Altitude training

Of all the winter activities available in the French Alps, I never expected to be doing lengths in the outdoor swimming pool. But that's exactly what complemented a day's snowboarding at Alpe d'Huez.

During the high altitude swimming, there were two strange experiences of note. The first was the obvious breathlessness due to the reduced oxygen at 1880 metres. You become very out of breath after only a few lengths, but it seems to disappear after a while and you can return your breathing to normal. The second was the French approach to communality; standing naked in the male changing rooms watching the suited female swimmers pass by the doorless entrance while the female cleaners are milling around mopping the floors. Perhaps French ladies have just seen it all before.

I successfully managed to avoid increasing my weight during the week's holiday. Trudging for hundreds of metres through 2 feet of fresh powder snow at over 3000 metres was also pretty good for the lungs and it offset the cheese overdoses encountered on more than one occasion and the even more frequent boozing.

Current weight is 17 stones exactly (238 pounds / 108 kg)