How much is enough?

Well, I managed to get myself back in gear after a really work-filled, training-free week and have done plenty of running, core and strength training, and swimming this week - five swims and 4 gym sessions in all. Hopefully, the previous week was just a blip where work got away from me.

But as I was swimming today, I was wondering about how much training I should be doing. I think that everyone worries about this, and I dealt with this first time round by training as much as I possibly could. Consequently, in some ways, I think I did more than enough....although I think that I needed that for my confidence, and that this really helped me when things got difficult during the swim. But I think that it should be slightly different now - after all that intense build-up over a couple of years, I feel like (hope?) that I have enough "distance in my arms" to be able to work on maintaining during the winter and then intensifying in the few months leading up to the swim. I don't want to skimp, or squeak through on just enough, but at the same time, I want to be able to keep the swimming within manageable proportions on an ongoing basis rather that just for this few years.

So, as always, part of me is very unsure as to whether I'm doing enough, but another part of me feels like I need to have a bit more faith in my swimming and my ability to do this. Tricky...I guess I'll find out in July.

Too much work, not enough swimming...

It's been fantastic to get my new research website up and running, and last week, I gave my first seminar paper on the research data, which felt like an important step forwards for the project. But the downside is that the training has had to take something of a back seat to the work involved, plus maintaining my usual teaching commitments. I finished the week completely pooped and motivation-free, and am now feeling very frustrated at myself for letting it all slip (again). It's ridiculous, because I LOVE swimming, but sometimes it can be just too hard to drag myself back out in the evening, especially with a pile of work still waiting to be done.

It's the old problem of work-swimming balance, but I think that I've perhaps developed too much of an all-or-nothing approach to training - if I can't go for a full training swim, I tend to not go at all, rather than going for just 30 mins, or going to the gym to do a bit of weight training. So my goal this week is to do something every day, even if it ends up being a short session.

It's beginning to dawn on me that Catalina is just over 5 months away, and I'm a long way from where I need to be to complete it. Time to pick it up a bit.

New research website

Good news - my research website - "Becoming a Channel swimmer" - has finally gone live. I want it to be a vehicle for communicating about the research, but also, hope that in time, it will become a useful resource for swimmers - for example, I'm in the process of building a big library of organisations, information sites, videos and blogs which some might find helpful. It's a bit scary putting it out there, but it needed to be done, not least because I've spent days playing with pictures, link and layouts - all of which is far more fun than the marking that I have to do, but I can't put it off indefinitely...

You can find it by clicking on the link above, or in the list on the right of the blog page. Enjoy!

Guest post

Nicola Joyce invited me to write a guest post for her blog about open water swimming - you can see what I wrote here.

Strength and conditioning

I went to a session on Strength and Conditioning last night, run by Mark Jarvis of MMJ Training, who provides S&C coaching to elite athletes preparing for the Olympics, as well as working on a small group and one-to-one basis with more normal mortals. He gave a free seminar and taster session to members the triathlon club to explain the virtues of S&C in terms of performance and injury prevention. He was fantastic - he really knows his stuff, as well as being funny and extraordinarily positive in the face of our manifold inadequacies. He had us doing some of the basic movements and tests that expose inefficiencies, structural problems and "energy leaks", and was clearly itching to dive in and start coaching as we tilted, over-compensated, collapsed and wobbled our way through the exercises. In many ways, it was a sobering experience in that I feel really strong bodily a lot of the time, and especially when I'm training, but at the same time, was unable to do many of the simplest-looking movements that he set us. That feeling of capacity and control that comes from training can be very deceptive. But it was a very thought-provoking lesson in rethinking what good training is, and where our time might be best spent. I'm not sure how to mobilise this in terms of my training practice yet, but many thanks to Mark for a really great evening.

swimming documentary

Have a listen to this gorgeous documentary about the swimmers at Sandycove. It's made by Kevin Keane, and is a beautiful evocation of the joys of sea swimming, as well as a very particular celebration of the community at Sandycove and their swimming achievements.

Cold Water Swim Champs pictures

There's some great pictures from the Cold Water Swimming Championships in the Guardian today - what fun... it does all look a bit chilly though.