Janathon Week 2

Ah, the traditional Janathon set-back bites me on the arse again, but thankfully just a nibble so far. Lots on my mind this week, for various reasons - I've had some hibernating days, some down days, some shut-up-and-get-on-with-it days and a day feeling like I'd been hit in the face by a snow shovel thanks to a sinus infection. I've done more laundry than any one household should ever have to do. Still struggling with sleep - I have a really peculiar form of insomnia that I can't seem to find by Googling: I fall asleep fairly easily, have vivid dreams for ten minutes, then wake myself up somehow (often by pointing out a logical inconsistency within the dream). Then I'm wide awake for ages. It's so frustrating. It only used to happen when I went to bed too early - for me that's before midnight - and now it's any time I go to bed. I can't fathom it out. It leaves me very tired and prone to dozing off during the morning if I get even slightly comfortable. The cat sitting on my lap is fatal - one purr and I'm out for the count.

I have managed most of what I set out to do this week; I'm down one karate and one run, both due to the sinus infection. Having to sit out of karate whilst the girls were sparring was one of the most frustrating and tedious things I've done in ages. I couldn't do much more than curl up against the wall, pathetically mainline Strepsils, and hope I wasn't too cross-eyed to drive them home afterwards; but I still wanted to damn well get up there with my mitts and pads on and try to get the better of someone. Bah.

This week:
Fri 9th: 30mins Vinyasa Flow Yoga: Tadasana to Warrior 3 on physio's instructions to do more balancing.

Sat 10th: Karate: loads of circuit training and feeling unhappy with my kata (currently Heian Yondan). I really need to get on with the home study.

Sun 11th: USWIM Manchester: working hard and feeling good; included a timed 750m at 15.32 - not stellar but a big improvement for me. And lane leader for a while without getting my toes tapped! 1.6km and really missing that last half-hour the pool management have nicked off us :(

Mon 12th: Run: Roughly C25k wk5 powered by hate and spite - I SO wasn't in the mood but I figured I may as well make it as hard as possible so ran up a 10% hill into a headwind. Not quite the 5/5/5 min splits I was going for - made it in 3.5/4.5/15, so longer and harder than planned. I'll take it. Three years ago I was knackered just walking up that hill. 3 miles in total including the warm-up and walking breaks.

Tue 13th: 1hr Yin for runners, aaaaah. Much appreciated and nowhere near as sore as the first run.

Wed 14th: Death. Slept for a solid four hours during the day, so no run, and had to sit out of karate. Did ten minutes of Restorative Yoga before bed to get the kinks out of my neck and shoulders. And because Janathon.

Thu 15th: USWIM Blackburn: ye gods and little fishes, quite possibly the hardest set I've ever done - virtually all sprint work. Absolutely exhausting and yet, here I am, still alive, slightly faster and with almost-clear sinuses. Witchcraft, I tell you. 2.2km all told.

Tomorrow depends on the weather. I neeeeeed a good long session of yoga (and by that I mean 90mins) but I should also crowbar a run in there, and I'm in school all morning. We shall see.


The Christmas chocolate is all gone. This is probably a good thing.

Janathon Week 1

 I do love my enormous Tyr bag. It's so comfy to carry and I can take ALL the things.

I was in my girls' school this afternoon (I do volunteer reading help with a couple of classes) and overheard the Juniors' assembly. It was all about New Year's Resolutions and how it's ok to fail and try again and make a new resolution any time of the year. I thought that was a really nice thing to make clear to the kids early on and it was worth hearing the message myself, too.

My first week of Janathon hasn't been as badly derailed as last year's was. I have had a day being very off-colour when I'd planned to run, and a few mornings where I've just desperately needed to hibernate in the quiet. I've accrued quite the sleep-debt (if that is a real thing and not a myth), and trying to force my natural 10am-2am bodyclock back to 7am-12am has been torturous. The kids are shattered too, although gleeful to be back with their school and sports friends. We also had a disaster on Monday night when the washing machine took the final revenge and covered all three white karate gis in horrendous brown streaks, creating one panicked 2am order of a new machine (arrives Friday) and a sad little plea to our sensei for new gis. Which, stunningly, she managed to get hold of for us before our Wednesday class. How awesome is that! So washing kit has been a problem and the Christmas laundry backlog is laughing in my face.

However, I have managed to do something reasonable every day, which breaks down like this:

Thu 1st: 1hr Yin Yoga (supine focus)
Fri 2nd: 20mins Hatha Yoga (pre-bed relaxation)
Sat 3rd: Ran a mile with Eldest in 10m 49s
Sun 4th: USWIM Manchester, 2.6km of ALL THE DRILLS EVER OMG SO MUCH SINGLE-ARM
Mon 5th: 1hr Yin Yoga (evening practice)
Tue 6th: 1hr Yin Yoga (sthira sukham asanam/steadiness & sweetness)
Wed 7th: 1hr Karate (lots of fitness work, stances and kata with a little sparring)
Thu 8th: USWIM Blackburn, 1.6km of even more drills and some sprints. Much easier than Sunday, and although I'm rubbish at tracking these things, I do think my speed over 100m has improved again - below 2mins, don't think I've ever been there before.

There ought to be at least one more run in there, but eh, at least I did something and I feel better in the hips and back than I did last week, which can only be good. I plan to do some more challenging yoga over the next few days - any day I can do, I will do (because every day is too much pressure but I like it so much that I kick myself if it gets more than a couple of days between sessions), and hopefully at least two sessions each of run/swim/karate as appropriate. Next week I need to start reining in my post-Christmas chocolate munching. Cos it's nearly all gone.

In other news, I GOT A DRYROBE! This is ace and I can't wait for the next winter swim.

It's that time again...Janathon!

And we're back! Happy 2015, everyone, and if you haven't signed up for Janathon yet, hop to it. The rules have changed a little this year and you don't need to blog every day! Tweeting counts, hurrah.

Last year I was the last member of the family to succumb to the vomiting bug on New Year's Day, and thankfully it hasn't nabbed us this year (well - some of us had it in late Nov/early Dec and it could still hit us again, no chicken counting here!). I did feel kinda seedy after some enthusiastically alcoholic seeing in of the New Year and a whole lot of travelling over the last week, but a good session of Yin Yoga has sorted me right out. It's obvious I've been slacking, though, so my plan is to do yoga for the next few days to loosen myself up, then we're back into the usual round of Masters USWIM and karate five days a week, with yoga whenever I can fit it in. I saw my physio before Christmas to get my shonky hips and knees checked out, and it sounds like the usual hip flexor tightness and weakness on the left that's plagued me for years. So yin yoga and balance-based yoga need to feature highly this month. Also apparently my feet are "a bit wrong" so that'll need work too.

Plans for the year include but are not limited to:

- Swim a 10km event (mostly likely Bala two-way with the BLDSA, of which I'm now a member, and I'd love to do Kielder Water too) and probably a bunch of USWIM events

- Get my purple belt and be working towards purple/white

- Run a 10km event. Oh dear, what have I let myself in for with that! I have a rough plan to do it by the end of April. We'll see. I had a test run before xmas and I can still do a mile in about 9mins (albeit downhill), so that's something to build on.

- Support all our Team Bear members at Ironman UK - loads of our kids are doing the IronKids race, including my girls (and me, since Youngest has to be accompanied!); and wave pompoms for our Ironman nutters.

I'll probably end up doing a whole bunch of other stuff, and that's half the fun! In the meantime, have a horrible pun:

The teacher I like the most on YogaGlo tends to say "Yogi's choice" when there are multiple adjustments to a pose. So, I'm a Yogi. In Team Bear.

Clearly, I am Yogi Bear!

Time Passes

October was a bit of a random month, training-wise - a few hiccups of ill-health, a grand dose of "can't be arsed", some frustration, some generalised family chaos, and some useful gains, mostly in karate. November, despite bouts of illness, was much better.

 

 

 

 

Swimming

Completed my Aspire Challenge, a bit slower than I wanted to, but I finished it in style with three short laps of Salford Quays (1200m), in skins, at 10oC. And had a nice dose of some mixture of hypothermia and hypoglycemia to show for it; thank you to my Bears for taking care of me (read: stuffing me full of sugar and coffee til I stopped giggling and shaking).

USWIM Masters is back at Manchester Aquatics, with an extra session at Shadsworth, just down the road from me. Currently I'm performing reasonably well there (and having a lot of fun, actually - it's great not to miss my swimming friends through the winter!). My stroke feels cleaner and stronger despite not a lot of practice in October - thank you to Rach for the drill suggestions at the end of summer season, it does seem to have helped. I get off-days but overall things are consistent.

Victorian Polar was amazing fun - I made four costumes in the end and we looked AWESOME. Swam 200m in costume at 8oC and had a jolly nice, if painful, time in the water followed by all of the calories in the world ever.

Karate

This has been very challenging lately and that's where the majority of my energy has been going - I've been training three times a week plus working at home trying to nail down the three katas I needed to show at my next grading (heian shodan, heian nidan and heian sandan), and all the combinations required to go from yellow belt (7th kyu) to green belt (6th kyu). Technically I was wearing an orange belt but that's from the old grading system, it just wasn't worth changing it for a couple of months. I've learned how to bring side kicks into my sparring more and that seems to have improved things significantly. I'm quite good at those, but I know I need to work on my overall control and blocking. Learning three new kata in one go is not the normal way of things and I've spent a lot of time being cross with myself over kata and kihon (basics). I do think I've neglected kumite in my head at least and aside from 6th kyu kata, I want to focus on sparring in the new year so I can go to tournament.

We had the extraordinarily exciting opportunity to train with Shinji Nagaki Sensei - a world champion and 5th dan black belt! Eldest and I had a wonderful time taking an absolute master class in the basics (Youngest is a bit too young for this sort of thing right now, sadly, but at just 4y 4mo she is working her little butt off and she'll probably join us for seminars next year) and I felt a whole lot better about heian nidan in particular afterwards.

All three of us graded on 29th Nov.  Eldest and I are now green/6th kyu and Youngest impressed everyone with her concentration (over two hours of focus is a big ask when you're four!) and of course brought her orange belt/9th kyu home. I found it particularly hard - full of a cold, something feeling badly wrong and painful in my hip and being convinced I'd failed halfway through did not help, but like the Bears, the Tigers are brilliant support and I got past the pain. Definitely earned this one. Physio visit impending.

Running

Yeah...didn't do any of that stuff. To be honest I just didn't feel like it, then I didn't want to break anything before grading, and now my legs just feel rotten - everything's tight everywhere and I need to figure out what the cause is. Hence physio. I'm getting an awful lot of cramp whilst pool swimming and it was a real problem at grading - at one point I was stretched out in the box splits and two toes on my left foot were pointing at the ceiling all by themselves. I don't know if it's the cold or what but it needs dealing with. And when it's dealt with? Well. I have my target race picked out. It's not going away any time soon and it'll be there next year if it takes me that long to sort this out.

  

Yoga: I have an entire post about that coming up later. I can tell you're excited.

So...this happened.

  

Team Bear Tri

I seem to have been adopted! I'm still a little bemused and bowled over even a week or so later, partly by the sheer enormity of the digital hug that is Team Bear, and partly from an unsubtle dose of imposter syndrome. Patrick summed it up really well recently in this piece for H2Open: Am I A Proper Swimmer?. I think it's a feeling most people run into from time to time so I'm trying not to take it too seriously. Debates about the definition of "ultraswimmer" aside*, crossing Coniston has put me in a fairly small group of distance-capable swimmers, and I'm still getting my head around the reaction of people who don't swim a great deal. It still doesn't seem that far to me when I hang out with Windermere soloists and Channellists at USWIM.

Anyway, I suddenly have a zillion new and awesome people to follow on Twitter, lots of interesting conversations to have, enormous amounts of cheerleading and Kermit flailing to do, cake recipes to swap, and hopefully folks to duck drown throw into taunt bribe with cake introduce to open water. I still think it's unlikely I'll ever do a tri - the hills and narrow roads where I live are really quite intimidating for a newbie cyclist - but I'm content to be a long-distance swimmer, amateur runner and triathlon groupie! We (see, it's the royal we, now, cos we are Team Bear) will have some participants in IronManUK in Bolton next year, so I will almost certainly be hopping over the hill to provide screaming and cake. I'm definitely talented at that bit. My kids are even talking about doing the IronKids race and asking for Team Bear "Cub Strip". All very exciting.


Speaking of being in a small minority, this also happened:

Big thank you to Carl at @hypehairdarwen for the four hours of patience it takes to put that lot in!

This is the third time I've had mermaid greens put in, this time with some blues, and I'm as delighted as ever. The green is particularly long-lasting in my hair despite - or perhaps because of - the chlorine. You very rarely see greens and it does turn a few heads, but I guess the school run folks are used to my odd taste by now. There were many admiring noises at Salford Quays on Saturday, which was fun. So sad to be near the end of the season, although there are super-amazing Winter sessions to look forward to - including a Victorian themed dip in December for which I'm making a costume (or three, depending on how easy it is and how big the bribes are) modelled after an 1880s style outfit with bloomers and all. When I start making it I'll put some progress pics on my other blog Sea and Wood. I appear to have broken all the photos on there, bear with me.

This week(ish) I have:

- Brought my Aspire Challenge total up to 7.3 miles; a combination of working on my technique and bobbling about at Quays with friends - I have a rotten neckache from all the head-up breaststroke but it's been so worth it to just play in the water with no training pressure.

- Three sessions of karate in which I have my kicking legs back! I fell off the pontoon at Quays about five weeks ago and massively bruised my left leg to the point that Coniston was in doubt for a bit. I haven't been able to spar properly in a month or so, which has sucked in terms of fun, but I think it's made me more aware of how I use my punches and how much I depend on that left leg. All very educational.

- Been out for a run twice more, trying to balance the combination of disappointment that I'm not amazing right out of the box with surprise and pleasure that actually, I can run a mile without stopping and nearly two if I take a wee break for the vicious humpbacked bridge in the middle.

- Re-committed to a regular yoga practice. I did my very own little Julyathon and practiced every day, but it wasn't so easy to do with the kids off all Summer. Now I can go back to it, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I have a day off here and there. I would really, really rate YogaGlo for a home practice. For me it's well worth the subscription fee - much as I miss Jane's classes I now have access to lots of fantastic Yin-style classes by Felicia Tomasko which have undone a lot of my troubles. I also love David Harsharda Wagner's meditation classes.


So yeah...been a pretty darn good week for sports!


* I think it means the same as for running, ie anything further than marathon distance, which for swimmers is 6 mi/10k and that's the yardstick I judge myself by - but I also think that sea swims like EC, Triple Crown, Ocean's Seven etc deserve a special category of their own because the degree of difficulty is so much higher. Certain members of Team Bear loudly argue that the definition is "a bloody long way so shut up", and I'm going to leave it at that!

Don't Stop Me Now

Yes, yes, Queen is on my MP3 player.

I'm going to run Great North Run one day.

It might not be next year. I don't know. A half-marathon run on top of a marathon swim and a whole bunch of karate might be too much, and I might not even get a place next year anyway. But it might not be too much. And I might be dead slow, and I might come in last. I don't care. I can swim more than five miles! I can do ANYTHING. I can run for ten minutes without stopping even after a break of eight months. I can definitely do something with that, yes?

Ok, I know this is post-event high still. On Tuesday I went for my supposed "recovery swim" and put the first 1.5 miles on my Aspire challenge. On Wednesday, even though my arms went like noodles at the end of class, I got my green tip at karate. Check it out:

Quick digression: the last time I was writing regularly I wasn't far off taking my 8th kyu grading; since then I've also taken my 7th kyu (as shown by the orange belt, which is the old combined Goju/Shotokan syllabus - we're now a JKS England affiliate so everything has changed and we're all working doubly hard to get our heads round the new stuff before grading again!). 6th kyu grading is now on the horizon for me and Eldest, and Youngest joined us two months ago on her 4th birthday; she'll be going for her 9th kyu as well. I also competed in the club tournament (taking silvers for both kata and kumite in my age & grade group, and a bloody nose into the bargain), and attended a really fantastic seminar on grappling techniques. I fall more in love with the discipline at every class.

Autumn at the Quays

Ok, back to the programme. I had a lovely bobble about at Salford on Saturday introducing a friend to the joys - and her first time out in open water, she went skins at 17oC! So brilliant. Absolutely perfect weather, wonderful company and another 800m on my Aspire total, so two miles altogether (or 7.25 if you count Coniston, which I'm not sure whether I'm doing or not yet). Today I ran just short of a mile, having gone out to see if I could still run for ten minutes after all this time. Turns out I can - and I have better fitness, more experience and a whole lot of support to draw on. So I just need to do that fourteen times one after the other, right?

100kms to Coniston

Who on earth is that? 

To be honest, I'm not sure... 

So, yes, hello, long time no see. Er, I have still been training, just not writing about it out of sheer laziness, really (I'll update the karate grades and medals another time!). And that picture is part of the proof - that's me (apparently - thank you to Marylyn for the snap) ready to swim the 5.25 miles/8km that is Coniston Water on Saturday morning. And I did it!

According to the Year-Long Swim Challenge on Fitocracy I've done 102km altogether this year - post title being a hat-tip to the lovely Patrick of 1000kms to Windermere, who virtually saved my swim by writing about his last Windermere crossing! I have a sneaking suspicion that's not enough training to have done it well - I have been lazy, there's no two ways about that, and I should be quicker - but it turned out to be good enough to get me all the way across without injury or death. Huzzah!

Thank you

Before I write about the swim I have the Oscar-acceptance speech thing to do - first and foremost thank you to USWIM for providing such great facilities and coaching; and the opportunity to meet other nutters, and to Chillswim for organising a fantastic event. Thank you to Marylyn, Ursula, Sarah and Hazel for being such inspirations, setting wonderful examples of just how much you can do if you try, and always being there for a hug and a laugh. Thank you to Patrick and Alex and Bear for cheering, advice and staunch support, and always having a kind word even amidst their own challenges. All of my love, cake and penguins to Rach, who I suspect will never let me quit - there are not enough words to say how much your support means. Everything I've written and erased is inadequate. To all of my non-swimming friends who let me ramble and still sweetly cheer me on even when I must be as boring as hell. And of course my amazing husband Andrew and our daughters for not only putting up with all of this but for walking me through the tough bits and sticking to their own training. 

The Swim

So, the swim itself. I singularly failed to organise the weekend well and I had to get myself up, alone, at 4.30am to drive to the Lakes. It clashed with Great North Run, which Andrew was doing with his family for the second time, and he'd taken the kids up to Newcastle on Friday. So I had no-one to boot me out of bed, but I was awake five minutes before the first of three alarms went off. The cat clearly thought I was insane to leave the warm comfy bed, but after weeks of insomnia and nightmares about hypothermia, I'd actually slept well and fairly bounced out to the car. The drive was quiet and the sun rose just as I crossed into the Lakes, gifting me with breathtaking views of low-hanging cloud over mountains, and eventually Coniston itself, flat as glass and smooth as steel. What a relief that was: I don't do well with wind-chill and I was very glad that wasn't going to be a factor.

Chillswim's organisation was phenomenal. I was a little early for registration and managed to see not only Rach, who was just leaving to crew on feed station 3, but Sarah at reception too. I had time to write my mantras on my arms (sthira sukham asanam: steady and sweet posture in Sanskrit, from the yoga sutras and panta rei: everything flows in Greek, a soundbite summary of the philosophies of Heraclitus - yes, I know, poncy but it works :P). Then I stuffed myself with flapjack and apples, which is the only thing I've found that I can hold down at that time of the morning, and coffee. Chatting with other swimmers is always easy, so I idled my way around the cafe, comparing distances, gloating about the perfect weather, soothing pre-event collywobbles, high-fiving other skins swimmers, helping with tow-floats and so on. Then Marylyn, who was in the wave behind me but on my shuttle bus, arrived and that was lovely - a bit of "Salford home" in a strange place. Transfer to the start was smooth and Marylyn made sure I didn't do anything stupid like leave my glasses on! 

Having read Patrick's sweary Windermere blog and a near-disasterous report from H2Open about hypothermia/hypoglycemia, I resolved to stop at every feed station to have a drink at least, and get the morale boost that comes from knowing there are people out there looking out for you. In addition I shoved two Torq gels under my cap and gave one to Marylyn, so I felt quite confident. The water was a delightful 17.3oC - stony and then very squelchy underfoot to get in, but absolutely no cold shock. Most of the swimmers in their cosy wetsuits zipped off fairly quickly and I had a great view of all the orange tow-floats and caps bobbling along ahead of me. Good job, because I couldn't see the first mile marker at all!

My plan for the swim was this:

• First mile and a half: this is going to be horrible and my brain will play tricks on me. Can handle it. Got my mental music. Yes, it is stupid but I'm Not Gonna Talk About Doubts And Confusion.
• 1.5-2.5miles: this will be ok, I will have rhythm and music and everything eases up at this point
• 2.5-3.5miles: still ok, getting hungry and possibly tired but RACH WILL BE THERE, YAY!!
• 3.5-4.5miles: possibly hurting but it's only a mile, get on with it
• 4.5-5.25miles: I have no idea but I AM NOT STOPPING UNLESS I'M DYING

 First Section

I'm afraid I behaved like an absolute tourist for the first mile and a half. It was just. so. gorgeous. The sun came out and the water was completely clear - floating weed, yes, but nothing I haven't encountered before. Every so often there would be a patch of perfectly clear water with nothing but a single, turning autumn leaf below me. If I was any good at haiku I'd have written dozens that day. Surprisingly my internal Bad Voice was completely silenced by all this and I made the first mile marker at a reasonable 41 mins. That was ok, I knew I'd not trained enough lately due a ridiculous injury that left me bruised from knee to foot and it was twanging away, so I wasn't expecting to drop much below 40mins at any point. I had some difficulties navigating the island section and dropped back a little to allow another swimmer to "drive" because I couldn't see clearly. Like a doofus I'd forgotten to rinse my goggles out before setting off and my Secret Special AntiFog Solution (oh, alright, it's just baby shampoo) had got into my eye. It cleared, but it was easier to follow a tow float than try to sight through the channel.

I was towards the back of the wave, where I'd planned to be, and it was nice - I could recognise three or four other swimmers by stroke and suit and we all came into the first feed station together. 

Torq energy drinks are horrible.

"Onwards!" I shouted to my back-of-wave compatriots, and off we went in pursuit of mile 2. I didn't hit my watch for the split as I went past the marker but I remember calculating that I'd slowed a little, which I put down to stopping to clear my goggles and the feed station. At the 2.5 mile station I grabbed a handful of jelly babies and crammed them ALL into my mouth at once like a starving toddler. I felt good, not too hungry, and just wanted to crack on as the three mile marker looked closer than I'd expected.

 

The Horrible Bit

Three miles went by uneventfully, accompanied by a delighfully bright green-and-purple kayaker, which was very reassuring. Even being the last of our wave, we began to catch the slowest of the green-hat wave who'd gone out before us (the 50+min group). I think the guys who go out in skins in this group are actually the bravest of us all, not the speedy folks - I know my pace is just enough to keep me warm; I'm not sure I could handle being in the water for five hours at less than that. 

Like an idiot I'd forgotten the wave order, though, and I convinced myself that not only were those green hats the wave behind me catching up, but that the kayakers were annoyed and harrying on the end of my wave. Worse still, I couldn't see the 3.5mile feed station marker ANYWHERE and as tiredness was beginning to kick in, my left arm was dropping, steering me hard to the right and into the shore. I started to feel quite anxious; the lake was getting very very deep just here. I know I can see to 6m deep at the bottom of Salford Quays when it's clear; now I was swimming over weeds that went down in straight lines to far, far deeper than that. It was like a prehistoric jungle. In fact it was so deep it gave me vertigo a couple of times, a very unpleasant feeling on top of the anxiety of not seeing the marker, guilt at being so goddamn slow and the fatigue starting in my left shoulder. This is where I really needed my mantras and the promise of food and a smile from Rach. Trying to "find the sweetness", as yoga teacher Felicia Tomasko says, in every stroke was really hard but eventually we started to round the shoreline and there was the buoy. Bloody miles away still. But there was a large group of orange hats clustered about it and a few yellows starting to zip past, so I just aimed for that lot and hoped.

 The view from boat 3.5. I am waaaay back behind that lot, probably.

Even from seemingly miles away I could see Rach hanging over the side of the boat doling out bananas and I kicked hard at that point (my legs are usually pretty lazy, but at least the bruised one wasn't hurting anymore!). This may have been a mistake as it was a long stop - I hate bananas so I had to pull one of the Torq gels out of my cap and foist my rubbish onto the boat. It went down like heaven and I got some water too. This was at about 2hrs 37 if I remember rightly, already over my previous maximum swimming time, cold exposure and all on my furthest distance. I have no idea what Rach said at all, or what I said, but it helped enormously. I do remember she said she was proud of me, which completely mended my head. I tend to babble and talk claptrap at stressful times (apparently when my eldest was in NICU I would just talk and talk and talk without pausing for breath). Being able to confess how scary that last bit was settled me right down. I could feel my legs starting to cramp up, though, which was unexpected but I'd been secretly concerned about happening. I never cramp outdoors usually, only from banging my overly-tight feet off pool walls, and it was all up my feet and calves and thighs. I put on a brave face and swam away, figuring that if I couldn't work it off fast at least I was close to somewhere I could be pulled out.

Miraculously the cramp disappeared as quickly as it had come on and I was in good spirits as I hit the four mile marker. From there you can see what looks like the end of the lake - it wasn't, the marina and busy boats completely fooled me! but even though I was being overtaken by virtually everyone, I didn't care - we were all on the home stretch now and I had James' Sit Down in my head, bouncing me along.

The weeds were difficult again, but I could see the last feed station up ahead. I was feeling pretty good in the brainpan until about 400m from the boat, when my lips started to tingle like mad. Uh-oh. I knew that sensation - I'd had it once before in training, when I'd done 4.5km on no breakfast - and I knew my blood sugar must be dropping fast. I would be ok, I promised myself - not far to go and I had another gel on me regardless. I was thinking clearly, I wasn't cold, there was a kayaker very close by. I thanked Patrick in my head again for his sweary post. I swam in, sucked down a gel like a hoover and the tingling vanished within seconds. Just three-quarters of a mile to go. I could now see the 5-mile marker and beyond it, the finish proper.

The weeds got really rough here, with kayakers helping us to keep out of the worst of it. I had to do this weird modified stroke for a bit to get through it,  scooping it away from my face, and that dragged me rightwards even more - I must have looked like a boat with a broken rudder. Every so often I'd see how far off I was and shout BLOODY HELL!!! under the water. It cleared briefly at five miles and I hit the marker at exactly four hours.

#sufferbutNEVERsurrender

This is Team Bear Tri's motto and boy, did I need it for the last quarter of a mile. It took me 14 minutes to do it and every single one of them hurt. The weeds were thick and horrible and I was swearing like a trooper because I could NOT make myself go straight. The prior injuries I'd expected to be sore were completely absent - but I had a whole new catalogue of pain to contend with and the bloody weed was so distracting. But after aeons and ice ages and galaxies forming and dying, I could hear the crowd clapping even through my earplugs, and to my complete surprise, I landed and stood up on my own two feet without falling down. No wobbles, no shakes, no shivering and completely stable, if sore. So I had suffered and NOT surrendered - and got away with it.

I virtually danced past the crowd, got my medal, slurped down some vile, lukewarm blackcurrant drink and found my bag. And my glasses! Got changed, ran into Marylyn who came in just after me, the speedy thing! Got a hug from Hazel (from a Channel soloist I can't say how much that means!) and texted Rach with my time. Wonderfully she was already back at the school and getting coffee, so we hopped on the first bus we could and settled in to eat as much cake as humanly possible. I finally managed to meet Claire, who I've known online for years, and was rather awed to be at the same table as Dan Abel, who'd done the lot in just over two hours on no feeds at all. Gobsmacking. Completely missed the awards ceremony, forgot to put my wristband in the prize draw bucket, and spent several hours basking in the joy of having completed the biggest swim of my life with my friends all around me. I was a bit itchy from the weeds but SuperRach fed me an antihistamine and all was well.

Then I drove to Newcastle. Whereupon I fell through the door, kissed my loved ones, got a shower, ate more cake and slept like a rock until the sounds of four runners getting ready for Great North Run finally woke me up.

Wood boys ready to rock the Great North Run. Perhaps I'll join them one day!

They all did really well in hot, crowded conditions, with the first back coming in at 2hrs01 and the last of them at 2hrs20, so we have had an awful lot to be proud of this weekend. And the girls put up with it all beautifully, despite being late to bed and starting school the next day. One day soon I'm sure it'll be us trekking around their sporting events!

Apparently this is how you do a "busy weekend" in our house.

I'm still processing a lot of it, but at the moment I'm recovering well - there are no obvious injuries. I'll see for sure when I go for a pootle about in the pool tomorrow. I'm starting the Aspire Challenge this week to keep me honest through Autumn, so I have 22 miles of training plans to get through and I have to pick up my speed significantly (and also fix that broken rudder). But at this point? Yes, I may well be booking again - and currently I'm talking about taking on a 6-mile/10km next year, possibly Bala or Buttermere, which is pretty much the point where you can start to call yourself a marathon swimmer (6 mile swim being equivalent to a runner's marathon). Then, who knows. 

The length of Windermere twinkles in the far, far, VERY far distance...