Great North Swim

 A couple of days ago I signed myself up to do the Great North Swim, 2011. It's something I have talked about doing for a while now and finally thought enough is enough and signed myself up. Got fed up with talking about it.

So for those of you who don't know it's a mile swim across Lake Windermere. There are others across the country, including one in the Thames (yuk) but no I have this thing about swimming across Lake Windermere. Obviously it's open water so temperatures of about 17 degrees in September when it was originally but now it's in June it will be colder. The Lake is also tidal!

I have been doing a bit of research into training for it and found out that a mile is equivalent to about 65 lengths of a pool. Obviously on the day it will be non-stop but I figure I'll get to that. I also learned a great trick for counting lengths. Use the alphabet. By doing it this way I have to go through it 2 times and then through to 'M' to do 65 lengths. Perfect, as it also alleviates the mind boredom as you start to think of all the words beginning with that letter.

So today I did my first training session and was able to complete 80 lengths in exactly an hour. Not bad for the first time I thought and that was with the woman in the fast lane who was doing a very good impression of a drowning whale . She did eventually move out!

So I figure that with exactly a year to train, not only will I get fit but I might actually complete it in a half decent time. That is my next task - to research the average time taken and work towards achieving that.


Gemini6x