Over The Blip

I can swim! I can swim! I can swim!

OK I have been able to swim since I was 4. I can pretty much carry on doing breast stroke forever. Even if the coach tells me I’m totally inefficient, swimming forward with my arms and dragging myself backwards with my legs. When I did Chirk I did 5 lengths crawl then alternate breast stroke crawl because the crawl tired me. When I did the open water the breast stroke was too tiring in a wet suit and I swallowed half the Mere when I did crawl. Last night I had a one to one lesson with Cerys, who I’ve known for a long time, her son used to play football with my daughter, she is a swimming coach in Mold and she is doing the Deva Diva’s.

We started off, after I’d warmed up, with a float, breathing out under water and breathing in on alternate strokes. Easy! Then without a float. Easy! I couldn’t believe it. In 10 minutes she had broken 40 years bad swimming habits. I wasn’t out of breath. I wasn’t tired.

Bring it on open water.

I’ll back track a bit now I’ve got that euphoria out of the way.

Training has been alright. Nothing spectacular. Doing what I intended to do so pretty much on track. Not improving time wise. Still finding the bike hill hard. Still running a hilly 5k in 40-42 minutes. The only thing stopping me going longer is time. I’ve got to be back in a morning to take the kids to school.

I’ve felt tired though. Maybe influenced by outside factors.

My mother in law broke her nose so my husband had to spend some time with his parents last week.

My big kids went to Italy with their Dad on Sunday for 2 weeks.

There are 2 people on holiday from work so I’m working every day this week and having to start at 8.

So I’ve decided…. Or it has been decided for me…. To treat this week as a consolidation week and just do a bit and hopefully train harder, stronger, longer and faster from next week.

I still haven’t been to the gym to start my pilates and spinning so need to get those booked for next week.

I took a spin in the car to recce the old Mold Sprint bike course. It is horrendous. Hill upon hill upon hill. And I mean hill not incline.

This basically knocked the stuffing out of me because it got me thinking that Llanrwyst is hilly and if it’s worse than Mold there’s no point me doing it.

Call in the cavalry - Iain from the gym

“Don't let ANY hill put you off or bully you. You've come too far for that nonsense. Train on them and conquer them. Again, learn to use your gears in the correct manner. Small gear, big cadence, tiny chance of walking. Control pace and breathing on bike and run. Try to arrive at the bottom of a hill in the right gear, the fewer times you change down the better for your rhythm. The same goes for the run. Maintain consistent run speed, try not to speed up or slow down significantly, changes in pace sap strength and confidence. Better to start slow and continue to run over the top than start too fast and have to crawl.”

Llanrwyst is 13 weeks away. Piece of cake!

And then.. I got letter of the month in Zest. Pretty remarkable as I hadn’t written to the magazine. It was all about the book that my sister in law bought me for my birthday. But hey ho who am I to complain? £74 worth of Liz Earle skincare products. Woo hoo!