up to around 15C in July and August. As I suspected it doesn't get much warmer than that. And starts to go down again in September (or at least, it doesn't get any warmer in September). All in all, I think that August - beginning or middle will be the best time to go. At least in Scotland August will be warmer than September. The air temperature is a factor as well.
I've contacted the Phibbies to be official observers for the swim - no answer yet. I'd really like the swim to be ratified though, officially recognised. This part of it is very important to me.
Also in place provisionally are some of my crew - my sister Sophie who has been on my second Channel swim as well as Windermere. Sophie didn't take her eyes off me in the dark on my Channel swim. Very reassuring. Also Helen, a swimmer from my lane at the Cally - she has also been on the same swims as Sophie has crewing for me: second Channel swim, and Windermere. She's very calm in a crisis and very organised... I've also contacted Chris Kelly who has kayaked for me a few times. If I'm to need a kayaker or small boat for accompanying me in shallow waters (there are a lot of sandbanks around) I trust Chris more than anyone. He'd be great and has also accompanied me on two big swims and is a great sea kayaker. And a great motivator. He takes no bullshit. He's been a very good marathon canoeist, so knows about endurance athletes. What I haven't got yet is a long distance swimmer on my crew. That's the one thing that I still need. I feel it's really important. I'll find someone though, as it gets closer.
It's all coming together slowly but surely.