The Quest for the Negative Split

I can't pace myself. No matter how good my intentions, or how in depth my mental preparation is, as soon as I hear the word "go", natural instincts override everything, massive exercise excitement sets in and I go off like a rocket.

Marathon Motivation

Despite always saying that I didn't want to “go long” – I signed up for my first marathon. It was a combination of wanting a winter goal and a good excuse to get lots of miles loaded up into the legs for next year. I was even very, very sensible about my approach; I took a few weeks off running completely to rest and refresh the muscles (and the mind), then intricately formulated a 16 week training plan leading me up to race day, with rest weeks and everything!

Garmin Swim Review

The box had arrived when I got home from work. I did a tiny squeal of excitement and frantically went about pulling the package apart. Then I sat there for what was probably a good ten minutes, ogling my brand new swimming watch. Whilst I had been scouting out the swim watch market for a little while, I had bought this on somewhat of a whim and I admit, it was a purchase made in the heat of the moment without too much consideration. Nonetheless, it looked like instinct had prevailed.. based on the fact that it was pretty and it fitted my (very small) wrist.

Stoptober

The Stoptober campaign begins today, “a new, exciting 28 day challenge to stop smoking”. When I first read about it, I immediately had a couple of issues. First and foremost, presuming that it is in fact playing on the name of the month “October” and that isn’t just a very strange coincidence, it appears to be missing three days. Furthermore, surely if it was that easy to just stop, everyone would do it, wouldn’t they?

The Revival

In all honesty, I have not been going healthy recently. At all. I used the build up to my big swim as an excuse to overeat enormously and my packet-a-day cookie habit has come back with a chocolatey vengeance. A knee injury threw a spanner in the works as my fully planned out 16 week marathon training plan ceased to commence at the start of September and since then I haven't really reassessed the goals or gotten myself back in the zone. In general, motivation has just been seriously lacking, except motivation for exhausting all of Salisbury's supermarkets of their sweet baked good supplies.

The Dart 10k.. an ACTUAL 10k swim

Signing up to a 10k swim was a wine-induced idea inspired almost solely by the novelty that it would be a swim with food included. As the event drew closer though, I became less and less convinced that it was actually an achievable goal. I had completely mentally prepared myself to not be hugely disappointed if I didn't manage to get through it.

Plenty of tips were offered to me: just keep moving to stay warm, eat as much as you can, wear as many thick swim caps as you can get away with, silicone ear plugs save you a perceived few degrees.. all very sound advice. My favourite snippet though, the wisdom I took with me through the event, was from my slightly alternative thinking Canadian buddy Hillary: "You'll be alright, just pretend you're a mermaid". Genius.

Daring to do the Dart 10k

I have written many a time of my convoluted love/hate relationship with swimming. It seems that if I am not training for anything in particular then I really rather enjoy it and get on just fine, but as soon as a goal is up ahead, all swim systems crash and the hatred begins. It's not that I hate swimming itself, I just hate not being very good at it.