Swim times

This week's key swim session was 3.4km. It's the last long distance swim shown in my training plan before The Event, so I was prepared to put in a decent effort. I've always hoped to break the 60 minute barrier for my open water swim time, which I believe would equate to a 20m pool time of under 70 minutes, but despite all the training I've been doing and numerous technique improvements, I've never actually made significant gains on my time. What I have achieved is to leave the pool feeling fresh after swimming for over hour, albeit more than a little hungry.

I break down long pool swims into 50 lengths to try and remove some of the intense monotony. The first 50 lengths were completed in 19 minutes and 33 seconds. Not too bad, and I felt pretty good at this point. The clock showed 39 minutes and 3 seconds at the end of the next 50 lengths. If you hold on a moment, I'll do the maths .... 3 seconds quicker than the first 50! I laughed out loud in disbelief that I could complete two sets of 50 lengths and finish them to within 3 seconds of each other. I was not the only one displaying disbelief; the old lady who happened to be parked at the end of the pool whilst I was checking my times looked extremely perplexed, wondering why my watch was so amusing.

The third set of 50 lengths took 19 minutes and 38 seconds, and the remaining 20 lengths a further 7 minutes and 53 seconds.

To summarise mathematically, which I'm sure you weren't hoping for, my actual swim time for 170 lengths was 66 minutes and 34 seconds and if you pro-rata my first 50 lengths, it gives a projected swim time of 66 minutes and 28 seconds.

To summarise generally, my swimming stroke is very, very consistent.

And just to cool down after the swim, a quick 120 minute cycle up a consistently steep hill. The things I now consider normal ...

Current weight is 13 stones 4 pounds (186 pounds / 84.4 kg).