#ThankYouFriday
My thanks this week go to a mom who cheerfully offered to drive out of her way each week to drop my kid off after volunteering so that I can get a full workout in that day. And to all of the volunteers that make me largely unnecessary to the program I direct. We send food home each week to families who might need extra to make it through the weekend, and the people who are quietly ensuring that no child goes hungry in our little part of the world are amazing. They are constantly restoring my faith in humanity.
So a big thank you to those helping me out both directly and indirectly in my Channel chasing dreams.
Channel Prep
For me, the organizational details are absolutely the most boring part of swimming the Channel. Does anyone have any magical administrative fairies I could borrow?
People ask me if I get bored out there in the water for hours at a time. The answer is no (or very rarely), but I do get massively bored spending hours at my computer trying to parse travel insurance.
I need to:
- Follow up on some Bournemouth school stuff. I have an email from someone who provided great info – I just need to start contacting schools and figuring out details.
- Re-connect with US school admins now that my plans are more choate. Make sure that I can transition seamlessly from public school to “homeschooling” next winter.
- Visas – make sure I understand the system, know what type of visas we’ll be applying for and what we need in order to do so.
- Pets – can Henry come? Do we want him to? (both customs and flights – can he ride in the cabin?)
- Pools – where will I train until the ocean warms up? What are the hours? Anyone to train with while the kids are in school?
- Peanut butter – the only truly vital question in all of this – how do I ensure a supply of suitable peanut butter? The girl who eats anything has found her kryptonite in peanut butter pickiness.
Swim Stuff
Wednesday – yoga was HARD. My easiest, most stretchy yoga almost killed me. Muscles are seriously fatigued.
– Swam 5600, including a 30-minute straight swim with random sprint pickups – perfect. (and when you look at that as a perfect set, you really have to start questioning your sanity)
I forgot to mention I started doing some test 100’s when I’m on my own before the team gets in (the intent is 5 descending 100’s):
Monday 1:20; 1:17; 1:15; 1:12; 1:09
Tuesday: 1:21 (and it felt like a 1:15 effort – only had time for 1)
Wednesday: 1:21; 1:14: 1:11 (only time for 3 – lesson)
Thursday – pilates – it is so easy to strengthen your core. It adapts well to load and without a lot of time or energy. And it affects everything. Why don’t we all do it? (And I firmly include myself in the group of people who don’t do enough core work)
4700 yards + 30 minutes in the diving well. Dive down, flip, push of in streamline, 5 butterfly kicks at the surface (I think the name of this drill is “the dying dolphin””) Then “75’s” that showed me I really, really can’t tell how far I am from the wall. Come back, depth perception!
Thursday’s test 100’s: 1:21, 1:18, 1:16, 1:13, 1:11 (the 1:11 felt like what it was – an effort at speed from someone with no fast-twitch muscle fibers at the end of a very long week)
The dietary life of a marathon swimmer
I forgot to include this when I mentioned “Dover Solo” by Marcia Cleveland – her diet cracked me up
(She mentions, BTW, that she had previously eliminated sugar and wheat from her diet and felt terrific, and that she thinks she would have felt better during her training had she loaded up on nuts, cheese and other nutritious snacks instead of all the junk.)
“Breakfast usually consisted of oatmeal with butter, a roll or two with butter, maybe a donut after that, and then Ensure, a high calorie nutritional drink. Lunch was a sandwich or two, cookies, fruit, candy, and either a milkshake or a soda. More than once, I received incredulous stares from diners as they overheard me ordering lunch. I never shied away from an afternoon snack of whatever food in the vicinity was not nailed down. Dinner resembled a normal-sized meal but was usually followed by ice cream or another dessert. I estimate that I was eating between four- and five-thousand calories a day. For a while, it was actually fun but by the spring, all this face stuffing became more like a time-consuming job.”
I found that to be very true when training hard this fall. There has got to be something in between feeling like you don’t get to eat enough and feeling like you are preparing to turn yourself into foie gras!
