tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48539968957322944132024-03-12T19:47:31.047-07:00The Long SwimKaren Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.comBlogger311125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-40360761944355202232020-03-12T05:02:00.000-07:002020-03-12T05:25:20.431-07:00The (global) politics of marathon swimmingWe are living in very strange and scary times - climate catastrophe, a pandemic, US and UK leaders who are incompetent, lazy, sexist, malevolent ideologues void of empathy and compassion (it's my blog - I can say what I like). On a lesser scale, but another major stressor for me and many of my colleagues in Higher Education, is a our long-running disputes over working conditions and pensions, including most recently, nearly 4 weeks of strike action that's coming to an end (and without resolution) tomorrow. Against this bleak and uncertain context, I've been thinking about a couple of things in relation to marathon swimming (itself an uplifting practice in difficult times) where I think that positive changes can be made to make our lives just a little bit better. Not everyone will agree, but perhaps this can be a contribution to some conversations that I think we need to have as a community. In particular, I've been thinking about two things: (1) the responsibilities of the marathon swimming community in the context of climate change; and (2) the need for proactive trans-inclusivity.<br />
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Firstly, climate change. Given that many parts of the world have been / still are on fire, there is no (sensible) denying the urgency of climate change. It feels like such an insurmountable challenge that it's hard to feel like any direct action on an individual level is significant enough to make a difference. I'd also be the first to admit that I'm a little late to the party on some of this, so none of what follows is in the spirit of setting myself up as an eco-paragon. But along with other aspects of my life / consumption, I've been thinking a lot about marathon swimming and flying. Marathon swimming is a practice that involves a great deal of long-haul travel for many of those eager to complete the 'big' swims on the roster. This is exacerbated by challenges like the Oceans 7 or its ice-mile equivalents, with these latter in particular involving extensive travel to already-fragile ecosystems. I understand the desire to make these trips and I have done more than my share of long-haul flying for swimming (as well as work / leisure). But I wonder if this is the moment when we need to be rethinking what the travelling involved in marathon swimming might be costing those very aquatic environments that we travel to enjoy.<br />
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I recently attended a 'teach-out' talk here at Leeds that was being held as part of the strike action. Politics scholar, <a href="https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/politics/staff/71/dr-jonathan-dean">Jonathon Dean</a>, gave an amazing lecture on the politics of bird(watch)ing, describing how he loved taking trips all around the world to observe unfamiliar birds in their natural habitats. It reminded me of the many swimming holidays and swim challenges that we all love. He told us that he had decided to no longer take those trips because he felt that he could no longer justify the environmental impacts of those flights, especially given his investment as a birder in those environments and their wildlife; he spoke about how sad this made him feel and what a loss it was, but that he was certain that it was the right thing to do. And I think that this might also be true about swimming - that while the world is literally on fire, we have to stop. And so, as a start (and this is by no means a definitive answer to a complex problem), I've decided to no longer sign up for any swims that would involve long-haul flying (and I'm also refusing long-haul flying for work). Like I said, I'm no paragon here - I've done lots of swim-related flying in the past, and am scheduled to fly to the Canary Islands in a few weeks for a writing retreat, where there will certainly also be some swimming (although COVID-19 may also put paid to all that). But I think that it's something that the marathon swimming community should be thinking and talking about. I know that many local swimming orgs are strongly invested in environmental protection (<a href="https://www.nyopenwater.org/">NYOW</a> is an excellent example of this), and am inspired by the work that many people are doing to change their patterns of movement and consumption to minimise environmental harm (going vegan, reducing plastic, using public transport etc). Stopping marathon swim-related flying is just one small step, but I think it's worth considering. This feels like a time when things really need to change, not least before the aquatic environments where we love to swim are irrevocably damaged.<br />
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The second issue is one of trans-inclusivity. As I write this, the UK is caught up in a bonfire of transphobia. Mainstream newspapers are publishing opinion pieces with appalling regularity demonising trans people, creating a deeply unsafe environment for a group that is already multiply disadvantaged and discriminated against, and globally, trans people are finding themselves on the receiving end of discriminatory legislative interventions and hostile environments that make their everyday lives increasingly dangerous and difficult. Sport is something of a lightning rod for this, with high profile athletes like the swimmer, Sharron Davies, speaking out against trans inclusion in women's sport, relying on a transphobic ideology dressed up in unsustainably reductive biological accounts of what constitutes a 'woman' in order to facilitate that exclusion.<br />
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So this seems like the perfect opportunity to me for the marathon swimming community (and the open water swimming community more widely) to take a proactive stand and explicitly declare its inclusion of trans people as a matter of policy and practice. As an absolute minimum, this should include allowing swimmers to self-identify without question for the purposes of swim recording (and to make clear in the regulations that this is the case). But perhaps this is also a moment when we could think about moving away from the binary categorisation of men / women in marathon swim recording. Ultra-endurance sport is an arena where the performance gap between men and women is the least predictable and marked and I'm not convinced that there is any need for gender binary categorisations at all; to get rid of them would be to open up the sport proactively to those who are currently excluded by it (e.g. those identifying as non-binary) and enable us to blaze a trail in looking beyond a gender binary that is, for many, tyrannical and destructive in the way it is enforced socially. People could still self-identify in the records (male / female / trans / non-binary etc), but without forcing those identifications into the binary frame. Trans and non-binary people currently face enormous challenges in accessing sports like swimming, where the visibility of the uncovered body can make them very vulnerable to public scrutiny, hostility and violence. The overt opening up of marathon swimming to those people would send a significant message that transphobia is not acceptable and that all swimmers are welcome. Particularly in the UK (but also globally), it is not enough to wait until the situation arises or to just passively stand by with inclusive intent; I believe that we need to stand collectively and proactively in defence of trans-inclusion in policies and practices of the sport's organisations, communities and practices right now, leaving no doubt about the unacceptability of transphobia and its discriminatory effects.<br />
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So these are just thoughts - the kind of thinking that happens when you're on strike, the world is on fire in multiple ways and the only sustained public response is the panic-buying of toilet roll - but serious thoughts nevertheless in serious times.<br />
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-33015108126934568852019-08-16T09:15:00.001-07:002019-08-16T09:15:11.454-07:00Back in business....? Last Tuesday, I swam the length of Windermere in 5 hours and 47 minutes.<br />
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In the world of marathon swimming, and particularly now that the swimming season is in full bloom, this is a fairly mundane accomplishment. In fact, there was a time just a few years ago when a 6-hour swim was just a bread-and-butter training day for me, often tied back-to-back with a swim of similar length the following day to get endurance miles in the shoulders. But not this year; not on Tuesday. Tuesday was the culmination of 2 years and 3 months of injury and rehab to my back, neck and shoulder; it was my longest swim since I was injured and it was the first time since May 2017 that I have felt solid and strong enough in the water to swim in a sustained way. And it felt amazing. That night, I sat in the van and cried with delighted relief. </div>
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There have been a number of points since I was first injured that I have thought that I was okay, but each time, the recovery was too superficial and any effortful swimming soon broke the fragile truce I had reached with my body. I had started to think seriously about the possibility of not being able to return to swimming and had even begun some tentative ventures into running and cycling by way of a Plan B, just in case. But then, really only in the last 6 weeks, everything started to fall into place and I began to rediscover my swimming self, adding longer swims to my Lake District trips without the regression into pain and immobility that had happened previously. I swam the BLDSA Coniston event a couple of weeks ago by way of a test swim without any negative consequences (apart from some ferocious duck itch...occupational hazard) and finally committed in my mind to the Windermere swim that I had booked months ago in a fit of optimism. </div>
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When the day came, I was as nervous as if I was doing a Channel swim and had spent the preceding week glued to the constantly changing weather forecast. I watched storms pass through dumping huge quantities of rain that ran into the lakes and rivers, lowering the water temperatures and threatening floods. But I was supremely lucky, and amidst a wet and windy couple of weeks, I landed an almost perfect swimming day. <a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8RzQYgQ3NvU/XVa8S3yXfUI/AAAAAAAABdg/6yp9r8sK2UYO0kXf_6MP_a3x0C1vve6igCLcBGAs/s1600/Windermere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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In spite of the rain, the water was still deliciously warm from the good weather in July, and there was just the gentlest of breezes for most of the swim, licking up just a little towards the end as we began to cross the lake in the final 3km of the swim into Waterhead. I was accompanied by Pete Kelly of Ambleside's <i><a href="https://www.swimthelakes.co.uk/">Swim The Lakes</a>, </i>who provided navigation, safety cover and support from his canoe, and was a wonderfully calm presence, quietly paddling alongside, guiding me round hazards and protecting me from boat traffic. By hour 3, I started to feel like I was hitting my stride, and by hour 5, even though my lack of stamina from my long lay-off was starting to show, I had rediscovered the glorious feeling of belonging and comfort in the water that only comes (for me, at least) during long swimming. I was tired at the finish and relieved to be able to stop having achieved my goal, but I could have done more, and I finished feeling confident that with more training to build my endurance back up, I will be able to do more and go further (if I decide I want to). It feels unspeakably good to be back.<br />
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But none of this tortuously slow return to swimming has happened by accident and it has taken a lot of work by a number of people to get me back to this point. In the first year of the injury, I worked with a local osteopath and a massage therapist, both of whom did a great job of relieving the trapped nerves and the most obviously rigid muscles that were impeding movement and causing pain. But while this treatment always helped, it never really got to the heart of the problem. It's hard, though, to stop a line of treatment with people you like and trust when it seems to be working, even if only very gradually, and in hindsight, I left it too long before looking for alternative solutions. It was only when I started working with Cumbria-based injury and rehab specialist, Adam Smith (@adamsmithrehab on Twitter) last year that things really started to move noticeably in the right direction. I've had two sustained courses of treatment with him - <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.com/2018/09/on-scale-of-1-to-10.html">at the end of last summer</a>, and throughout this summer - during which he has worked relentlessly through scar tissue and taut muscles, restoring movement in my thoracic spine (which turns out to be the heart of the problem) and shoulder (which often felt like it was the problem, but was really collateral damage). The damage was quite deep and long-standing and it's been a drawn-out (and often quite painful) job that has demanded a great deal of expertise, effort and tenacity from Adam. But quite recently, everything started to change and I noticed that swimming was relieving my back rather than aggravating it; the restored movement seemed to have set up a positive cycle where movement produced more movement rather than immobility, which Adam had been promising would eventually happen but I never quite believed him. Amazingly, when I saw Adam after the Windermere swim, he could barely find the band of scar tissue that he's been digging away at for all this time, and since the swim, I've had almost no symptoms at all. My recovery is still ongoing and I am diligently doing all of my rehab and mobility exercises to fend off even the hint of recurrence, but the state of my recovery is so markedly different from any of the previous times of the last couple of years when I thought that I was on the mend that I am feeling very confident that we have it properly on the run now and that I am (cautiously) back in business.<br />
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But what does it mean to say that I am back in business? At the moment, I'm not sure. Part of me - a big part of me - wants to set my sights on something long. I have a couple of swims in mind that I am keeping to myself for now, but in any case, I will need a very long and steady run-up to anything substantial. It took me two years to train for the Channel, and using this as a model, 2021 would be the absolutely earliest for anything really long, although I'm also thinking about interim, build-up goals for 2020. But I'm also not 100% certain that I'm going to go back to very long swimming. If it is a choice between being able to swim Windermere-length distances and below, but to swim regularly, often and consistently, and having a big blow-out swim that might leave me out of the water for an extended period again, I would undoubtedly choose the former. I've had a wonderful summer in the Lakes, swimming, paddle-boarding and enjoying the beauty of it all; I don't want to risk losing that again.<br />
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I'm also uncomfortably aware that when I was first injured in 2017 and in subsequent moments of optimism over the last couple of years, I ended up letting quite a lot of people down, having to cancel swims and inconvenience friends who had been generous enough to make arrangements to crew for me. I really don't want to be that person, and this makes me cautious about diving back into it all again. Time will tell.<br />
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But the most important thing for now is that swimming is back in my life. My working life has been very challenging over the last year and without swimming to blow of steam, get my head straight and wear myself out, by last spring, I was experiencing high levels of stress, anxiety and insomnia that were impacting on my mental and physical health in unacceptable and unsustainable ways. Swimming is not the answer to these problems, which are fundamentally structural in nature rather than a personal failure of self-care, but it certainly helps to keep me going while I focus on ways to find a better balance in my working life. I feel better going into the next academic year knowing that swimming is there to fall back on.<br />
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I am grateful to so many people for sticking with me through this rather drawn-out palaver and helping me find a way through it. Adam has been amazing; Scarborough osteopath Neil Corcoran found bits of me to pop and crack that I didn't even know existed or were supposed to move; my local osteopath, <a href="http://www.ilkleyosteopaths.co.uk/">Louise Judd</a>, has been a steady influence throughout, helping to ease my body towards recovery; and Leeds massage therapist, <a href="https://www.sportsmassageleeds.co.uk/">Jim Mason</a> kept me up and moving over the winter months. Skilled experts, one and all. Nevertheless, I have to confess to hoping that this is now the beginning of being able to focus my disposable income on something other than treatment... although I'm also very aware of the incredible privilege that comes with being able to engage with this kind of therapeutic expertise, and I'm very grateful that that option was available to me.<br />
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As we head into the dog-days of summer and as the beginning of the new academic year looms large, I'm looking forward to some final trips to the Lakes for swimming and paddling fun as I rediscover my love of swimming. We'll have to see what happens next, but for now, if you need me, I'll be in the water.Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-88298170518207527822019-02-10T13:10:00.000-08:002019-02-10T13:14:16.588-08:00Bioprene....Since whining about injury has become a bit of a default setting for the blog recently, I thought I'd return to a bit of opinionated rambling by way of light relief.<br />
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So....recently on the <a href="https://forum.marathonswimmers.org/discussion/1956/why-is-the-non-wetsuit-category-called-bioprene-category#latest">Marathon Swimmers Forum, there was a discussion about the use of the term "bioprene"</a> - a neologism that compounds <i>biology</i> and <i>neoprene</i> to describe body fat specifically in the context of swimming. As a concept, 'Bioprene' serves a number of functions. Firstly, it signals a form of 'natural' swim-enabling body composition (buoyancy / insulation) that stands in direct contrast to <i>neoprene, </i>whose 'artificial' assistive qualities remains a lightning rod for debates about what constitutes authentic marathon swimming. I'm not sure that the use of a term founded on that binary is particularly helpful in smoothing out those battle lines (and I'd make the same argument about the use of 'skins' to describe non-wetsuit swimming - an ugly term that defines swimming by the body's surface rather than its entirety, and makes me cringe every time I hear it). Second, it is a euphemistic attempt to distance swimmers from the social stigma of fatness / body fat by separating it from the embodied self; bioprene is something that can be gained or lost, put on or taken off, just as a wetsuit can, rather than being part of, and inseparable from, who the swimmer is. Third, and relatedly, bioprene operates as an alibi for fatness; as I've written about extensively elsewhere, bioprene is repeatedly articulated in terms of 'heroic fatness' (fatness for a higher purpose) in ways that render body fat forgivable by virtue of its connection to an status-bearing, extreme endurance sport. In a fat-phobic society, fatness and body fat always need to be accounted for, and calling fat bioprene distinguishes it from other, more easily discredited, forms of fatness. And fourth, variable amounts of body fat among swimmers, and the impossibility of reading performance off the fat body, is commonly cited as evidence of a community that is exempt from the fat-phobic prejudices that people with noticeable body fat encounter in as they move through the world. The water, we are told, is a great leveller, but this still leaves those negative assumptions intact outside of swimming; this swimming exceptionalism, while well-intended, does nothing to disrupt the negative assumptions and devastating discrimination that fat people face in their everyday lives (and also ignores the entrenched fat-phobia that is alive and well in the swimming community).<br />
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I've never really liked 'bioprene' as a term - it's too euphemistic, and too wedded to the idea that body fat is somehow not part of the body / self. But I also strongly dispute the idea that fat-phobia is rendered obsolete by the accustomed exposure among swimmers to bodies of all shapes and sizes and the awareness that size / composition is no predictor of performance. Every time you observe a fat swimmer and make judgements about their performance, you reproduce assumptions about the bodies of fat people; and every time you are proved wrong by being trounced by a fat swimmer, your surprise reflects those assumptions (and we could say the same about age, or about gender and the repeated (and slightly shocked) acknowledgements that women can out-swim men). Marathon swimming is always part of the social world rather than an exception to it, and swimming becomes an alibi for fatness when framed as bioprene, rather than a site of fat's radical reframing. It is not enough to conclude that size and age are meaningless indicators of swimming performance without also maintaining the commitment to actively refusing those prejudices. Otherwise, the water is not a great leveller, but rather, a means of obscuring fat-phobia both in swimming and beyond it.<br />
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So each to her own, but I don't have bioprene, I have body fat, and I'm fine with that.<br />
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Opinionated rambling over....<br />
<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-84086321334143719352018-11-24T12:07:00.001-08:002018-11-24T12:31:25.274-08:0045 minutes....As we move into week 9 (of 11) of the teaching term, it's been a really tough one, mostly for reasons that I'm not going to discuss on here, but not helped by being much more inactive than in previous years. Over the last couple of months, I've continued working with Adam, and more recently, with his osteopath pal, Neil, and between them, they have massaged and crunched me slowly towards something closely approximating recovery.<br />
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Every day, I do my stretches and strengthening exercises, and my back, shoulder and neck are being slowly restored....even (hopefully) exceeding their previous state to enable me to continue swimming long into the future:<br />
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A month or so ago, I got the go-ahead to get back in the pool, albeit in a carefully controlled and modest way....every other day, only 30 mins at a time while we assessed my progress. The process was not with hiccups, especially psychologically, when I began to really appreciate the depths of my loss of fitness over the last year or so, and particularly over the last few months of non-swimming treatment. Feeling the stiffness in my shoulders the day after only a 30 minute swim felt very sobering and ageing. Being right back at the beginning is hard when I think back to the many fantastic years of long swimming I've been able to enjoy, but I'm trying to focus on starting from where I am, and am working on relishing the steady build-up to fitness rather than regretting what is lost (and without going mad and wrecking all that hard work); I do my drills diligently in the pool to try not to slip into old bad habits. To date, I'm at 45 mins of swimming in the endless pool, 4-5 times a week, without negative consequences to my neck / back, so that's progress indeed. I'm still doing Pilates at least once a week, and I've resumed running, following a beginner's 5km programme (on a treadmill primarily but hoping to venture outside once I've got my confidence / capacity up). I''ve also introduced some cycling on the turbo, with a view to buying a mountain bike in the new year so that I can get out into the hills around our house, and I've rediscovered the joys of walking, with many trips to the Lake District, and up into the Yorkshire Dales - who knew that there are far more ways to enjoy the outdoors than from the water....?</div>
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If I've learned one thing this year it's that having all my eggs in one basket in exercise and activity terms is a mistake, so these are all good outcomes coming out of a difficult situation. </div>
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But perhaps the greatest impact of my slow but steady recovery is the return of sleep. I've been suffering from terrible insomnia for the last few of months, mostly as the result of work-related stress, but compounded by not being able to exercise it off in the usual, water-based ways. Anyone who has suffered from the inability to sleep in a consistent and sustained way knows how awful and grinding it is, and how it only compounds the stress that you so desperately need to sleep off. The half-hour dips weren't doing it for me, but it turns out that a regular 45 minutes of swimming (plus a bit of running etc) is what it takes to break the sleep log-jam and I'm finally sleeping through most nights. This is a quality-of-life changing development, and as a result, I feel much better placed to manage some of the other challenges that life is throwing my way. If ever there was an incentive to keep up with my rehab and recovery, it's that 45 minutes....and there's hopefully more to come.</div>
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So, it's been a tricky few months, but in 21 days, I'm off to the Canary Islands for 2 weeks of sun, relaxation, recovery, and hopefully more swimming. And sleep. Lots of sleep. </div>
Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-77130779313003594262018-09-07T12:11:00.000-07:002018-09-07T12:46:44.362-07:00On a scale of 1 to 10....At the risk of this reading like episode 476 of my injury story., and since I have nothing exciting to tell by way of swimming adventures, I thought I'd offer up a quick update.<br />
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The long and the short of it is that I remain injured, but nowhere near as badly as this time last year. I've benefited from the significant expertise and care of my osteopath, <a href="http://s471417574.websitehome.co.uk/?cat=5">Louise</a>, at the <a href="http://s471417574.websitehome.co.uk/">Ilkely Osteopathic Practice</a>, and Pilates instructor, Sarah Clough at <a href="https://www.spacefitnessandwellbeing.co.uk/">Space: Fitness and Wellbeing</a>, both of whom have helped me transition from constant pain and neck and shoulder immobility to an almost pain-free everyday existence. Over the year, I've cycled on an endless loop between being able to engage in modest swimming (3-5km at a time) and long periods of injury-imposed rest; each time I thought I had it on the run, back it would come once I passed the threshold of my body's tolerance, no matter how slowly and gently I approached it. I have been performing my <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.com/2017/12/prehab.html">prehab routines</a> with religious diligence, do yoga and Pilates several times a week, and have generally been an obedient neoliberal subject trying to take responsibility for my body, but while everything that I have done has helped, nothing has managed to get to the bottom of it all, and the movement restriction and buzzing nerve aggravation in my neck / shoulder persisted. However much it receded into the background, it was always ready to jump to the fore when I got ahead of myself. More recently, this has also manifested itself in a shoulder impingement, just to add to the fun.<br />
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Amidst the frustration, I still had a fantastic summer. I kayaked for Patrick Smith in the BLDSA Coniston Vets swim, watching him swim with impressive consistency while being swamped with waves from behind in a howling gale and while I paddled frantically backwards, desperately trying not to be blown down the course away from him. Amazingly, unlike our adventure in Ullswater the year before, I even managed not to fall in, so I chalk this up as a total success. And I volunteered as a timekeeper for the BLDSA Windermere one-way swim last weekend - always a great chance to see some determined swimming in a beautiful setting. I did a bit of swimming myself too, including 4 full 9km laps of Crummock Water (separately) over the summer:<br />
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I also completed the BLDSA Champion of Champions event - a total of 9 miles across three separate swims, coming in just under the 5 hour mark - something that I was very pleased about after my appalling swimming performance over the last couple of years:<br />
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I enjoyed a glorious there-and-back swim of Buttermere with Amanda Bell too, since there are few ills that Buttermere won't cure:<br />
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And I bought an inflatable paddle board, which opened up all kinds of possibilities for bobbling about in beautiful places:</div>
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But while I have loved all of this during what has been a quite spectacular summer (who knew Cumbria could have a water shortage!?), it's not enough for me. I can't swim like I want to, and at the moment, I'm not ready to let go of long swimming.<br />
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And so, I have recently started working with sports therapist, <a href="http://www.activeblu.co.uk/adam-smith/">Adam Smith</a>, who I met through the prehab workshops organised by Active Blu's <a href="http://www.activeblu.co.uk/meet-emma/">Emma Brunning</a>, who has also been hugely helpful over the last few years in <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.com/2017/08/dns.html">working on my stroke</a>. After a thorough assessment, Adam agreed with my osteopath's view that this is not a vertebrae/ disc issue, but rather, is a question of tight soft tissue trapping the nerves and causing the problem. And the solution? If the problem is deep in the tissue, then the only way to resolve it is to get in there. It has to be said that this is not a pleasant process, and as a treatment experience, the more gentle approach of my osteopath / Pilates instructor is a far more pleasant way to spend an hour. As anyone who is familiar with deep tissue massage will tell you, it can be exquisitely painful, but the more you can endure, the quicker it goes in the long run. In my first session, Adam constantly asked me to rate the pain from 1-10, calibrating my tolerance for the process and tailoring it accordingly. At 3, I wondered what 10 might be like; in the brief moments that I hit double figures, I concentrated on breathing and thought about swimming. Sometimes, he announces that he's going to 'drop in' to this or that bit of my back / shoulder; it sounds so benign and friendly ('dropping in for tea'), but really isn't. Far worse than the pain, for me, is the occasional moments of what I have come to think of as 'twanging' - the easing into movement of taut muscles by strumming or peeling across them. It's not so much painful as, well..... just weird; it doesn't really hurt, but makes me feel really squeamish, like listening to someone crack their knuckles or scrape their fingernails down a blackboard. I've been trying to find the adjective to describe the whole process. I started off with 'violent', but that's not right at all since the whole experience is collaborative and consultative, as well as voluntary and temporary. Instead, I've settled on 'physical' - it's an intensely physical experience that digs to the heart of the mechanics and sensory mechanisms of the body. On a scale of 1-10, my desire to return to long swimming is about a 15, so it's all more than worth it, especially in the hands of someone who knows what's he's doing and shares my goals.<br />
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And the most important thing is that it seems to be working. Adam's theory is that while everything that I've been doing has helped, nothing has gone deep enough to cut to the core problem, and it's a persuasive thesis which is already being proven by the results - a massive increase in range of motion and flexibility, and far less pain and discomfort in my neck and shoulder. The treatment itself is leaving me quite sore and bruised, but this is of a very different quality to the injury pain and feels incredibly constructive. It also leaves me feeling completely whacked, and after each treatment I've slept as if I've done a 6 hour swim, which tells me that there's a lot more going on than I can directly perceive. Only 10 days after my first session, there's a world of difference that fills me with optimism. There are more sessions to come, to be followed by a rehab strength and conditioning programme, but hopefully, with all the necessary work, this is all preamble to a proper return to the water very soon.<br />
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So that's where things are. My long swimming days aren't over just yet.Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-32451901527028086732018-03-01T13:41:00.002-08:002018-03-01T14:04:24.944-08:00Slow healing....This is the next instalment in what is becoming a series of annual posts where I chart the gulf between my swimming aspirations and bodily realities. After last year's disappointments, I have been working hard to manage my injuries; in particular, my neck problem proved to be stubborn and intractable, but a combination of osteopathy and a diligently-followed <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.com.es/2017/12/prehab.html">prehab regimen</a> slowly relieved the trapped nerve and associated muscle damage and by the end of January I was covering 25-30km a week in the pool quite happily and feeling very optimistic. I threw my hat in the ring for an ambitious and exciting swim and thought I was good to go.<br />
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But it's never so simple. I came out to the Canary Islands last week with the aim of spending a couple of weeks doing some very dull data coding, made easier by sunshine and swimming on tap. Unfortunately, a spell of stormy weather here made the swimming lumpy, and then later, impossible, but even in the modestly lumpy phase, the gap between the predictable flatness of the pool and the erratic movement of the waves exposed the weaknesses of my recovering neck, which soon started to feel stiff and sore post-swim. I stretched, pre-habbed and maintained a position somewhere between optimism and denial, but the next day the stiffness and immobility started to return even while I was still in the water being bounced around by the waves. A huge storm then hit the islands putting a stop to all swimming, but the niggle in my neck persisted, clicking and crunching when I woke up in the morning or turned my head quickly.<br />
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What to do? I could persist and hope that it would be relieved by more swimming; or that calmer waters later in the trip would reduce the strain and allow me to continue building up. Or I could pull the plug and go back to my modest pool-swimming, osteopathy and prehab regimen, which has undoubtedly been working...albeit not as quickly as I would have liked, as it turns out. I couldn't face (or afford) another late pull-out, so in the end, this morning I decided to pre-empt the issue and withdraw from the delicious swim I had been hoping to do (as well as a more low-key UK event that I'd signed up for a while back). I feel terrible that I seem to have become a serial withdrawer, in spite of my best intentions and genuine convictions that I was up to each challenge.<br />
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It is painful to have such a fantastic opportunity slip through my fingers, and I have been torturing myself all day with the thought that maybe...just maybe...I would have been alright and could have done it. But in the end, I suspect that uncertainty about an injury is certainty enough when deciding about a very long swim; distance is pretty unforgiving of bodily weaknesses and injurious flaws.<br />
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This is very different to last year's crash and burn though. I hope that I've called a halt in time to stop the injury niggle in its track and to get quickly back to my slow.....slow....recovery. I haven't pushed on and aggravated the injury into something much more serious like I stupidly did last year, so perhaps I am learning and this too is some kind of progress in my swimming evolution (or possibly devolution, given that I started strongly with the EC years, but am becoming increasingly unimpressive and breakable).<br />
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The healing process is slow - perhaps because of my age, or maybe because this is just how bodies are sometimes - but I am still confident that I am healing, if not at the pace I thought I was. I'd like to think that I still have another long swim in me, but I wouldn't want to say with any confidence that I do. And I think you can only cook up exciting plans and then let people down so often before you have to rein in your ambitions with a dose of reality and the wisdom born of experience. But perhaps this is also a chance to learn other, gentler ways of being in the water too... an opportunity for a more leisurely summer of beautiful 2-3 hour swims in the Lake District rather than the 6-8 hour slogs I was anticipating; a chance to think about swimming rather than training, perhaps...<br />
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We'll see. But for now, it's back to slow healing.<br />
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To end on a positive note, even though it's ferociously windy, it's 23 degrees and sunny here in the Canary Islands, while the UK is blanketed in snow and ice. Plus we have kittens at home now, and life is always okay once there are kittens in your life.<br />
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-24467478100136618482018-01-13T11:26:00.000-08:002018-01-13T11:26:12.424-08:00Aquatic adventures....When I think of the water, I always think about swimming; when I see a stretch of water, I wonder what it would be like to swim in it, across it or around it. But there's a whole world of other ways to interact with the water that I've never really explored....and as my 50th birthday rolled around this January, it was time to try something new. In the summer, I was feeling pretty fed-up about my pending big birthday - my various injuries made me feel decrepit, and I felt a bit defeated. But then I thought....well, sod it. So I decided to embrace it instead, and to that end, used my birthday trip to the Canary Islands to try two new water activities - scuba diving and stand-up paddle boarding (SUP).<br />
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I was quite terrified when I turned up for my try-dive lesson at a <a href="https://www.divecollegelanzarote.com/en/">sea front dive centre</a> near our holiday bungalow, and I had no idea how I would feel about being submersed and reliant on what seemed like a very complicated and cumbersome set of equipment. After a short period of dry-land instruction covering safety procedures and in-water communication, we kitted up and waddled under the weight of the gear down to the beach and into the water. One by one, the instructor submerged us, deflating our buoyancy vests and guiding us down a couple of metres to the sea floor. Rather disconcertingly, my instructor grabbed a couple of rocks from the sea floor and shoved them into mesh pockets on the side of my gear to prevent me from rising. It takes a particular kind of trust to relax enough to allow someone to sink you so thoroughly under water. Once we were all submerged, we paddled along the side of a rocky reef, flanked by our instructors, and soon found ourselves surrounded by a school of fish with large, rounded bodies and yellow stripes, completely unbothered by our presence. Later on we saw cuttle fish, and this beautiful octopus.<br />
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Once I'd relaxed into it, I was completely blown away by the experience of visiting this vibrant aquatic world which I thought I understood from swimming at the surface, but in reality had no clue about. It was hard to let go of being a swimmer though - I couldn't resist using my arms and hands to propel myself forwards, even though I was wearing huge fins that required only the slightest flick to move me through the water. Using my hands also proved to be quite destabilising, and I found myself constantly tipping from side to side and then having to correct.<br />
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I slowly came to understand that while swimming is about constant movement, diving is more about not moving - of being in the water rather than moving through it and using the fins as rudders rather than propellers. It's about enjoying the view and visiting another world. </div>
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We were only in the water for about 30 minutes, but I loved every second and was so disappointed when the instructor started pulling the rocks out of my pockets and slowly guiding me to the surface. In fact, I loved it so much that I signed up for a second session the next day, this time in deeper water and entering from a boat rather than the beach (although still with the same level of instructor support as my first dive - this was a diving experience rather than structured training). I felt like Jacques Cousteau as I tipped rather anxiously backwards off the dive boat, but it was as easy as, well....falling off a boat; my instructor helped me to submerge, and off we went, exploring a reef and encountering huge shoals of long, thin trumpet fish. </div>
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The whole experience made me want to get a PADI qualification and learn to dive more independently, but I can already see that it's a hobby that eats time and money....and I already have one of those. But still...it was an amazing experience. </div>
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And so....on to adventure number 2 - an SUP lesson. While I took to diving immediately, I think it's fair to say that this was not an opportunity for me to shine. It was quite windy, and although we had <a href="http://www.kabotisurf.com/stand-up-paddle-lanzarote/">excellent instruction</a>, the entire session was punctuated by the sound of me scrabbling up onto the board, staggering to a stand, yelping as I lost my balance and then falling back into the water with a percussive splash. At the end of the lesson, we signed up for a 3-hour coastal SUP tour a few days later where I reprised my scrabble - pause - shriek - splash soundtrack but I soon discovered that by staying kneeling, I could stay on the board and still enjoy the novel perspective of being on, but above, the water. We visited caves, paused to go snorkelling, and had a splendid time. Towards the end, I found my sea legs and managed to both stand up and paddle, so there is hope for me yet. Peter, on the other hand, took to it immediately, and was able to draw on his skateboarding past and a very good sense of balance to strike a relaxed and effortless pose as he paddled away with impressive aplomb.</div>
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So two successful aquatic adventures - one deep below the surface, and one on / above it. It turns out that there is far more to a life of aquatic leisure than swimming. </div>
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But of course, there was swimming too, although not as much as in previous years. I ended up doing a fairly modest 40km over the two weeks we were there - after my long lay-off, I'm still building my fitness and don't want to risk overdoing it and falling back into injury again. My confidence took a bit of knock over the last year or so, but hopefully all of the work I've been doing on my stroke, plus the <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/prehab.html">prehab regimen</a> which I do diligently every day, will bear fruit and I'll be back to full swimming capacity soon. Happily, I'll be back in the Canary Islands for more in February and then again in April - I have a great deal of data analysis to do for the sugar project, and see no reason why this should not be done in the sunshine and combined with swim training. </div>
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And in the mean time, I had a wonderful trip and a splendid birthday. If this is what it's like to be 50, then count me in. </div>
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-16193403948930138732017-12-15T04:51:00.001-08:002017-12-15T04:51:47.139-08:00Prehab...<br />
I've been thinking a lot recently about my swimming, and in particular, about my various injuries and niggles, and the general sense that I'm not swimming as consistently or recovering as well as I used to. Part of this is the obvious fact that injury necessitates down time which impacts upon swimming fitness, but also I'm 50 next January (how did that happen?), and no matter how much I refuse to be bound by constraining ideas about middle age, the ageing process, plus the menopause, has undoubtedly affected my flexibility and recovery. I've been involved in marathon swimming for almost 10 years, but I feel like the bodily stresses of long swimming have started to take their toll, and if I want to keep on swimming, something has to change.<br />
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So....a month ago, I joined a <a href="http://www.activeblu.co.uk/prehab-workshop-2017-a-must-for-every-triathlete-and-swimmer/">"Prehab" workshop</a> run by Active Blu's <a href="http://www.activeblu.co.uk/meet-emma/">Emma Brunning,</a> who I've seen on and off over the years for help with my swimming stroke, and <a href="http://www.activeblu.co.uk/adam-smith/">Adam Smith</a>, a sports therapist and strength and conditioning coach. I've been thinking for a while that I could benefit from something like this, but wasn't sure where to go for advice, and to be honest, was a little embarrassed about pitching up to a professional coach - I never feel enough like the sort of 'athlete' I imagined they worked with. So the timing was perfect.<br />
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The premise of the workshop was that everyday life and regular training create bodily imbalances that eventually lead to injuries which in turn impact upon training consistency which affects overall performance. The coaches suggested that many amateur athletes who train regularly are on constantly on a knife-edge of breakdown and injury; this is certainly how I've been feeling, to the point where I wasn't sure whether I should even try to train up for another big swim and should perhaps stick to shorter events. The workshop explained the anatomy of these imbalances and provided us with a sequence of exercises to enhance thoracic and shoulder flexibility and stability that we were advised to do at least three times a week. The core principles are to keep the routine relatively simple and be consistent about doing it.<br />
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During the workshop, we performed shoulder distraction exercises using the resistance band hooked up to a large A-frame, but at home, I struggled to find a safe anchor point, so invested in a <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bodylastics-Anchor-Attachment-strong-webbing/dp/B00CF42UA2/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1513338229&sr=8-10&keywords=bodylastics+bands">heavy duty door anchor</a> which does the job perfectly - it sits behind the door on the hinge-side, is solid as a rock and doesn't damage the frame. The routine also includes work with a foam roller, floor work to improve shoulder and thoracic flexibility and techniques using a lacrosse ball to dig out knots and release taut muscles. Trust me - you'll never look at a lacrosse ball in quite the same way again, and if you ever see me hugging a wall with an expression of pained resignation on my face, you'll know what's going on.<br />
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Apparently, one of the biggest frustrations experienced by sport therapists / physios etc is that people don't do the exercises that they're given. I can see why this happens - people are busy and this is just one more thing to do, and the exercises themselves don't always feel immediately beneficial, lacking the direct logic for example, of going for a long swim as training for a long swim. But I have a lot of respect for expertise, and don't really understand paying someone good money for sharing their expertise and then not doing what they say. So...I've spent 30 minutes a day on the exercise routine (almost) every day since the workshop, and am a total convert. (I'm lucky in that I'm currently on research leave, so the time for this is less of an issue than it will be when I return to teaching next year. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it). The positive benefits have been swift and noticeable, especially in terms of flexibility and balance. This has played out in the pool, where the combination of the rehab regimen and the stroke correction work I've been doing for the last couple of months has resulted not only in a much more relaxed and balanced stroke, but also a tangible pace increase. I care more about the prevention of injury than about improving my pace, but it's a happy side effect. </div>
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None of this is any kind of guarantee that last year's cascade of injuries won't happen again, but I feel like this is such a positive step, and I wish I had done it years ago. I'm sure many more experienced and accomplished swimmers are rolling their eyes at my late arrival at this understanding, but as with many late-onset marathon swimmers who didn't experience the more professionalised training of serious squad swimming when they were younger, there's a lot to learn about <u>how</u> to train. I've been through the same learning curve over the years with technique work and speed work, but it turns out that you can teach an old dog new tricks, and I'd encourage anyone in a similar position to find someone with the right expertise and commit to the process. </div>
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I'm flying south to the sun soon for a bit of a holiday and the chance to take my improved stroke and newly stable and flexible shoulders swimming in the sea. And yes, I will be taking my foam roller, exercise band and even that lacrosse ball with me. </div>
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On a separate note, in response to a recent outbreak of abuse across a range of platforms where I am active online, I have closed The Long Swim to comments. I've also tightened up security and privacy on my new research blog, <a href="https://sociallifeofsugar.blogspot.co.uk/">Sugar Rush</a>, and on all social media. There is a history to this abuse and it is not directly related to any specific recent forum or other online activity. If you would like to engage constructively with anything here on the blog, I'm happy to discuss on the <a href="http://marathonswimmers.org/forum/">Marathon Swimmers Forum</a>, which has the advantage not only of being closely moderated, but also of involving many members with far more experience than me on all things swimming. I'm also on Twitter as @thelongswim, but will only engage in debate publicly (and constructively) and not via DM. Please note that any abuse on any platform will be blocked and reported immediately. </div>
Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-49207614798695007802017-11-29T09:28:00.000-08:002017-11-29T09:28:49.774-08:00Thanksgiving: the relationship between sport, society and oppressionTo coincide with Thanksgiving in the US last week, my colleague <a href="http://www.sociology.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff/hollin">Greg Hollin</a> invited a handful of present and previous members of the School of Sociology and Social Policy to contribute short posts around the theme of the social relations of sport. You can download the full collection of posts in pdf form <a href="http://www.sociology.leeds.ac.uk/news/2017/sociology-spotlight-thanksgiving-the-relationship-between-sport-society-and-oppression">here</a>, and they've also been posted on the <a href="http://gender-studies.leeds.ac.uk/category/blog/">Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies (CIGS) blog </a>as individual posts. The collection explores questions of gender, race, religion, "taking the knee" and globalisation in relation to sport - please visit the CIGS blog to read more. In the mean time, I've pasted my contribution below.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond";">Sport, or at least some
sports, enjoy extraordinarily privileged status. At the level of elite sport,
national pride, vast sums of money, the passionate belonging of team loyalties
and the spectacular feats of extraordinary bodies create a privileged domain
which can dictate TV schedules, mark holidays and capture national headlines.
At the amateur level, sport provides a means of demonstrating bodily discipline
through practices normatively coded as healthy and is a source of pleasure to
many; the sporting subject is the good citizen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">par excellence</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond";">But the public
endorsement of sport and its subjects is also premised on exclusions that
should give us pause for thought. Sport remains determinedly demarcated on
gendered lines, with men and women rarely allowed to compete directly with each
other. The boundaries between men and women’s sport are closely regulated and
policed, with women at risk of exclusion if their hormonal or genetic profiles
exceed arbitrarily defined boundaries of acceptable femininity. And even when
women can compete, they still experience systematic exclusion and
discrimination: women’s sport receives only a tiny fraction of the media
coverage that men enjoy, women are frequently limited to fewer and shorter
events and they receive lower rewards in prize money and sponsorship. Other
exclusions persist alongside the rigorous and hierarchical gendering of sport:
sporting participation is constrained for many by lack of access to facilities,
prohibitive costs, the absence of childcare or the failure to accommodate the
needs of disabled athletes. And for some, participation in sport is simply too
shaming a possibility to face; it is hard to be a fat body, for example, in an
environment so strongly oriented towards the elimination of fatness, and where
access to size-appropriate equipment and clothing may not be available.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond";"></span><span style="font-family: "garamond";">Race also serves as an axis along which
discrimination persists, with ideas of sporting ‘fit’ closing off opportunities
and limiting choice. For example, the whiteness of my own sport of swimming
remains mired in notions of the incompatibility of blackness and swimming, and
in particular, the myth of higher bone density as a precluding factor; it is a
prejudice of significant consequence when we realise that young black boys are
far more likely to drown than their white peers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bHqk4dTWiWw/Wh7tNMpRm6I/AAAAAAAABUM/lkpsAu0bem0Hq_TW7U2IwPLzhqeKrT8fwCLcBGAs/s1600/acid%2Bin%2Bpool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="661" data-original-width="915" height="231" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bHqk4dTWiWw/Wh7tNMpRm6I/AAAAAAAABUM/lkpsAu0bem0Hq_TW7U2IwPLzhqeKrT8fwCLcBGAs/s320/acid%2Bin%2Bpool.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://theafricanamericanathlete.com/2017/10/25/picture-of-motel-manager-pouring-acid-on-black-swimmers-explains-the-major-flaw-of-the-civil-rights-movement/">Motel manager James Brock pours acid into a pool in 1964 after learning that black swimmers were in the water. </a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sport,
then, can be understood both as a mirror of the social and a means of its
reproduction. Attempts to figure sport as outside of politics (for example, in
the Olympic movement, or in recent debates about ‘taking a knee’) obscure its
status as an intensely political site, not only in national and international
settings, but also at the level of individual bodies as they variously
challenge and sustain what counts as the ‘good body’ in contemporary society. </span><!--EndFragment--><br />
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Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-71887460176325015772017-11-06T14:15:00.001-08:002017-11-06T14:19:08.267-08:00Recovery drinks....Since becoming a vegan, I've been struggling to find a good substitute for the High 5 Chocolate Recovery shake that I used to use after training (and which contains milk products). I generally get all of the protein I need from my everyday diet - something that's pretty easy as a vegan, in spite of the myths that persist about the need for meat and dairy to get adequate protein. But if I'm doing swims of more than a couple of hours, I need something extra post-swim to maximise recovery and to stop the weird night-time arm-twitching that I get if I don't refuel properly (a problem I had long before I switched to vegan). Most recovery shakes are far too sweet and sickly for me and over the last couple of years, I have experimented with the small handful of vegan options out there with little success. I also tried soya chocolate milk which is tasty but doesn't really do the job...plus it's quite sugary, and there's a lot of wasteful packaging for each individual drink box, including plastic straws, which are disastrous for the environment:<br />
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So then I tried this vegan blend of pea, rice and hemp protein, which I blend up in shakes with banana, blueberries, strawberries, almond milk and maybe some spinach; it's also nice if you add in some coconut or almonds, or a dollop of peanut butter. It's flavourless so requires plenty of other ingredients to make a tasty shake, and consequently, also requires access to a blender - it's not something you can just shake up in the van or the car after swimming. It's £19 for 30+ servings, so it's a good deal and a great option for when you have easy access to a decent blender, especially if you've got some frozen fruit to hand to make a nice thick shake. This is my go-to when I'm at home. </div>
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For out and about, I tried a couple of vegan post-exercise products that you can shake up in a bottle, but they were utterly undrinkable - either sickly sweet or disturbingly grainy. But then last year, I stumbled across this product by <a href="https://www.amazinggrass.com/">Amazing Grass</a>: </div>
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I'm not so keen on the more 'green' products in their range (literally....very green), but this flavour hit the spot perfectly. It's sweetened with stevia, but isn't sickly, and the chocolate taste isn't overbearing or too plasticky. It's entirely drinkable blended up just with non-dairy milk, and add in a banana and maybe a strawberry or two, and you've got a top notch recovery drink on your hands. It's not cheap (about £22 for 10 servings...although I stretched my last tub to 15 servings by skimping on the scoops a bit and maybe subbing in a few almonds), but it goes down a treat after a hard training session. I also have it for breakfast sometimes, blended with lots of frozen fruit and a big handful of spinach. The downside is that it doesn't really do well without a blender, and although I tried mixing it up in a shaker, this was a grainy and unpleasant non-starter. However, last summer, I acquired one of these portable blenders to keep in the van to get round the problem:</div>
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The bottom portion houses the motor, battery and blade, and it's rechargeable via a USB port, meaning that you're not tied to the need for mains electricity. It's not very powerful and can't really manage nuts or frozen fruit, but it can accommodate a scoop of powder, a cup of almond milk and a some bits of soft fruit quite easily - the perfect solution to the problem of the vegan post-swim recovery shake on the move. Problem solved. </div>
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The other product I've started to use is <a href="http://www.ultimareplenisher.com/">Ultima Replenisher</a>, particularly if I've been running or am somewhere warm. </div>
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I picked up on this from journalist and accomplished marathon swimmer, <a href="http://www.ultimareplenisher.com/project/elaine-howley/">Elaine Howley,</a> who is a strong advocate, and this is now a standard part of my swimming kit - it shakes up easily in a bottle and is a quick route to rehydration and electrolyte replacement. There are lots of flavours, although the grape flavour is the only one that really works for me (you can buy mixed packs of individual sachets to test them out). It provides zero calories, so you'd need to intake energy in addition if you were mid-swim; but I also imagine this would also be a good option if you had stomach issues during a swim and would keep you on an even keel while everything settled down. A 90 serving tub is £39, which is a bit of an outlay, but pretty good value (and not as wasteful in packaging as individual stick sachets). </div>
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At the moment, this is all rather academic for me as I'm still inching my way back to full fitness after my summer of injuries and am not really able to do enough to even require recovery shakes and electrolyte drinks. But when the time comes, I'll be ready. </div>
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Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-42758114617739670372017-08-28T08:36:00.000-07:002017-08-28T09:53:35.369-07:00DNSIt has been the summer of Did Not Start (DNS). Unlike last year, when my Geneva DNS materialised right before the scheduled swim and towards the end of the season, this year, the writing was on the wall by mid-June. This left me with a non-swimming summer of watching milestones in my Geneva plans come and go; it was a long summer of wishing it could have been different. I've had several DNF's in my swimming career, and I haven't enjoyed any of them, but for me, the DNS is a more intense disappointment. Last year's accident-induced non-start in Geneva didn't help with this - from the outset, it made this year feel like more was at stake, making the fall harder when it came. The impact of all this was magnified by a simultaneous volley of other events. As I mentioned in my previous post, the death of a much-loved pet, the spectacular, scary and expensive structural failure of our roof and the terrible political climate of Britain in the shadow of Brexit (not to mention the US political landscape) all piled on, and the general stress and upset caused the wrist injury to cascade around my body, creating new and preoccupyingly painful problems in my neck and upper back that have ended up prolonging my swimming hiatus far longer than the original wrist injury would have. I felt wrecked and ragged, and with my 50th birthday approaching in January, I felt terribly old and creaky. In the moments when I felt most sorry for myself, it all seemed like a confirmation that I'd had a lucky run with swimming, but that my aquatic masquerade had been exposed; I felt like I had lost something very important to me that I didn't know how to get back.<br />
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It's worth saying at this point that I know that this is a very self-indulgent crisis to have. Not being able to do a marathon swim because of injury is a pretty privileged problem to be faced with, and I am also extremely fortunate to have the resources to pay for the interventions from my osteopath, physiotherapist and massage therapist that have aided my recovery enormously. I know that nothing catastrophic happened here. But at the same time, knowing this also makes the material and psychological impacts of injury even more difficult to talk about to others, which can compound the sense of defeat.<br />
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So what to do?<br />
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What follows is not an uplifting story of triumphant overcoming, or a 'how to' for surviving injury. Instead, it's a short list of the things that I've tried in order to manage my summer of DNS and re-orient myself now that the season is almost over.<br />
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<b>1. Escape</b><br />
This isn't affordable or practical for everyone, but as the scaffolding went up around our house and the hammering began, I took myself and a pile of interesting books off to the Canary Islands for two weeks. I gave my body chance to recover from its various ills, got heaps of sleep, finished off some writing projects for work, and even managed to do some swimming. There comes a point when your body's had enough and you have to stop. It was the best decision I made this summer.<br />
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<b>2. Social media</b><br />
I enjoy social media, but over the summer, I found it difficult to be confronted by the constant stream of swim-talk. I didn't (and still don't) resent other people's swimming pleasure or successes, but for this summer, I wanted to take a step back from it. I came off Facebook, and temporarily muted a number of very swim-focused accounts on Twitter. I also muted any accounts that regularly post sporting motivational quotes and gifs - I find these annoying at the best of times, but the relentlessly trite attribution of swimming success to the power of mind over matter is positively insulting when you're injured and no amount of positive thinking is going to fix things. So I just turned them off. I kept half an eye on some events, and there have been some truly incredible swims this summer, but basically I took a long breath of fresh, social-media-free air.<br />
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<b>3. Volunteering</b><br />
I resisted the desire to hide away from swimming entirely, and instead, volunteered to help out with several <a href="http://www.bldsa.org.uk/">BLDSA </a>swimming events in the Lake District - some kayaking, some time-keeping and marshalling. This allowed me to keep a toe in the swimming world, and also forced me to confront the utterly mundane reality of injury as an inevitable part of an extreme sport like marathon swimming. It also gave me some extremely memorable moments: kayaking for 74-year old Bryan Finlay in the BLDSA Coniston Vets race and seeing him finish in spite of fierce winds and cold conditions; spending 4 hours in a kayak in the middle of the night on Windermere on a beautifully clear, calm night, guiding overnight 2-way swimmers round the turn buoy and watching meteor showers; and kayaking for Patrick Smith for his successful length of Ullswater. I also managed to capsize just metres from the finish of Patrick's swim - what I lack in kayaking ability, I try to make up for with enthusiasm. Volunteering is what makes the swimming world go round, so injury was an opportunity to help out and still be part of the fun and challenge of swimming, even from the sidelines.<br />
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<b>4. Stroke correction</b><br />
Thanks to the ministrations of the various professionals who have helped put my ailing body back together again, I'm now pain-free and good to go, but the original wrist injury is most likely the result of a stroke defect, and the only way to prevent it from happening again is to fix it. So last week, I went to see Swim Smooth coach, <a href="http://http//www.activeblu.co.uk">Emma Brunning</a>. I've worked with her before, and like her thoughtful approach and sharp eye. I went in convinced that my habit of splaying my fingers on entry and then snapping them shut before catching was the problem, but the video showed an additional, and much more likely, culprit - my bendy wrist:<br />
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The video shows an unmistakable tilt of the wrist downwards at the beginning of the catch phase; this then straightens up again as I hinge from the elbow to continue through, but repeated over thousands of strokes, this must have been placing incredible strain on my lower arm. There's a small chain of problems that are connected to this (including my splayed fingers and a bit of a dead spot at the front of the stroke on the left side) and these are now the subject of daily drilling in order to break bad habits and hopefully forge new ones. It feels like it's going to be a long job, but I have to confess to quite enjoying this kind of work - it's very consuming as a task and feels constructive after months of relative inactivity.<br />
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As I write this, I don't yet know what, if anything, comes next. I am nervous to take on another long swim after two disappointing years of DNS, but I love long swimming and think I'd regret it if I let the fear of it going wrong stop me from trying. And I still haven't swum through a whole night - something that I'm itching to try. I also feel like my 50th should be marked by something ambitiously fun. We'll see.<br />
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For now, I'm relieved that the summer of DNS is drawing to a close and I can turn my attention to my next adventure - a year of research leave, courtesy of the <a href="http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/">Leverhulme Trust</a>, to work on my new project, "<a href="https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Publications/LEVERHULME%20LORES%20MAY17.pdf">The Social Life of Sugar</a>". That...and the drilling, and whatever comes next....Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-27396778750428099482017-06-11T01:57:00.000-07:002017-06-11T02:06:02.758-07:00Defeated...It's not been the best week - on Monday, we had to put our lovely old cat, Oscar, to sleep; we discovered that our entire roof needs to come off and all the beams need to be replaced; and then came the messy upheaval of the election and its aftermath towards the end of the week. And throughout, I was trying desperately to remain optimistic about the intractable niggle in my left wrist. It had started a couple of weeks ago, becoming sore and swollen, with the tendons squeaking and rubbing together whenever I moved my wrist or thumb. It felt very sudden, but it probably wasn't; I'd done several long swims in the preceding two weeks which presumably stressed the tendons without me realising it. With the help of my physio, I treated it every way I knew how - rest, ice, taping, denial, optimism - and by the end of last week I had full and pain-free movement and no more squeaky tendons. At the same time, I had managed to postpone my planned Geneva qualification swims for another week; I was hoping that now my wrist was better, I could slowly build back up during the week ready for the swims and then I'd be good to go for the last run up to Geneva II. But sadly, a gentle test swim yesterday morning caused a mild, but unmistakeable, return of the symptoms and I was faced with an unavoidable truth: that if I couldn't do 30 minutes in the pool without triggering it, I was never going to be able to do 10 + 7 hour qualification swims without setting my injury so far back that I wouldn't be able to train between the qualification swim and Geneva. A session with my physio confirmed my suspicions; tendon injuries generally take longer than 2 weeks to heal properly, and although we'd tried really hard, it wasn't looking good. This was particularly true with "old" tendons, he told me. Thanks for that.<br />
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The inescapable fact of the matter is that there is simply not enough time for the injury to fully settle and to correct whatever stroke defect is causing it (my persistently wiggly thumb is the prime suspect) before the Geneva swim, never mind actually training for it. And so, in spite of my best efforts and determination for it to be otherwise, I have declared defeat and this summer's qualification swims and the Geneva swim have been cancelled.<br />
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In an extreme endurance sport, injury is an occupational hazard, where even the slightest problem is easily magnified to swim-stopping dimensions - whether that's stupidly slipping off a small step, or the imperceptible rubbing of two tiny tendons under the strain of a misplaced micro-movement. I don't know if I have just been unlucky, or perhaps I didn't work hard enough to take care of my body in my training, or maybe I have just over-reached in taking on such an ambitious swim. I feel bad for messing people about (LGSA, Chillswim, Janine and Kate who were coming over to crew) and am embarrassed that once again I've not managed to make it to the start line. At least the injury was swimming-related this time, so perhaps that's some kind of progress.<br />
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I'd like to say that I'm down but not out, but right now, I don't feel like that. I love swimming, and especially swimming a long way, but I'm not sure that I have the temperament for such a high-risk game. We'll see. But for now, back to physio and stroke correction I go.<br />
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-56728700923154812982017-05-28T09:36:00.000-07:002017-05-28T09:36:13.931-07:00Unfinished business...My one reservation about going back to Geneva this year was that the lure of "unfinished business" would raise the stakes of the swim to the point where it would cease to be the enjoyable adventure that a swim like that deserves to be. In general, I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping it in proportion and not letting it gather too much import over the winter, but the start of the open water season saw my first major wobble. I spent two weeks in Lanzarote at the end of April, covering just over 90km in total and feeling really good in the water, but my return to the open water in the UK didn't go quite so well. It was COLD, and a combination of having lost a bit of weight and being a bit of a softy in the face of the cold, left me unable to get beyond a couple of hours for my first few outdoors swims before my stroke slowed dramatically and I had to get out. There was a lot of this:<br />
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It was very disheartening, and with my 10 hour + 7 hour qualification swims looming and the unfinished business of Geneva waiting in the wings, my confidence took a bit of a battering. Thankfully, several people I know and trust gave me a good talking to, and then right on cue, some long-awaited sunshine arrived and the lakes quickly tipped over the threshold from cold to perfectly swimmable (for me, this comes between 12/13 - 14/15).<br />
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And so, with the unfinished business back in its box and an almost unbelievable forecast of 25 degree sunshine for the Lake District, I heading off to the always-stunning Grasmere this weekend to get a bit of confidence-building distance under my belt:<br />
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I managed my first 6 hour swim of the season with no problems at all, and I followed that with a couple of hours the next day - I was hoping to do more and definitely would have been able to, but thunder, lightning and torrential rain of the kind that only the Lake District can truly deliver stopped play and I was forced to retreat to the van, where I feasted on beans on toast and read until I fell asleep. If this is what unfinished business is like, then I think I can deal with it! </div>
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So the upshot of all this is that I had a bit of a wobble, but some sunshine and the gorgeous Lakes have set me straight. I've got a touch of niggly tendonitis in my left wrist which I'm getting sorted, but apart from that, I'm fit and well and feeling cautiously optimistic. </div>
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And in other news, I recently heard that I've been awarded a Leverhulme Trust fellowship for my new research project on the social life of sugar. This is a huge privilege and a great opportunity, but aside from the work implications (research only for the next year, with no teaching or admin commitments) and the chance to focus on some interesting research, it also means that I'll have the time to train. I was going to take a year or two out of long swimming after Geneva II is over - a chance to let my body / finances recover. But this seems like too good an opportunity to waste. So I'm probably going to be on the market for an interesting swim. At the moment, the 40 Bridges, Zurich or Tahoe are on the 'possible' list, but all suggestions are gratefully received. </div>
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But for now, I'm keeping my sights on (a) the qualification swims in a couple of weeks (2-way-Windermere + 1-way Windermere) and (b) Geneva II. And I'm watching my step very carefully. </div>
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Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-71291386555069357392017-03-04T07:25:00.000-08:002017-03-04T07:32:13.901-08:00Inclusive swimmingI read today that the UK's Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) has issued <a href="http://www.swimming.org/sport/inclusive-swimwear-guidance-for-competitive-swimming/">a new swimwear guidance</a> that allows for exceptions to the usual rules for competition swimwear on the grounds of religious belief or pre-existing medical condition. These changes are in response to a review requested by the Muslim Women's Sports Foundation (MWSF), who highlighted growing participation by Muslim women and girls in sport and the need to foster this interest by maximising the possibilities for access. The revised rules allow the use of textile full body suits that do not have the potential to enhance performance and which have been approved by officials in advance. This change to the rules will primarily benefit those women and girls whose religious beliefs mean that they would prefer to cover their body.<br />
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The ASA guidance includes these images of the kinds of suits that are included by the new guidance:<br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cui-GVCOotk/WLrQOVd_r9I/AAAAAAAABQ8/i9pIZh7pfjgEaggY2RdfBk9vjFZHK8iaACLcB/s1600/full%2Bbody%2Bsuits.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Cui-GVCOotk/WLrQOVd_r9I/AAAAAAAABQ8/i9pIZh7pfjgEaggY2RdfBk9vjFZHK8iaACLcB/s400/full%2Bbody%2Bsuits.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The guidance also includes examples of suits that the revised rules will continue to exclude: </div>
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There has been some predictable grumbling on social media about the changed rules potentially serving as a back door to performance enhancing body suits, but this is clearly not the purpose or consequence of this ruling. It's also important to note that this is distinct from recent FINA changes to the rules about wetsuits in competitive open water swimming, which have also caused controversy in the open water / marathon swimming / triathlon communities. Instead, this new guidance is simply a way of enabling more women and girls to compete in swimming, and that has to be a good thing. </div>
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BME communities are notoriously poorly represented in swimming (all kinds, all levels). This is due to a combination of factors including lack of access to affordable swimming lessons and facilities and the lack of perceived 'fit' with the sport (i.e. children being pointed towards other sports, or being told that 'black people can't swim' because of outdated and racist assumptions about bone density). This poor representation is particularly true for women and girls. There is also the legacy of the historical exclusion of non-white people from swimming facilities - for example, during segregation in the US (see Wiltse's 2007 book, <i>Contested Waters</i>, for a frank and disturbing account of this) - which has ongoing generational impacts in terms of facilities, expectations and a paucity of role models. </div>
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So this small change in the swimwear guidance isn't going to solve the problem of the whiteness of swimming, but it is an important beginning, and signals the active valuing of participation and inclusion to those outside of the sport who might like to give it a try. </div>
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And this got me thinking about other branches of the swimming world where strict costume rules apply, including marathon swimming. This is a sensitive and hotly contested area, but it seems to me that marathon swimming is in a position to be among the leaders in the field of amateur endurance sport by actively incorporating amendments of this kind to swimwear rules. Changes like this to the regulations by Channel / marathon swimming governing bodies are relatively costless, since they would not confer a performance advantage on swimmers wearing full body costumes, but would demonstrate an openness to the social diversity that is currently lacking. It's a small measure, but one that I think would speak volumes in welcoming new swimmers to the marathon swimming community. </div>
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-33555925780743122492017-01-12T13:39:00.002-08:002017-01-12T13:39:58.184-08:00Starting from where you are....One of the hardest lessons of training is that you have to start from where you are, and not from where you think you should be at any given point in the training cycle. <div>
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In my last post, optimistically entitled "Recovery", I was optimistic about having completed my functional recovery from the ankle injury and having been signed off from physiotherapy. But the reality was that this was just the beginning of a much longer, slower phase of recovery where my injured ankle inched with glacial slowness towards fuller, more reliable pain-free function. And inevitably, from time to time, I became impatient, or perhaps over-optimistic, and pushed too hard, causing it to swell and ache. Sometimes, even just wearing regular shoes to work rather than allowing myself the comfort and support of trainers, meant that evenings had to be spent with my foot up, wrapped in ice. Each setback made me feel old and useless and I kept returning in my mind to the costly moment of inattention when I fell, wanting to take it back and have it all work out differently. </div>
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But they're not kidding when they say that time heals, albeit with frustrating slowness. And since Christmas, I've enjoyed a step-change in my recovery and can swim, cycle and run without pain for the first time in months. I'm still proceeding cautiously, and am diligently nurturing my physio-acquired, ankle-stabilising skills of balancing on wobbly things, but at last, I feel like it's pretty much fixed and ready to really take on the work of training. Over Christmas, we escaped to the Canary Islands, and although a sustained weather pattern of lively winds made swimming difficult, I was able to taste the beginnings of the return of the comforts of being in the water....a necessary foundation for training for me. </div>
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Since November, I've been doing short, 30 minute swims (with the occasional hour thrown in), mostly with a pull-buoy at first, then more recently on full stroke. I've also been walking on a treadmill and riding a stationary bike, although both at low intensity. So I still have some basic fitness, but nothing like what I am going to need this summer for Geneva 2, and the gap between my current swim fitness and where I'd like to be now in order to get where I want to be is quite daunting. </div>
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But....you have to start from where you are. So I have a training plan, running in the first instance through to mid-April, when I'll be going to the Canary Islands for two weeks of hard open water training (with the goal of 100+km during the trip). The next goal after that is to complete the qualifying swims of 10 hours, followed by 7 hours the next day....probably sometime around mid-June. My weeks are mapped out to incorporate gradually increasing volume, and even though I'm starting from only 4 hours per week at the moment, I have to trust that by starting from where I am rather than where I feel like I should be, I will be able to stay injury free and rediscover my long swim fitness. Happily, too, I'm on research leave now until September, which should mean that I can train with a consistency that usually escapes me during the teaching term. I've also been working over the past few months on improving the quality and quantity of my sleep, and I've tweaked my vegan diet slightly to focus even more on whole foods and to eliminate (almost) all processed food. Both of these efforts have been effective, although I'm also aware that these interventions were as much about making me feel purposeful in the face of my ankle frustrations as they were about improving my well-being (although both have). </div>
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So that's where things stand....with 30 weeks to go, I'm starting from where I am and determined to do everything I can to get where I want to be. Money is being put down for the swim, and there's no going back now. </div>
Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-13651911933613772652016-10-11T14:34:00.003-07:002016-10-11T14:41:06.385-07:00Recovery<div class="MsoNormal">
It is 7 weeks to the day since my accident in Geneva, and I
am finally able to walk around pain-free with a relatively strong and stable
ankle. The abrupt failure to even start the swim and the frustrations of
debility have left me feeling sad and demotivated at times, but the last two
weeks have seen a rapid acceleration in the healing process in ways that have
completely transformed my ability to get around and enabled me to begin rebuilding my lost
fitness....including, at last, a return to the pool. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I had always thought of physio as something you did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after</i> an injury had pretty much healed
rather than to facilitate healing, and so when I first contacted Mark Wilkinson
of Skipton’s <a href="http://paragonphysiotherapy.com/">Paragon Physiotherapy</a>, I asked whether it was even worth coming in
while the injury was still relatively new and angry or whether I should hold
off for a bit. He was emphatic that I should start immediately and
offered me an appointment for the next day. This, as it turns out, was one of
the best decisions I have made and Mark has been pivotal to my recovery. He put
me on an intensive regime of cold therapy, and kept me off the foot for longer
than I would have if left to my own devices, but then two weeks ago, the pace
of treatment changed and we went from resting, to simple strengthening exercises with a
stretch band, to a wobbly cushion for proprioception, to today – a session of
strength and proprioception tests that had me balancing on wobble boards, doing
squats on a bosu ball, bouncing on an unstable trampoline whilst boxing or
throwing and catching a ball, doing walking lunges carrying a 10kg weight and
jumping two-footed over low hurdles whilst trying not to thud to a landing with
the finesse of a sack of potatoes (apparently, we were aiming for balletic, but
let’s face facts…). <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s such a fascinating process to go through. Weaknesses I
couldn’t even feel sprang to the surface as I tried to do various exercises….or
more accurately, they ran through my body as it tried to respond to the
demands I was placing on it. Occasionally, my right hand would start to shake
violently mid-exercise; with all my focus and energy on my left foot, it was as
if the embodied effort and tension of completing the task was pouring into my
unattended opposite hand. And then there was the step – a stable platform, barely
a foot high, which I had to jump up onto, two-footed, from standing. The first
time Mark asked me to do it, I couldn’t even get my feet off the floor – it was
as if my brain wouldn’t even let me consider jumping. Apparently this is a
defence mechanism – the brain knows that all is not well and that the
proprioception is damaged and stops you putting yourself at risk. But this
isn’t a “mind over matter” affair – you can’t ‘think’ your way out of it.
Instead, you have to take the time to restore the neural pathways before the
jump even becomes thinkable. The body is never simply a matter of mechanics. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And so….after all the balancing, hopping and jumping, I have
finally been discharged from treatment with my foot strong and stable enough to
move safely through everyday life without the immediate risk of going over on
it again. I still need to be careful with it and to keep up with exercises to
build on the progress already made, and it’s still a bit sore at the end of a
busy day and needs to be iced, but it is a world apart from the day I hobbled
home from Barcelona. I have started swim training again, and have Geneva II firmly in my (long-range) sights. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And so, my advice to anyone who finds themselves in a
similar position in the future is: find yourself an experienced, well-qualified
sports physiotherapist as soon as possible and do whatever they tell you to do.
I am hugely indebted to Mark for his expertise and care and learned a lot in
the process. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But most of all, try not to fall down steps in the first
place. It saves a lot of trouble later.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-8741268618140225362016-09-23T08:19:00.000-07:002016-09-23T09:41:51.583-07:00Cold feet and too much thinking time...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've spent large parts of the last 10 days with my foot in this. It's a cryocuff - a wrap-around 'boot' that inflates with iced water run in through a valve from a cooler, providing compression and cold to aid healing. I take it off before I go to bed, and have to go to sleep with a woolly sock on or it's a bit like sleeping with a dead fish at the bottom of the bed until my foot warms up. The good news is that it's working, but oh....so....slowly. It's exactly a month today since the ridiculous, clumsy slip in Geneva that had such costly and enduring ramifications - the wasted year of hard training, the financial costs, and the ongoing problems of mobility that being on crutches and unable to drive are causing. My physiotherapist estimates that it will be another 2 months before the ligaments are fully repaired (or as repaired as they can be - he reckons about 70% recovery of strength is normal). It constantly amazes me that my body, like all bodies, can be incredibly robust while also being intensely vulnerable and fragile; it seems like a high price to pay for a 2-inch slip, but sometimes that's all it takes. </div>
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Before I go any further I should say that I know that none of this, in the grand scale of things, is important or disastrous. Not being able to do a 42 mile swim - a leisure activity funded by my disposable income and enabled by my (generally) high levels of health and well-being - is the definition of a first world problem. Nothing terrible happened here. But having said that, you need to bear with me while I indulge in just a little self-pity. I had considered not being able to swim because of the weather (although this is unlikely in Geneva), or even having to cancel earlier because of acquired injury during training, but I was utterly unprepared for the possibility of not being able to start the swim because of an acute injury so close to the swim. Consequently, although the couple of weeks immediately after the injury were filled with the more pressing and occupying demands of the injury itself and coping with my work trip to Barcelona, I was really knocked for six when I got home. I wasn't expecting this, and didn't even really register how sad I was feeling for a while, but I slowly realised that I felt embarrassed by what had happened, and very down in the face of the rather exhausting work of the everyday and my newly acquired dependence on others to get around and look after myself. </div>
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As the new teaching term has started to kick into gear, and as my foot (and therefore, my mobility) is slowly showing signs of improvement, I am feeling much better and much more positive, and I have a much better sense of perspective on the whole affair. It's a good learning experience about the vagaries of the swimming, the riskiness of big plans....and the fragility of ankles. </div>
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And so...one consequence of the cryocuff and my immobility is that I've had far too much thinking time and that can only end up one way. On some level, I had hoped that I was sufficiently grown-up to be able to look back on the Geneva venture as a good idea that just didn't work out and then move on; I didn't want to feel compelled to go back and have another try. I think 'unfinished business' is a dangerous game to play, since it massively raises the stakes of the second time around in ways that probably aren't healthy emotionally and which risk leaching the fun out of the whole process of training and swimming. This, after all, is why I do it - because I love the swimming. But then again, I also came to realise that my desire to go back to Geneva was not so much (or at least not only) about redemption from this year's failures, but also about the very real desire to do the swim - to swim here: </div>
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And so it's done - I'm booked in for August next year for Lake Geneva II. And this time, I will be wearing walking boots and wrapping myself in bubble wrap in the days leading up to the swim!</div>
Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-81205774280137840942016-09-16T00:59:00.000-07:002016-09-16T01:06:13.522-07:00Are women 'quietly dominating' marathon swimming?A recent article in New York magazine's "Science of Us" section, entitled <a href="http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/09/the-obscure-endurance-sport-women-are-quietly-dominating.html">"The obscure ultra-endurance sport women are quietly dominating"</a> has recently been doing the rounds on social media and discussion forums. Many swimmers are relieved to see women's participation in the sport recognised (which I also share), and there has been much enthusiastic listing of other notable female swimmers not mentioned in the article but celebrated in the community. The article begins from the premise that unlike other ultra-endurance sports, women are 'dominating' in a way that is unlikely in, say, ultra-running, and this is ultimately attributed to the assumption (a) that women have more body fat than men, and (b) that that body fat provides a critical advantage that explains their success in the sport.<br />
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At the risk of being a killjoy in the face of an article that I know many find affirming and positive, I have a number of concerns about its claims. Firstly, what does it mean to 'dominate' a sport? In fields conventionally understood as masculine (e.g. business, politics), even a small number of successful women is quickly read as 'domination' -a marker of alarm at the disruption of business as usual. Although well-represented relative to many other sports, women are still vastly outnumbered by men in marathon swimming, and the fact that even the possibility of female parity in performance / participation warrants research articles and news stories shows how far we are from 'domination'. Although much more subtle than actively excluding women from those fields, the rush to cries of 'domination' is another means of constraining women's participation in public life by marking it as out of place.<br />
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Secondly, I am deeply uncomfortable with the rush to biological explanations. Women's high performance (in sport and other public domains) is often attributed to their bodies (high pain threshold, favourable fat distribution), but much of this is based on (unfounded) generalisations that can't be brought to bear on the very small numbers of marathon swimmers, about whose specific bodies we know very little. It is striking that the journalist (and the scientists researching this) don't stop to look at training regimes and preparation, for example. And I'm not saying that women necessarily train harder....my point is that there are other conclusions that could have been jumped to but which aren't. Consequently, we should be very wary about citing women's presumed body fat as a performance advantage. Firstly, it obscures the work of training and technique acquisition (a point made by Evan Morrison in the article); and secondly, in a social and cultural context where fat is constantly derided, this is a punch with a velvet glove. Indeed, the article cites a horribly fat-phobic encounter between Lynne Cox and a taxi driver who tells her that she is 'too fat' to be a Channel swimmer. The implied derision and unacceptability of fatness, and the freedom which this man felt to hurl what is undoubtedly intended as a casual and disciplining insult at a young girl, should make us all very wary of these seemingly celebratory explanations of women's biological advantageous body fat. </div>
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The rush to biological explanations for women's relatively high participation in marathon swimming (particularly compared to other ultra-endurance sports) obscures a number of other social explanations. Swimming is conventionally understood as a sport appropriate for women (unlike something like boxing, for example, or rugby, which are far more rigidly masculinised and harder for women to break in to). Consequently, it is much more likely to be experienced by women as a potentially welcoming and safe sporting space already populated by other women. But secondly, the higher average performance of non-elite female swimmers in events such as MIMS may well reflect the fact that it is the stronger female swimmers who are more likely to identify themselves as participants for ambitious or high profile swims. Women are not taught to see their bodies as athletic or adventurous, and they also pay much higher social costs for standing out or pushing themselves forwards, especially if all doesn't go well. Consequently, women are much less likely to enter such an event without being particularly confident about their abilities. I suspect that the women who have traditionally taken part in MIMS (an event where you had to push yourself forwards aggressively to even be accepted) were already among the better swimmers, and it was this high performance that facilitated their self-identification as MIMS competitors and their successful swims....and not the fatness of their thighs. </div>
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I have some sympathy with the journalist of the piece. As one of my favourite swimming journalists and writers, Elaine Howley, noted in <a href="http://marathonswimmers.org/forum/discussion/1496/the-obscure-endurance-sport-women-are-quietly-dominating/p1">a forum post on the article</a>, the demands of publication are for spectacular headlines and short punchy claims within tight word limits, and there is little scope for nuanced analysis. As coverage of women and sport goes, this is an engaging and carefully written piece. But in my view, however inadvertently, articles like this end up reinforcing the egregious inequalities in our expectations of women's bodies rather than challenging them. </div>
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As a feminist and a swimmer, I am first in line to celebrate the accomplishments of female swimmers and to encourage women's participation in the sport. But rather than treating marathon swimming's relatively high rates of female participation as a surprising, newsworthy anomaly that can only be explained through biology, a better question might be: What can we learn from marathon swimming about women's access to sport? How could marathon swimming facilitate even greater female participation? What social and structural barriers might be in place in other sports that are preventing women from participating and excelling?<br />
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Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-14418054860445291472016-08-26T00:15:00.000-07:002016-08-26T00:15:52.130-07:00Cancellation...It's done. I finally made the decision yesterday to cancel my Lake Geneva swim. My foot and ankle are still very painful, swollen and bruised, and even though a big part of me just wants to just get out there and give it a go no matter what, the rest of me knows that 24+ hours of swimming is unlikely to improve an injury that I can hardly bear weight on even before we've started. It also risks exacerbating the injury with potential long term consequences, and I don't think any swim warrants that, no matter how much time and money has gone into it (and in this case, it's a lot of both). Even though, like most long distance swimmers, I don't really kick much, the habitual work of stabilisation in the water places constant demands on the ankle in ways that I hadn't really appreciated until now. I've tried swimming holding it still, but this puts new and assymetrical demands on different parts of my body to manage rotation etc - fine if that's how you've trained, but it's an invitation to further injury otherwise. <div>
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And so, I decided to put an end to the uncertainty and to move on. There's nothing that I can do about it other than lick my wounds for a while and then turn my attention to ankle rehab and new (or old) goals.</div>
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Thanks to everyone who's sent encouraging messages over the last few days, and especially to the Lake Geneva Swimming Association, who've been very supportive in the face of my inability to make it even to the start line. I'm down but not out, and in this spirit, last night, we took an evening cruise from Lausanne to Geneva, saw the lake in all its glory and toasted the spectacular gap between my aspiration (to swim 42 miles) and my accomplishment (to fall 2 inches). If you're going to be injured and disappointed, there are worst places to do it. </div>
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Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-47248170163469405272016-08-24T04:48:00.001-07:002016-08-24T05:42:27.199-07:00An unexpected turn of events....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Well...this wasn't how I expected things to go.<br />
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The story begins with the fact that Peter and I were walking out of a lakeside bar yesterday evening.... It was the end of a disappointing day. We were scheduled to start our Lake Geneva swim today (Weds), with perfect conditions forecast, but sadly, a mechanical problem with the boat put paid to that and on Tuesday afternoon, we heard that the swim would have to be postponed to either Thursday or Friday. It was frustrating, but it's just one of those things - an occupational hazard in a sport that has a lot of variables in play and lots of moving parts. It is also a million times better to identify a mechanical problem in advance rather than mid-swim. So, knowing that everyone was working hard to fix the problem, we brushed off our disappointment, headed off for a swim in a deliciously lovely 50m lakeside outdoor pool, and then sauntered along the shore, stopping at a bar for a beer and to watch the sun set behind the mountains. It was a lovely end to a disappointing day, and we decided to head back to our Airbmb flat to eat and prepare ourselves for the possibility of a Thursday swim. To be honest, I was feeling quite proud of myself for keeping my focus after the change of plan - I hate the lead-up to a swim, and am not good with spontaneity, so I felt pleased that I had been able to keep my positive focus (although it turns out that a bit more focus on my surroundings instead of the swim would have been more productive).<br />
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And then it happened... I slipped off a small step at the edge of the decking - just a matter of a couple of inches in height - and wrenched my left ankle over. I knew immediately that I'd done something more than just tweak it and my heart sank. I was able to hobble home, but it was sore and swollen, and by morning, it was still no better, with bruising starting to come through and limited mobility. I decided to go for a morning swim in the hope that it would be fine in the water without my weight on it, but the stabilising work of the legs made my foot ache on every kick, however gentle. The pain rose over the 20 minute swim, and I soon came to the reluctant conclusion that I needed to face the possibility of having to cancel the swim. A 24+ hour swim is unlikely to be forgiving of such an injury.<br />
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So I currently find myself in the tense position of waiting to see if my ankle can recover sufficiently for me to swim on Saturday (the last possible day open to me). I'm sitting in the flat with my foot wrapped in a compression bandage and up on a cushion, dosing myself with ibuprofen and willing it with every ounce of my being to get better.<br />
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This is really not how I had expected this to go, and I am utterly mortified by my own spectacular oafishness.<br />
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Time will tell about what happens next. In the mean time, I'm just concentrating on trying to keep the rest of me in one piece.<br />
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-56117520331572484622016-07-05T04:47:00.001-07:002016-07-05T04:49:02.079-07:00Elbowed in...As per my last post, I headed off to the Lakes this weekend for a couple of 'test out my elbow' swims, after which I was determined to make the decision about whether to postpone my Geneva swim or commit to it. I picked the beautiful Crummock Water as the setting for the swims - a long, thin lake, surrounded by monumental, relentless hills. It's stunningly beautiful, even when, as with this weekend, the weather is a bit grim. It was a grey couple of days, punctuated by high winds and apocalyptic bouts of rain, with air temps listed on the Met Office site as "12 degrees, feels like 10" (because of the cold winds). A bunch of wet-suited swimmers hanging around the beach told me that they'd measured the water temp at 15, which seems about right, although the wind made it cold across the shoulders, turning it into a bit of a slog at times.<br />
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But whatever the weather, this was my last chance to test the elbow before deciding about Geneva, so I set myself the target of 2 x 10km swims (one each day) - basically a full circumferential lap of Crummock Water plus a bit extra to make up the distance. Like every Crummock Water swim, it was beautiful (if a little menacing at times with the clouds sinking low down the hillsides), and the poor weather meant I seemed to have the whole lake to myself. Such luxury. I used a tow-float with energy drink in it, and one big bottle got me round each time (although for a 6 hour swim, I find I need more regular feeds, so carry gels as well). (As an aside, the Chillswim bottle-holder float has an advantage over the dry-bag tow-floats in that it doesn't flip over in rough conditions, meaning that the strap never gets twisted. This makes it much more comfortable to swim with, although you lose the security of being able to carry a robe and shoes with you).<br />
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And the good news is that my elbow held up just fine, and so I have now committed fully to the task ahead. To be honest, I don't think the joint is quite 100%, but with more physio to come, and no noticeable problems during either swim, I'm feeling fairly confident. And realistically, even if I wait until next year, there's always going to be something niggling away, so now is the time.<br />
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The Geneva swim season is about to start shortly, and I heard today that the water is a glorious 21 degrees. Let the fun begin.<br />
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<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-54332672723328587122016-06-29T07:00:00.002-07:002016-06-29T07:00:59.701-07:00Elbowed out?Things were going so well...It's been a struggle since January to get the hours in the pool that I need, but I've managed to keep going, finally hitting the open water in May and building to several 6 hours swims, including a couple of back-to-back sessions. Each time, I was tired, but left the water feeling good and without any aches or pains. I was feeling optimistic, and began my taper for my planned Windermere weekend (2-way, followed by a 1-way) when out of nowhere, three days before the Windermere swims, and during a very gentle hour in the pool, I got a slight niggle in my left elbow. It was nothing major, but it was new. The joint felt a bit stiff afterwards, but the next day it seemed okay, so in I went again, just for a gentle paddle, but back it came, more insistently this time. Damn.<br />
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I booked an emergency sports massage appointment, and later that day, the wonderful, relentless Christine massaged my left arm to within an inch of its life. Already, I could feel that a lot of the tightness that had caused the problem had gone, but sadly, it was too late to risk doing the Windermere swims and reluctantly decided to cancel. I felt terrible, especially since Mark Robson and Amanda Bell had generously set aside the time to crew for me, but given the residual post-massage soreness that lasted several days, I'm convinced that this was the right decision and that this will give me the best chance of getting to Geneva in one piece. But one of the undesirable consequences of inserting a long swim into the training cycle as a confidence-builder is that when that swim can't happen because of injury, it's a bit of a confidence-crusher and I am feeling full of self-doubt.<br />
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So now, I'm awash with indecision. The elbow is heaps better, but not quite 100% (yet?), but unfortunately time is not on my side and I can't wait around indefinitely to decide for all kinds of logistical and financial reasons. So I have to choose very soon whether to just commit, give it a bit more recovery time and then go for it, or to err on the side of caution and postpone until next year. There are many reasons why I don't want to pick the latter option - I've really had to work hard to get the training in this year, and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to repeat this next year, particularly since I have an even heavier workload in front of me; but also, after putting in all that work, I don't want to waste it. But then again....after all this time and money, I don't want to go into the swim without having done everything possible to succeed. With 7 weeks to go, and having already had time out to taper for the Windermere swims and then recover from the injury, there's not a lot of slack left in the training schedule. AAARGH. I just don't know.<br />
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Ultimately, I'm hoping that my elbow will make the choice for me, so I'm off to the Lakes this weekend to do a couple of long swims. If it feels okay, then I'll commit to going for it; if it doesn't, then I'll have to pull the plug for now and try to come back next year.<br />
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It's not how I hoped all this would go, but it's an occupational hazard for a sport like this, so I can only hope that the right decision becomes clear over the next few days.<br />
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And in the mean time, make sure you're following the 2016 <a href="https://www.8bridges.org/">8 Bridges swim</a>, this year with the added ability to <a href="http://track.rs/8Bridges/">track the swimmers </a> (courtesy of Evan Morrison's new tracker app) as they progress down the river each day. You might as well give up on doing any work now and settle down to watch - it's easier that way.Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-26350541391371370782016-06-22T14:48:00.000-07:002016-06-22T14:48:41.674-07:00ImmersionIt's finally here...the real life, hold-it-in-your-hand book. After all these years of work, and over a year since completing the manuscript, it scarcely seems true. But it is....there's a happy heap of copies on my office floor (although I haven't dared open any of them up yet in case I find typos!). It is 14 years since my last monograph, so this is probably slightly overdue, but still...I couldn't be more pleased. Plus at 48, who ever thought I would find myself on the cover of a book in a swimming costume, with my back smeared all over with a US nappy rash cream called "Butt Paste". Life is strange and wonderful.<br />
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I'm not going to be flogging the book mercilessly either on or offline, not least because it's a relatively expensive hardback which is aimed primarily at libraries at this stage (with a paperback to follow next year). But, please allow me this brief promotional post.... </div>
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If you wish to buy a copy, you can purchase it from <a href="http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719099625/">Manchester University Press</a>. They are currently having a summer sale with 50% off all books, so the usual purchase price for my book of £70 is currently reduced to £35. (Still expensive I know, but better). To get the discount, click the "buy now" button and enter the discount code <b>Summer16</b> in the 'promotion code' box. Unfortunately, the code only applies to UK / EU purchases at the current time (the US sales are being handled by Oxford University Press).</div>
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I'm very excited for the book to finally be making its way into the world, and of course, I am very grateful to everyone who helped with the research. Books, like marathon swims, are a team effort, even though only one name ends up on the cover. So big thanks all round. </div>
<br />Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-39641322742094198912016-06-14T04:52:00.001-07:002016-06-15T04:36:29.525-07:00Fats, carbs, meat and plants....<div class="MsoNormal">
A warning….this post is not about swimming (although, as
with most things, I came to it via swimming, where discussions about diet and
nutrition are rife). As I explained when I <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/i-changed-my-mind.html">re-launched the blog in February,</a> as
my research moves away from swimming, I want to start using this as a site for
testing out new thoughts and ideas about a range of projects and issues, some
of which are more obviously swimming-related than others. So if you’ve come to
the blog looking for swimming posts, please browse away through past posts….or come
back in a couple of weeks, by which time I’m sure more swimming will have
appeared. <o:p></o:p></div>
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With my swimming book now at the printers (and out in
August), I’ve been working on getting some new writing and research projects
going. My primary goal is a long-abandoned but recently resurrected book about
obesity surgery, but as a side project, I’ve been getting very interested in
radical weight loss diets – those diets which conform to contemporary
anti-obesity sentiment, but which stand in direct opposition to mainstream
dietary advice. I started off by focusing on low carb – high fat diets (LCHF) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(e.g. <a href="http://realmealrevolution.com/">the Real Meal Revolution</a>) which have become very popular in the swimming community recently, and then
extended this to plant-based weight loss plans (e.g. <a href="http://www.forksoverknives.com/">Forks Over Knives</a>). The
former rely heavily on animal products as a means of limiting carbs and increasing the consumption of fat, while the latter completely reject all animal products (including
dairy). In spite of this very fundamental difference, I’ve been intrigued by
how much they have in common, leading me to ask how the cases for each are
made, what values they appeal to, and where their similarities and differences
lie. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I need a couple of quick caveats here: as a recently
converted vegan, and a vegetarian for 30 years before that, I have an obvious
loyalty to plant-based eating and think that it is environmentally and
ethically irresponsible to promote the greater consumption of animal
products. But this is not what this
project is about, and I think that while the vegan critique of LCHF is personally
important to me it is not particularly interesting sociologically. For this reason, I have excluded books guided by ethical veganism and am focusing specifically on plant-based <i>weight loss</i> plans. Nor is the project about adjudicating the
health effects of one or other regimen, but rather, to think about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> those claims to weight and health
outcomes are made and to what social effects. There is one final caveat – and
one which anyone familiar with my writing on marathon swimming and fat will
recognise. I come from an academic tradition of feminist Fat Studies and as
such, approach this topic with a well-worn suspicion of the easy equation of
fatness and ill-health, and a resistance to the habitual and moralising
assumptions about fatness that run through the contemporary attack on obesity - a starting point that not everyone will agree with. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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In dietary terms there is more common ground between the two dietary styles than you might expect, particularly in relation to the rejection of processed and refined foods, and both regimens have armies of acolytes for whom the prescribed dietary transformation has produced effects on the body that are experienced as both positive and meaningful (and I think it's important to take those experiences seriously). But the most interesting common ground for me lies in the programmes' self-presentations and
justifications, many of which overlap strongly with mainstream anti-obesity interventions. Both share the caricatured and hysterical fear-mongering that
is the hallmark of the ‘war on obesity', and both are sites of weight loss entrepreneurship, selling books and other products and plans, as well as engaging in research. Both marshall ‘science’ to shore up
their arguments, as embodied in books and websites primarily through the figures of white, male
doctors and scientists. Both exercise a rigorous critique of opposing
scientific views but rarely extend that level of scrutiny to supporting studies
or to the obesity science literature which feeds the ‘war on obesity’ more
generally. ‘Science’, then, for both is usually good or bad, but rarely treated
as inherently uncertain. Both rely on highly strategic and partial evolutionary
accounts of what we are 'meant' to eat. Both caricature and generalise the diet
of the ‘irresponsible poor’ whilst offering solutions which demand the social,
cultural and economic capital of the (westernised) middle classes. Both treat weight loss as
synonymous with, and a proxy for, health in ways that are fundamentally
unreliable. And both rely on profoundly masculinised narratives of bodily
mastery and athleticism as proof of positive health outcomes. </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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My preliminary argument, then, is that while both LCHF and
plant-based programmes identify strongly with their dissenting roles in relation
to conventional dietary advice, they simultaneously reproduce many of
the normative assumptions that underpin mainstream anti-obesity campaigns and
which Fat Studies scholars have been critiquing for years. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In short, I don’t think that they’re as radical as they
appear to be at first glance, and can alternatively be seen as intensifications of existing ideologies rather than divergences from them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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And this leads me to a further question (and one which is
central to my obesity surgery book), which applies to both the general audience and to the feminist and Fat Studies communities for whom the failure of diets is a core element of their opposition: What if it works? If one or other (or both) of these
regimens were to be successful in safely producing sustained weight loss and
improved ‘health’ (however that’s measured), what does that mean for the fat
body? What new or intensified coercions might result? What gets overlooked in
the relentless focus on obesity as the motivating problem to be solved? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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These are only my preliminary thoughts, and I’ve got heaps more
work to do. But even if it doesn’t come to anything, at least it’s the kind of research
where you pick up some great recipes and food ideas along the way (<a href="https://www.blogger.com/A%20warning%E2%80%A6.this%20post%20is%20not%20about%20swimming%20(although,%20as%20with%20most%20things,%20I%20came%20to%20it%20via%20swimming,%20where%20discussions%20about%20diet%20and%20nutrition%20are%20rife).%20As%20I%20explained%20when%20I%20re-launched%20the%20blog%20in%20February,%20as%20my%20research%20moves%20away%20from%20swimming,%20I%20want%20to%20start%20using%20this%20as%20a%20site%20for%20testing%20out%20new%20thoughts%20and%20ideas%20about%20a%20range%20of%20projects%20and%20issues,%20some%20of%20which%20are%20more%20obviously%20swimming-related%20than%20others.%20So%20if%20you%E2%80%99ve%20come%20to%20the%20blog%20looking%20for%20swimming%20posts,%20please%20browse%20away%20through%20past%20posts%E2%80%A6.or%20come%20back%20in%20a%20couple%20of%20weeks,%20by%20which%20time,%20I%E2%80%99m%20sure%20more%20swimming%20will%20have%20appeared.%20%20%20***%20%20%20With%20my%20swimming%20book%20now%20at%20the%20printers%20(and%20out%20in%20August),%20I%E2%80%99ve%20been%20working%20on%20getting%20some%20new%20writing%20and%20research%20projects%20going.%20My%20primary%20goal%20is%20a%20long-abandoned%20but%20recently%20resurrected%20book%20about%20obesity%20surgery,%20but%20as%20a%20side%20project,%20I%E2%80%99ve%20been%20getting%20very%20interested%20in%20radical%20weight%20loss%20diets%20%E2%80%93%20those%20diets%20which%20conform%20to%20contemporary%20anti-obesity%20sentiment,%20but%20which%20stand%20in%20direct%20opposition%20to%20mainstream%20dietary%20advice.%20I%20started%20off%20by%20focusing%20on%20low%20carb%20%E2%80%93%20high%20fat%20diets%20(LCHF)%20%20(e.g.%20the%20Real%20Meal%20Revolution),%20and%20then%20extended%20this%20to%20plant-based%20weight%20loss%20plans%20(e.g.%20Forks%20Over%20Knives).%20The%20former%20rely%20heavily%20on%20the%20consumption%20of%20animal%20products%20and%20the%20rejection%20of%20carbs,%20while%20the%20latter%20completely%20reject%20all%20animal%20products%20(including%20dairy).%20In%20spite%20of%20this%20very%20fundamental%20difference,%20I%E2%80%99ve%20been%20intrigued%20by%20how%20much%20they%20have%20in%20common,%20leading%20me%20to%20ask%20how%20the%20cases%20for%20each%20are%20made,%20what%20values%20they%20appeal%20to,%20and%20where%20their%20similarities%20and%20differences%20lie.%20%20%20I%20need%20a%20couple%20of%20quick%20caveats%20here:%20as%20a%20recently%20converted%20vegan,%20and%20a%20vegetarian%20for%2030%20years%20before%20that,%20I%20have%20an%20obvious%20loyalty%20to%20plant-based%20eating%20and%20think%20that%20it%20is%20environmentally%20and%20ethically%20problematic%20to%20promote%20the%20greater%20consumption%20of%20animal%20products.%20%20But%20this%20is%20not%20what%20this%20project%20is%20about,%20and%20I%20think%20that%20the%20vegan%20critique%20of%20HCLF%20is%20personally%20important%20to%20me%20but%20sociologically%20not%20particularly%20interesting.%20%20Nor%20is%20the%20project%20about%20adjudicating%20the%20health%20effects%20of%20one%20or%20other%20regimen,%20but%20rather,%20to%20think%20about%20how%20those%20claims%20to%20weight%20and%20health%20outcomes%20are%20made%20and%20to%20what%20social%20effects.%20There%20is%20one%20final%20caveat%20%E2%80%93%20and%20one%20which%20anyone%20familiar%20with%20my%20writing%20on%20marathon%20swimming%20and%20fat%20will%20recognise.%20I%20come%20from%20an%20academic%20tradition%20of%20feminist%20Fat%20Studies%20and%20as%20such,%20approach%20this%20topic%20with%20a%20well-worn%20suspicion%20of%20the%20easy%20equation%20of%20fatness%20and%20ill-health,%20and%20a%20resistance%20to%20the%20habitual%20and%20moralising%20assumptions%20about%20fatness%20that%20run%20through%20the%20contemporary%20attack%20on%20obesity.%20%20%20In%20dietary%20terms%20there%20is%20more%20common%20ground%20between%20the%20two%20than%20you%20might%20expect,%20particularly%20in%20relation%20to%20the%20rejection%20of%20processed%20foods.%20But%20the%20real%20common%20ground%20lies%20in%20their%20self-presentations%20and%20justifications.%20Both%20share%20the%20caricatured%20and%20hysterical%20fear-mongering%20that%20is%20the%20hallmark%20of%20the%20%E2%80%98war%20on%20obesity%E2%80%99.%20Both%20marshall%20%E2%80%98science%E2%80%99%20to%20shore%20up%20their%20arguments,%20as%20embodied%20in%20books%20and%20websites%20primarily%20by%20white,%20male%20doctors%20and%20scientists,%20and%20both%20exercise%20a%20rigorous%20critique%20of%20opposing%20scientific%20views%20but%20rarely%20extend%20that%20level%20of%20scrutiny%20to%20supporting%20studies%20or%20to%20the%20obesity%20science%20literature%20which%20feeds%20the%20%E2%80%98war%20on%20obesity%E2%80%99%20more%20generally.%20%E2%80%98Science%E2%80%99,%20then,%20for%20both%20is%20usually%20good%20or%20bad,%20but%20rarely%20treated%20as%20inherently%20uncertain.%20Both%20rely%20on%20highly%20strategic%20and%20partial%20evolutionary%20accounts%20of%20what%20we%20are%20%E2%80%9Cmeant%E2%80%9D%20to%20eat.%20Both%20caricature%20and%20generalise%20the%20diet%20of%20the%20%E2%80%98irresponsible%20poor%E2%80%99%20whilst%20offering%20solutions%20which%20demand%20the%20social,%20cultural%20and%20economic%20capital%20of%20the%20middle%20classes.%20Both%20treat%20weight%20loss%20as%20synonymous%20with,%20and%20a%20proxy%20for,%20health%20in%20ways%20that%20are%20fundamentally%20unreliable.%20And%20both%20rely%20on%20profoundly%20masculinised%20narratives%20of%20bodily%20mastery%20and%20athleticism%20as%20proof%20of%20positive%20health%20outcomes.%20%20%20My%20preliminary%20argument,%20then,%20is%20that%20while%20both%20HCLF%20and%20plant-based%20advocates%20identify%20strongly%20with%20their%20dissenting%20roles%20in%20relation%20to%20conventional%20dietary%20advice,%20these%20plans%20simultaneously%20reproduce%20many%20of%20the%20normative%20assumptions%20that%20underpin%20mainstream%20anti-obesity%20campaigns%20and%20which%20Fat%20Studies%20scholars%20have%20been%20critiquing%20for%20years.%20%20%20In%20short,%20I%20don%E2%80%99t%20think%20that%20they%E2%80%99re%20as%20radical%20as%20they%20appear%20to%20be%20at%20first%20glance,%20but%20rather,%20can%20be%20seen%20as%20an%20intensification%20of%20the%20unacceptability%20of%20the%20fat%20body%20and%20individual%20responsibility%20for%20it.%20%20%20And%20this%20leads%20me%20to%20a%20further%20question%20(and%20one%20which%20is%20central%20to%20my%20obesity%20surgery%20book).%20If%20one%20or%20other%20(or%20both)%20of%20these%20regimens%20were%20to%20be%20successful%20in%20safely%20producing%20sustained%20weight%20loss%20and%20improved%20%E2%80%98health%E2%80%99%20(however%20that%E2%80%99s%20measured),%20what%20does%20that%20mean%20for%20the%20fat%20body?%20What%20new%20or%20intensified%20coercions%20will%20result?%20What%20gets%20overlooked%20in%20the%20relentless%20focus%20on%20obesity%20as%20the%20motivating%20problem%20to%20be%20solved?%20%20%20These%20are%20only%20my%20preliminary%20thoughts,%20and%20I%E2%80%99ve%20got%20heaps%20more%20work%20to%20do.%20But%20even%20if%20it%20doesn%E2%80%99t%20come%20to%20anything,%20it%E2%80%99s%20the%20kind%20of%20research%20where%20you%20pick%20up%20some%20great%20recipes%20along%20the%20way%20(chocolate-banana%20ice-cream,%20anyone?).">chocolate-banana ice-cream</a>,
anyone?). <o:p></o:p></div>
Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4853996895732294413.post-80399304751428578722016-05-30T10:48:00.000-07:002016-05-30T10:55:44.854-07:006 hours...The 6-hour swim is a marathon swimming staple. As many swimmers already know, it is the length of the qualification swim for the English Channel (and others), and long distance training camps routinely culminate in documented 6-hours swims, providing certificates for swimmers to dispatch to organising bodies as evidence. But as every experienced marathon swimmer knows, your qualification swim should just be one of many. To have completed the qualification swim is really just a starting rather than a finishing point in your training, and as your big swim approaches, the 6-hour swim, while always satisfying, should become relatively mundane. And while there is disagreement about how many long weekends are necessary leading up to a big swim, I would definitely say that you should be able to double up with relative comfort as the swim approaches, doing back-to-back 6-hour swims across two days. If you are completely wrecked at the end of 6 hours and can't recover well enough to swim again the next day, then you're probably not ready for 12, 15, 20 hours.<br />
<br />
In the summer before my EC swim, I did 4-5 back-to-back weekends, plus I came to love the early season 6-hour swim at Swan Pool, which I did annually until I moved to North Yorkshire. I also did 6-hour swims with Swimtrek in Gozo, and on the Cork training camp. As a result, I learned to chop up a marathon swim into 6 hour chunks; in the EC, I changed my goggles at the end of the first 6 hours as the sun came up, and in my mind, I restarted the swim afresh. At the next 6 hours, I was rewarded with a black jelly baby to mark the start of the next 6-hour block. I did the same on both of my MIMS swims; the magic of the black jelly baby to reset the clock shouldn't be underestimated.<br />
<br />
Times have changed in my training though, and when I stopped to think about it before writing this, I realised that I haven't done a 6-hour training swim since <a href="http://thelongswim.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/going-nowhere-with-purpose_28.html">May 2013</a>, in the run-up to my rather unsuccessful season of cancelled and aborted swims. I have swum over 6 hours since then - on both of my MIMS swims, and then the 8 Bridges swim last year, which involved 3 swims of 7+ hours; but it's been 3 years since I did any 6-hour t<u>raining</u> swims. This is partly because, since I got the Fastlane Pool, I tend to do longer, more regular pool swims more consistently than I was able to before. I am firmly convinced of the relative value of doing frequent 2-3 hours swims over my previous pattern (from necessity) of being relatively fallow during the week then hammering out long training swims at the weekend.<br />
<br />
But with both Geneva and, more immediately, my 2-way / 1-way Windermere weekend approaching fast, it was time to get out there and get some distance in my shoulders... Plus, the weather forecast for the Bank Holiday weekend for the Lake District was for glorious sunshine. This doesn't happen very often, and the thought of all that water-warming sunshine inspired me to leap in the van and head to Grasmere to do my first 6-hour swim of the season - hopefully the first of many in my prep for Geneva. This was also the first 6-hour training swim I've done completely solo - just doing 2km laps of the lake with a tow-float carrying a drink bottle, plus a few gels down by the back of my costume, stopping in at the beach every 2 hours to restock. I was surprised how well it all went - I felt like I was swimming well, I didn't really get cold, and my energy levels stayed high. Over the winter, I've lost some of the habits of thought that long swimming demands, and I found my mind bouncing around problems with work for the first couple of hours. But by hour 4, I had settled down and started to find my marathon swimming-ness - an embodied disposition, a state of mind.<br />
<br />
I've been more tired today than I had hoped, and obviously still have a lot of work to do, but it felt SO good to be back at it in such a tangible, substantive way. It feels like a very solid contribution to training; a marker of progress in a long journey.Karen Throsbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07718131663334624711noreply@blogger.com0