It's been a difficult month or so, with more work than I had planned for and a lot of disruption to my already tightly packed schedule of eating, sleeping, working and swimming in constant rotation. It turns out that training for long swims while on research leave (as I was for my English Channel swim) and training with a full teaching workload, a big admin job and an endlessly unwritten book are two very different beasts, and I have found myself wondering whether it's even realistic. It's certainly felt rather inhumane at times this term. I have even been thinking about pulling out of one or more of my swims for this year (crazy talk....but it's been a tough term!).
And then two things came along. Firstly - the sunshine! It's about time, but at last, Spring is well and truly in the air. I can almost hear the water warming up, and the nights of trudging to the pool in the cold and dark will soon be replaced with the open water evenings. And secondly, Emma France posted this video - a slide show she made for the CS&PF dinner last Saturday (which I wasn't able to go to, but which looked like a good night). In many ways, training has been a bit of a chore lately than it should be - more like work than leisure. But this reminded me of the reasons to stick with it. Only 5 weeks to the Cabrera Channel, with plenty more fun to come.
Monday, 4 March 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
The things we don't discuss...
I've written quite a bit recently about things that get discussed a lot within the swimming community; for example, what counts as 'real' swimming is an old chestnut, as is the complicated topic of fat. But I've also been thinking about what we don't talk about....or at least, what gets talked about very quietly among female swimmers, but rarely in public: menstruation.
A couple of years ago, I was on one of the Swimtrek long-distance training camps, and we were having some (important) fun during the infamous "3 P's" seminar, during which we discussed the practical necessities of managing bodily functions (Piss, Pooh and Puke). It was a graphic and light-hearted discussion that recognised the important reality that many swims founder on the handling of these most basic of bodily functions. As the seminar drew to a close, a female swimmer (one of only a handful in a largely male group) asked: "What about periods?" You could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a knife; eyes fell to the floor; people squirmed uncomfortably. The seminar leader rose splendidly to the occasion, and some of the women in the room chipped in with experience and advice. A joke about sharks scenting blood lightened the mood and all was well; and in future camps, the seminar morphed into "the 4 P's" to incorporate this important bodily aspect of swimming.
But I've never forgotten that instant collective reaction in the room to the female swimmer's question - one of mixed disgust and embarrassment at the unexpected airing of a topic that women are expected (and expect each other) to keep to themselves. There's nothing particular to swimming about this - after all, the advertising of what are euphemistically called "feminine hygiene products" is based entirely on the extent to which the product hides menstruation (rendered blue, and never red, in product demonstrations), enabling women to dance around in tight white trousers to their hearts' content. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, a lot of the (quiet) talk among women on the issue of menstruation and swimming is also about concealment - for example, how to cope with it while changing on a public beach, especially given the fairly widely accepted wisdom that it is not a healthy practice to wear products like tampons during long swims.
But I think that there are a wider set of discussions that I certainly know I would appreciate being aired more publicly about the ways in which menstruation both affects, and is affected by, swimming - both positive and negatively. I suffer from a gynaecological disorder called endometriosis which can cause severe pain, as well as a hormonal imbalance that makes my cycle at times extremely unpredictable. I am unwilling to take any hormonal medications (including those that many use to postpone menstruation in order to avoid a big swim or other important event); nor, by the way, did I opt to follow the advice of my socially-inept consultant who suggested that I should have a baby to "straighten things out for a bit". Instead, I manage my health through a series of dietary and herbal therapies, plus over-the-counter painkillers when necessary. But even though I experience the very occasional days when pain prevents me from swimming (and hope upon hope that this never coincides with a big swim day), I have also noticed a significant pattern of improvement in the months following a big swim. Indeed, after each of my long swims, I have experienced 4-6 months of predictable and pain free menstruation. Even my hardest training doesn't have the same effect - only the very long swims. Periods are often seen as an obstacle to swimming or at best, a nuisance, but it is perhaps not surprising that such an intense bodily experience as a long swim will impact upon the body's hormonal and metabolic functions in all kinds of unpredictable and potentially positive ways.
More recently for me, the early stages of the menopause have begun to enter the picture (and the menopause is, of course, another aspect of women's bodies that tends to be discussed negatively or not at all). With it, I noticed last summer a new unpredictability in my tolerance for cold, and I've since met a couple of other women who, anecdotally, reported a similar problem. In my case, this has proved amenable to herbal interventions for now, but I have no idea how this will manifest itself as the process of bodily change continues...or indeed, how my swimming will impact upon that process.
In short, then, menstruating is just one part of (some) women's lives, but one which tends to be bathed in secrecy and silence (in public settings, at least). Indeed, I have been stewing on this post for a while, unsure about whether to raise the topic at all or how comfortable I was discussing my own body publicly in this context. Nevertheless, I regularly receive queries from female swimmers on this issue, many of whom are wary of raising those questions in more male-dominated public spaces and forums, and it is clear that there is enormous variation in the ways that menstruation both affects, and is affected by, swimming.
I suspect that we have a lot to learn from each other about this.
A couple of years ago, I was on one of the Swimtrek long-distance training camps, and we were having some (important) fun during the infamous "3 P's" seminar, during which we discussed the practical necessities of managing bodily functions (Piss, Pooh and Puke). It was a graphic and light-hearted discussion that recognised the important reality that many swims founder on the handling of these most basic of bodily functions. As the seminar drew to a close, a female swimmer (one of only a handful in a largely male group) asked: "What about periods?" You could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a knife; eyes fell to the floor; people squirmed uncomfortably. The seminar leader rose splendidly to the occasion, and some of the women in the room chipped in with experience and advice. A joke about sharks scenting blood lightened the mood and all was well; and in future camps, the seminar morphed into "the 4 P's" to incorporate this important bodily aspect of swimming.
But I've never forgotten that instant collective reaction in the room to the female swimmer's question - one of mixed disgust and embarrassment at the unexpected airing of a topic that women are expected (and expect each other) to keep to themselves. There's nothing particular to swimming about this - after all, the advertising of what are euphemistically called "feminine hygiene products" is based entirely on the extent to which the product hides menstruation (rendered blue, and never red, in product demonstrations), enabling women to dance around in tight white trousers to their hearts' content. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, a lot of the (quiet) talk among women on the issue of menstruation and swimming is also about concealment - for example, how to cope with it while changing on a public beach, especially given the fairly widely accepted wisdom that it is not a healthy practice to wear products like tampons during long swims.
But I think that there are a wider set of discussions that I certainly know I would appreciate being aired more publicly about the ways in which menstruation both affects, and is affected by, swimming - both positive and negatively. I suffer from a gynaecological disorder called endometriosis which can cause severe pain, as well as a hormonal imbalance that makes my cycle at times extremely unpredictable. I am unwilling to take any hormonal medications (including those that many use to postpone menstruation in order to avoid a big swim or other important event); nor, by the way, did I opt to follow the advice of my socially-inept consultant who suggested that I should have a baby to "straighten things out for a bit". Instead, I manage my health through a series of dietary and herbal therapies, plus over-the-counter painkillers when necessary. But even though I experience the very occasional days when pain prevents me from swimming (and hope upon hope that this never coincides with a big swim day), I have also noticed a significant pattern of improvement in the months following a big swim. Indeed, after each of my long swims, I have experienced 4-6 months of predictable and pain free menstruation. Even my hardest training doesn't have the same effect - only the very long swims. Periods are often seen as an obstacle to swimming or at best, a nuisance, but it is perhaps not surprising that such an intense bodily experience as a long swim will impact upon the body's hormonal and metabolic functions in all kinds of unpredictable and potentially positive ways.
More recently for me, the early stages of the menopause have begun to enter the picture (and the menopause is, of course, another aspect of women's bodies that tends to be discussed negatively or not at all). With it, I noticed last summer a new unpredictability in my tolerance for cold, and I've since met a couple of other women who, anecdotally, reported a similar problem. In my case, this has proved amenable to herbal interventions for now, but I have no idea how this will manifest itself as the process of bodily change continues...or indeed, how my swimming will impact upon that process.
In short, then, menstruating is just one part of (some) women's lives, but one which tends to be bathed in secrecy and silence (in public settings, at least). Indeed, I have been stewing on this post for a while, unsure about whether to raise the topic at all or how comfortable I was discussing my own body publicly in this context. Nevertheless, I regularly receive queries from female swimmers on this issue, many of whom are wary of raising those questions in more male-dominated public spaces and forums, and it is clear that there is enormous variation in the ways that menstruation both affects, and is affected by, swimming.
I suspect that we have a lot to learn from each other about this.
Friday, 8 February 2013
What I'd like to be doing right now....
It's been a bit of a week. Work has been busy and more than a little frustrating; the weather has been various versions of wet and cold; and I've been ill - nothing serious, but an ongoing, niggly viral thing that's left me wiped out and kept me out of the pool. All work and no play.
And in response, I've developed what I can only describe as a craving for a long, sea swim. I can think of nothing more delicious than a day of nothing but swimming in warm, clear water. I don't mean just an hour's dip and paddle, but a good 6 hours or more - enough time to hit that zoned-out state that is the perfect gift of the long swim.
That's what I'd like to be doing right now.
And in response, I've developed what I can only describe as a craving for a long, sea swim. I can think of nothing more delicious than a day of nothing but swimming in warm, clear water. I don't mean just an hour's dip and paddle, but a good 6 hours or more - enough time to hit that zoned-out state that is the perfect gift of the long swim.
That's what I'd like to be doing right now.
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Has anyone seen the 'real' swimmers?
The marathon swimming community has been having one of its periodical kerfuffles over 'real' swimming and its public representations.
It started with some media reports about US swimmer, Brittany King, who completed an English Channel swim in 2012 with the aid of a wetsuit and fins. An article in Shape magazine set out King's version of the story - she was aiming to swim it by usual Channel rules with the CSA, but suffered from the cold and finished the swim in a wetsuit. "Meet the Woman who Swam the English Channel", declared the headline - a red rag to a bull for the Channel swimming community, for whom 'swimming the English Channel' has a very specific meaning. Some corrections were added by Nick Adams in the comments section of the article: he points out that she swam with the CS&PF rather than the CSA; and that she was also wearing fins. Other comments protested the misleading nature of the article, and the debate was taken up vociferously in the marathon swimmers' forums, ranging across issues of misrepresentation in swimming, the boundaries of authenticity in marathon swimming, and even the old chestnut, CSA / CS&PF relations.
In many ways, I think that these debates display both the best and the worst of marathon swimming. They show the absolute passion of the sport and the desire for the honest representation of it. But I also think that the desire to preserve the 'specialness' of non-wetsuit marathon swimming can make the community (a) take a small number of slightly self-deluded individuals too seriously (see also my earlier post on Diana Nyad), and (b) force people into an unnecessarily derisive stance regarding other kinds of swimming.
In the debates that followed the reports of King's swim, a great deal of concern was expressed about the need to educate the media and the public about what 'real' Channel swimming is. While I think it's absolutely right to correct blatant factual errors in media reports, it's also important to think about the media product and its audience. Shape magazine is a fluffy bit of nonsense whose primary motive is to teach women that their bodies are never good enough and that appearance should be privileged over performance or well-being. If Channel swimming needs defending as a sport (which I don't think it does - it seems to be doing fine), then I doubt that this kind of superficial, misogynistic tat poses much of a threat.
And to be honest, I imagine that for most people not involved with the sport, the difference between a wetsuit and a non-wetsuit swim is utterly irrelevant and most would have no difficulty in seeing a wetsuit Channel swim as a Channel swim. In this sense, and at the risk of igniting all kinds of fury, I suspect that the struggle for definition that is going on within Channel swimming does not even register as a dividing line for most outside of marathon swimming - not because they need to be educated about the sport, but because the debate is too arcane to be important. These internal authenticity disputes characterise almost all specialist activities. Did you know that people who pick mushrooms with the goal of trying to identify and classify them look down on people who pick them to eat them? Or that people who collect dolls for display look down on people who allow children to play with collectable dolls? Or that the quilt-making world is riven between those who hand-sew and those who use machines? (and that the cat has now been set among the pigeons by not knowing how to classify quilts made by machines that have a setting that looks just like hand-sewing). These are all fairly arcane debates (from outside) that are hotly fought from within, and I imagine to most of those outside of swimming, the wetsuit / non-wetsuit debate appears very similar. And I think that Brittany King understands this perfectly...as much as she understands that the use of fins is a completely different kettle of fish in terms of popular perception, which is presumably why this aspect of her swim is never mentioned in her media articles while the wetsuit is.
I have very little time for people who fudge or lie about their swims: it's daft and pointless. But I also baulk at any attempts to police who should be allowed to swim where and how, or who should be able to call themselves what. This is firstly because it's only swimming and I'm just not clear what is at stake here that would warrant such an exclusive approach. Someone swimming the Channel in a wetsuit in no way stops me from swimming it without a wetsuit. And secondly, I think that the snootiness about wetsuit swimming that is evident in the marathon swimming community is utterly (but inadvertently) complicit in the mis-representations that crop up from time to time. If you treat wetsuit swimming as something shameful that has to be 'confessed' and derided as a non-achievement, then you make it a million times harder not only for wetsuit swimmers to be clear about the conditions of their swims, but also to take pleasure in what they have done. And especially this latter just seems a shame and quite unnecessary.
It started with some media reports about US swimmer, Brittany King, who completed an English Channel swim in 2012 with the aid of a wetsuit and fins. An article in Shape magazine set out King's version of the story - she was aiming to swim it by usual Channel rules with the CSA, but suffered from the cold and finished the swim in a wetsuit. "Meet the Woman who Swam the English Channel", declared the headline - a red rag to a bull for the Channel swimming community, for whom 'swimming the English Channel' has a very specific meaning. Some corrections were added by Nick Adams in the comments section of the article: he points out that she swam with the CS&PF rather than the CSA; and that she was also wearing fins. Other comments protested the misleading nature of the article, and the debate was taken up vociferously in the marathon swimmers' forums, ranging across issues of misrepresentation in swimming, the boundaries of authenticity in marathon swimming, and even the old chestnut, CSA / CS&PF relations.
In many ways, I think that these debates display both the best and the worst of marathon swimming. They show the absolute passion of the sport and the desire for the honest representation of it. But I also think that the desire to preserve the 'specialness' of non-wetsuit marathon swimming can make the community (a) take a small number of slightly self-deluded individuals too seriously (see also my earlier post on Diana Nyad), and (b) force people into an unnecessarily derisive stance regarding other kinds of swimming.
In the debates that followed the reports of King's swim, a great deal of concern was expressed about the need to educate the media and the public about what 'real' Channel swimming is. While I think it's absolutely right to correct blatant factual errors in media reports, it's also important to think about the media product and its audience. Shape magazine is a fluffy bit of nonsense whose primary motive is to teach women that their bodies are never good enough and that appearance should be privileged over performance or well-being. If Channel swimming needs defending as a sport (which I don't think it does - it seems to be doing fine), then I doubt that this kind of superficial, misogynistic tat poses much of a threat.
And to be honest, I imagine that for most people not involved with the sport, the difference between a wetsuit and a non-wetsuit swim is utterly irrelevant and most would have no difficulty in seeing a wetsuit Channel swim as a Channel swim. In this sense, and at the risk of igniting all kinds of fury, I suspect that the struggle for definition that is going on within Channel swimming does not even register as a dividing line for most outside of marathon swimming - not because they need to be educated about the sport, but because the debate is too arcane to be important. These internal authenticity disputes characterise almost all specialist activities. Did you know that people who pick mushrooms with the goal of trying to identify and classify them look down on people who pick them to eat them? Or that people who collect dolls for display look down on people who allow children to play with collectable dolls? Or that the quilt-making world is riven between those who hand-sew and those who use machines? (and that the cat has now been set among the pigeons by not knowing how to classify quilts made by machines that have a setting that looks just like hand-sewing). These are all fairly arcane debates (from outside) that are hotly fought from within, and I imagine to most of those outside of swimming, the wetsuit / non-wetsuit debate appears very similar. And I think that Brittany King understands this perfectly...as much as she understands that the use of fins is a completely different kettle of fish in terms of popular perception, which is presumably why this aspect of her swim is never mentioned in her media articles while the wetsuit is.
I have very little time for people who fudge or lie about their swims: it's daft and pointless. But I also baulk at any attempts to police who should be allowed to swim where and how, or who should be able to call themselves what. This is firstly because it's only swimming and I'm just not clear what is at stake here that would warrant such an exclusive approach. Someone swimming the Channel in a wetsuit in no way stops me from swimming it without a wetsuit. And secondly, I think that the snootiness about wetsuit swimming that is evident in the marathon swimming community is utterly (but inadvertently) complicit in the mis-representations that crop up from time to time. If you treat wetsuit swimming as something shameful that has to be 'confessed' and derided as a non-achievement, then you make it a million times harder not only for wetsuit swimmers to be clear about the conditions of their swims, but also to take pleasure in what they have done. And especially this latter just seems a shame and quite unnecessary.
Friday, 25 January 2013
Look what I got today...
I've been meaning to do this for ages, but I finally got round to putting an order in for some print copies of the "Becoming a Channel Swimmer" magazine that I published online last September. And today, a big boxful of them arrived, and I think they're rather handsome.
If you'd like a free copy (or more than one), get in touch by e-mail (details on my research website) with an address and I'll drop it in the post. International is fine too.
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Birthday 200's
I'm not a big fan of banging out long pool swims. I prefer to save the longer swims for the outdoors, not least because swimming pools tend to turn me into a carnival of sneezing and snuffling for hours afterwards, and the longer I'm in, the worse it is. But while I generally hover around the 3-6km mark for my pool training, focusing on pace and technique rather than distance, on my birthday, I like to do my 'birthday 200's' session. And so today, in advance of my 45th birthday next Wednesday, I pitched up at the pool to celebrate my arrival at my 40's midpoint by swimming 45 x 200m.
The 'birthday 200's' has become something of a benchmark swim for me, and I am happy to report that things are looking quite promising. Two years ago (43 x 200m - the birthday between my Channel and Catalina swims), I started the set with a turnaround time of 3.45 / 200m, but couldn't sustain it after the first 3km, and dropped it back to 4 mins, which was fine for the rest of the set. So this time, I started with a turnaround time of 3.45, but soon realised that this was giving me way too long a rest period, so dropped it down to 3.40, and then, by the end of the first 2km, down to 3.30, where it stayed for the rest of the set (finishing in 3.20 + 10 secs of rest). I mixed it up with a bit of pull, plus some pace variations / builds / progressive sets to keep it interesting. And then I did the final 1km as a solid swim with the Tempo Trainer set to 1.40/100m, and cruised in comfortably to finish. I had a few brief breaks to run to the toilets, grab a drink or munch a jelly baby, but apart from that, it was pretty constant from start to finish.
By the standards of a lot of the speedier swimmers out there, this is peanuts, but I'm pretty chuffed, and feel like all that technique work I did last year is really paying dividends now. I'm not really any fitter or stronger now than I was this time two years ago (although the 90km I did over Christmas in Lanzarote has probably helped in terms of general swim conditioning). But I am really starting to feel the benefit of all of the drilling and stroke correction, and am quite encouraged.
I've never been particularly bothered about my age, or the ageing process, and while I feel slightly surprised that I'm nearly 45, I don't really mind. But I do feel faintly pleased that while the conventional expectations of especially women's middle-aged bodies are primarily focused on their anticipated decline, my swimming is still improving. This is mostly, of course, because I started open water swimming with so much room for improvement, but still...
And having said that, I fully plan to spend the rest of the evening engaging in the age-appropriate activity of nodding off while reading in the armchair in front of a roaring fire.
The 'birthday 200's' has become something of a benchmark swim for me, and I am happy to report that things are looking quite promising. Two years ago (43 x 200m - the birthday between my Channel and Catalina swims), I started the set with a turnaround time of 3.45 / 200m, but couldn't sustain it after the first 3km, and dropped it back to 4 mins, which was fine for the rest of the set. So this time, I started with a turnaround time of 3.45, but soon realised that this was giving me way too long a rest period, so dropped it down to 3.40, and then, by the end of the first 2km, down to 3.30, where it stayed for the rest of the set (finishing in 3.20 + 10 secs of rest). I mixed it up with a bit of pull, plus some pace variations / builds / progressive sets to keep it interesting. And then I did the final 1km as a solid swim with the Tempo Trainer set to 1.40/100m, and cruised in comfortably to finish. I had a few brief breaks to run to the toilets, grab a drink or munch a jelly baby, but apart from that, it was pretty constant from start to finish.
By the standards of a lot of the speedier swimmers out there, this is peanuts, but I'm pretty chuffed, and feel like all that technique work I did last year is really paying dividends now. I'm not really any fitter or stronger now than I was this time two years ago (although the 90km I did over Christmas in Lanzarote has probably helped in terms of general swim conditioning). But I am really starting to feel the benefit of all of the drilling and stroke correction, and am quite encouraged.
I've never been particularly bothered about my age, or the ageing process, and while I feel slightly surprised that I'm nearly 45, I don't really mind. But I do feel faintly pleased that while the conventional expectations of especially women's middle-aged bodies are primarily focused on their anticipated decline, my swimming is still improving. This is mostly, of course, because I started open water swimming with so much room for improvement, but still...
And having said that, I fully plan to spend the rest of the evening engaging in the age-appropriate activity of nodding off while reading in the armchair in front of a roaring fire.
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Let the year begin....
At the end of last term, I think I was about as tired as I have been. I'd had a crazy few months of work, plus a big change for me and P as he started his new job in Leeds, and with training on top of all this, I was just about at the end of my tether by mid-December. But thankfully, in the middle of summer, foreseeing this very moment, we had booked a 10-day Christmas trip to Lanzarote for some proper R&R, and on 16th December, off we flew with a case full of swimming kit and a Kindle full of books and by that evening, we were sipping a G&T and watching the sunset in the delightful resort of Playa Blanca.
We soon slipped into a deeply pleasurable routine. We picked the resort for its quietness - it's basically populated by elderly Germans and young couples with small babies, with a couple of small sandy beaches, low levels of wind compared to some other parts of the island and plenty of cafes to while away the hours of almost constant sunshine, with temperature staying consistently between 20-25 degrees throughout. And then there is the swimming:
Every morning, I would swim back and forth along this route for two or three hours a day - a one-mile round trip in gloriously benign waters, completely protected from the various boat / ferry / jet-ski / powerboat traffic which is kept further off-shore by an intermittent buoy-line. The water is clear, relatively calm and teeming with fish, and although my forays back and forth between the bays attracted a certain amount of curious pointing from the promenade that connects the two beaches, I was left splendidly alone to swim to my heart's content. It was hardly hard training - I rarely mustered anything more dramatic than a sedate paddle, and the conditions were so benign that it barely counts as sea swimming. But still, it got some miles in my shoulders and left me intoxicated with the pleasure of it all.
And then we sat around and read, and I gobbled up book after book after book, ranging from biographies of George Mallory and of Robert Scott, a history of TB, fiction (Rose Tremain, Hilary Mantel, Pat Barker), a book about the strategic incarceration of troublesome family members in lunatic asylums in the 19th century, and ethnographies of mushrooming, women who collect porcelain dolls, and prostitution (that's three different studies, by the way, not one complicated and unlikely one).
The end result is that on Boxing Day, having enjoyed our traditional Christmas dinner the day before of beans on toast (we don't really 'do' Christmas...), we reluctantly made our way back to the UK, replete with swimming and reading, and utterly rested. Not the most exciting of holidays by many standards (although we did have a fabulous day out visiting volcanoes and volcanic caves), but SO appreciated.
Term is about to start and I expect everything will start to gallop out of control again shortly, but I feel like a different person compared to a month ago. I've got an exciting swimming year ahead, but I'm in good shape and feeling pretty optimistic about it all at the moment. Oh....and there's a book to write, which is exciting and terrifying in fairly equal proportions.
Let the year begin...
We soon slipped into a deeply pleasurable routine. We picked the resort for its quietness - it's basically populated by elderly Germans and young couples with small babies, with a couple of small sandy beaches, low levels of wind compared to some other parts of the island and plenty of cafes to while away the hours of almost constant sunshine, with temperature staying consistently between 20-25 degrees throughout. And then there is the swimming:
Every morning, I would swim back and forth along this route for two or three hours a day - a one-mile round trip in gloriously benign waters, completely protected from the various boat / ferry / jet-ski / powerboat traffic which is kept further off-shore by an intermittent buoy-line. The water is clear, relatively calm and teeming with fish, and although my forays back and forth between the bays attracted a certain amount of curious pointing from the promenade that connects the two beaches, I was left splendidly alone to swim to my heart's content. It was hardly hard training - I rarely mustered anything more dramatic than a sedate paddle, and the conditions were so benign that it barely counts as sea swimming. But still, it got some miles in my shoulders and left me intoxicated with the pleasure of it all.
And then we sat around and read, and I gobbled up book after book after book, ranging from biographies of George Mallory and of Robert Scott, a history of TB, fiction (Rose Tremain, Hilary Mantel, Pat Barker), a book about the strategic incarceration of troublesome family members in lunatic asylums in the 19th century, and ethnographies of mushrooming, women who collect porcelain dolls, and prostitution (that's three different studies, by the way, not one complicated and unlikely one).
The end result is that on Boxing Day, having enjoyed our traditional Christmas dinner the day before of beans on toast (we don't really 'do' Christmas...), we reluctantly made our way back to the UK, replete with swimming and reading, and utterly rested. Not the most exciting of holidays by many standards (although we did have a fabulous day out visiting volcanoes and volcanic caves), but SO appreciated.
Term is about to start and I expect everything will start to gallop out of control again shortly, but I feel like a different person compared to a month ago. I've got an exciting swimming year ahead, but I'm in good shape and feeling pretty optimistic about it all at the moment. Oh....and there's a book to write, which is exciting and terrifying in fairly equal proportions.
Let the year begin...
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