Winter training - or lack of it

First experience of really cold water, I behaved like a baby

So it came about that I had signed up for another ridiculous swim despite not being at all ready. Rottnest was just 4 months away and I had only ever swum in the sea once, and wasn’t going to get much opportunity in England over the winter. I did manage to get down to Folkestone a couple of times for a quick dip, but financially it made no sense to drive for an hour and a bit down to Folkestone jumping in the water for up to 40 minutes then driving back again. Plus I was not enjoying the cold at all, and I didn’t see the need to start acclimatising 9 months before a Channel swim then spend the next 4 months out of the sea. This was basically an excuse to not do it again, I was really not appreciating what I had committed to do.

I definitely had to up my training though as the furthest I had ever swum was still the River Dart 10k, and that was made incredibly easy by the wetsuit and current, so didn’t really count as a 10km swim in my eyes. So I started upping my distances in the pool.

I decided cold water wasn't for me, yet. 

I was slowly but surely building up my endurance, but training completely incorrectly (as I later found out). I was just getting in the pool and swimming up and down constantly, doing hour sets, averaging about 2.5km an hour. At the time I thought this was pretty decent, it helped that nobody in my local pool were particularly excellent swimmers so I had no idea how slow I actually was.

I had to swim a qualifying distance for the Rottnest Channel, 10km in the pool. I had 4 hours and 15 minutes to do this, which I thought would not be a problem at all, I was very wrong. The first time I attempted the swim I qualified with about 30 seconds to spare so I decided I should do it again, this time qualifying with about 6 minutes to spare. Slow. I forgave myself as the swim was 303 lengths of the 33 metre pool and incredibly dull, and I had qualified so all was well. I still didn’t really appreciate how slow I was, or how I should be training and just carried on with my plodding routine, this was to cost me.

I was in contact with Cameron who recommended I do a 15km swim as well before I flew over to Oz, I was understandably overjoyed to hear that.

I decided to do this at Crystal Palace pool, for 2 reasons: 1, It was a 50 metre pool, one of the only ones in London (shame on you England) and 2, I was guaranteed to have a lane for the time it would take me without it filling with school kids determined to jump on my back and drown me (This actually happened in my pool, 2 kids were bombing as close to me as they possibly could for about 20 minutes before the lifeguard managed to say a word). This was my first real eye opener as to how slow I was and how far I still had to go.

The 15km swim took me just under 6 hours and 28 minutes and after about 5 hours I went a little bit mental. The blokes in the lane next to me were swimming at about twice my speed, using just one arm or just kicking. It was horrific to watch and finally I understood…. I was incredibly slow.

I had less than a month to go before I flew to Perth for the big swim and my mind was not in a good place. I wasn’t used to being the slowest, I‘ve never been the fastest but was always happy falling into the average category. “Too late now” I thought and proceeded to give myself a 3 week taper period. One of the most ridiculous decisions of my life and it would definitely come back to haunt me…