Welcome to another blog from me, this one focused towards training for the summer ahead!
With spring less than a few weeks away I know that in this final month before the open water season, training will be psychically hard. The feeling of the fresh outdoors less than a month away will really drive me to train day in day out at the top level. This is something that is a real challenge, the mental side of regular and continuous high level training. Being able to motivate myself at 6am in the morning to jump out of bed, grab my swimming gear, head to a morning training session and push myself to the max. Then working 9-5:30 before a gruelling 2 hour swim, before you know it it’s 9:30pm and your body feels exhausted.
During a normal day I will be training and working from 6am till 9:30pm before I get a chance to relax, socialise and catch up on any work/tasks that I may have to do. However, normally come 9:30pm I am straight to bed, drained and ready for an early start on the next day.
On Mondays due to coached training I will not get home before 10:30pm, and will generally go straight to bed due to the demanding session that has just gone by. It’s safe to say that my life has become very un-social and both psychically and mentally demanding. There’s a saying that is used a lot – “living for the weekends” – and this is very true for me.
With open water training so close I really cannot wait! There are many very cold sessions along with the famous training camp that will push me to the max in every way possible. The more short term worry is if my swim wetsuit will still fit me, with all this training I have noticed a big change in body shape which has been terrible for the pocket, having to buy new clothes to fit the new me!
For me, this month signals the start of the count down to one of the greatest challenges known to man and possibly the greatest challenge I will ever face. The route to the channel swim is nearly upon me and the start of something great!
