What a Perfect Day: Reflections on my 5k swim…

It really couldn’t have been a more beautiful day.  The sun was shining.  Shorts and t-shirt weather in mid-April, as the mercury hovered around 19C in the afternoon.  Bright blue skies.  And no ambient noise from airplanes as the volcano from Iceland has been spewing ash into the skies and there have been no flights since Thursday!  A perfect trifecta – sun, warmth, and quiet!

A perfect day for a 5k swim.

I woke up on Sunday morning not sure what I would feel like.  I usually have sore knees and feet following running.  Flex the feet. Legs over the side of the bed. Feet on floor.

Zero pain.  A bit of stiffness, but no pain.

A sign.

We started off with a very mellow morning.  I decided that I do not like afternoon starts.  I also do not like early early morning starts.  So I guess my ideal start time would be around 10am.  Anyway, we had to fill our time until about 1pm when we left home.  A nice brunch at 10am of oatmeal and fruit, and then relaxing at home and packing the bag for the pool.

We finally set off.

We cycled up to the pool.  It is about 2 miles from our house, and with the sun out and shorts and a t-shirt on, it was such a pleasant Sunday afternoon ride.  And on the ride I passed this building…

See the PR?  It was another sign.

Today would be a PR for me.  A personal record.  I had never swum more than 3800m in one session, and on Sunday, I would do 5000m.

We arrived at the pool.

The London Fields Lido is my favourite pool in London.  I have been told it the only open air 50m heated swimming pool in the whole of the United Kingdom.  And it is only 2 miles from my house.  I feel spoiled, especially on such a wonderful sunny day.

You aren’t allowed to take photos of the Lido on the inside – unless you get special permission.  We snuck in a photo this winter, when we went on the first Saturday of January with ice lining the poolside.  Sunday was a totally different scene.  People were everywhere along the poolside, on beach towels.  A sign was up – Welcome to Hoxton Beach.  It was like summertime magic.

I got special permission to take a quick photo of the Swimathon banners hanging above the pool, and the clear blue skies.

Like I said: a perfect day… Blue skies and sunshine, warm weather, and no plane sounds (thanks to Iceland for the last one)… 

But…  What would the swim be like?

I was nervous about this swim… Probably front of mind were worries about cramping.  I had an epic cramp at 3500m during my 3800m swim about a month ago.  So along with my coach I formulated the plan of having two bottles poolside – a bottle of electrolyte water (I *love* my Nuun tablets) and a bottle of sports drink (I wanted Powerade but settled for Lucozade Sport – just a little sugar poolside was the aim).  I decided that every 500m I would take on a little electrolyte water.  This would degrade my time by up to 30 seconds per 500m but equally if I could avoid the cramping it would save me minutes of recovery.  I reckon I spent from 5 to 30 seconds per 500m.  So in all this probably amounted to about 3 minutes of stoppage time (which I have included in my overall time).

Hashing the lap count…  Friends of mine did the swimathon at another pool on Saturday and they had lap counters.  At the Lido, there was just one Lido worker who volunteered all weekend to administer the Swimathon.  So no lap counters.  The thing is, I stink at counting in the pool.  I just get lost in self talk and focusing on my stroke form, and lose track.  I borrowed a pen from the Lido-guy and embarked on my own lap counting.  When I stopped every 500m to take on water this gave me an opportunity to count in manageable pieces.  I hashed the count on my watch strap during each of these breaks.

10 x 500.  I still need to wash my watch band.  Thank goodness for hairspray which removes ball point pen ink!

Coach T suggested that I sign up for this swim to build mental toughness and confidence.  I hadn’t really thought of a time goal to go with it, but knew that I wanted to break the 2 hour mark for sure.  But I am aware that sometimes, post track sessions, I am shattered.  So time goal or no time goal, the aim was to be happy going out and doing my first ever attempt at 5000m.

On Saturday after we finished our track set, something possessed me to ask Terry for a time goal.  At the last second as he was about to pedal in one direction and us in the other, I asked – “Hey do I have a time goal for Saturday?” – he turned around and looked at me and said:

“Between 1 hour 30 and 1 hour 45.”

I know I am more than capable of doing 1 hour 45, and if I swim and push as hard as our Tuesday Club coached sessions (Terry coaches these and therefore knows what I can do) I know I could hit 1 hour 30.  But Sunday was not a coached session.  There wasn’t anyone in the lane to push me and there wasn’t anyone pool side to tell me to suck it up and pull harder.  I had a hard time knowing how hard to go, how to dole out my energy over the full 5000m, and I could feel the tightness in my calves when I hit the water so I had niggling concerns about cramps.

I didn’t push too hard.  It’s Monday and I can still lift my arms, which indicates to me that I could’ve pushed harder and hit a quicker time. 

I hit 1 hour 51 minutes.

I’m pretty pleased with the time.  And I now know that I can pretty much swim any distance – I’ve got that sorted out. My stamina is there – I would like to work on race speed now.

I was damn happy with my effort.  A first.  5k in the pool!

I celebrated with a ginger beer shandy.  In the warmth, under clear blue skies, and with bird song (not plane noise) overhead.

A perfect day.  A trifecta.

Thank you to everyone for all the support.  And special thanks to DH for doing this with me.  Another great day out for for Team DDH!

Once again, Twitter proved to be an amazing support system and the messages from other swimathoners like steved25, pgribbon, austinslide, fitvic, and M20mermaid made me feel part of a much bigger thing.  Also getting messages from lcollette who has swum the English channel kept me confident.  And muus from Israel who tempts me with other long swims (swim the Sea of Galilea anyone – if only it wasn’t the same day as my A race this season!)…  And my now “in real life” friends who I first met on Twitter – cleopompom, kemptonslim, kharamills…  And the emails about pre-race prep from my college friend Elizabeth which prompted me to remember to bring the post swim food (thank you so much Elizabeth – I oped for real food rather than my plan of Sport Beans, and the banana at the end was vital!!)…  This is only a drop in the bucket when it comes to thanking all the folks who sent me messages of support – absolutely everyone’s thoughts and support meant so much to me.

Here’s my medal. 

It was hard to get this photo – the medal is good at reflecting the light! But I think you can make out the 5k.  Boy I’m proud of that.

You can see on the medal that the swimathon was held for the benefit of Marie Curie Cancer Care.  I have a donation site if you would like to support their work.

And as usual, this year I am supporting the CMTA STAR initiative to find a cure for CMT1A – the nerve condition which I have.  My efforts are for those with CMT who are not able to swim bike or run – each stroke, pedal and step will hopefully bring us all closer to treatment for this unpredictable disease.  If you would like to support me in my efforts to find a cure, you can do so via the CMTA giving pages I have here.

Added on 20 April 2010:

I thought all night about who I may have forgotten on my thank you list – and one name was a glaring omission. 

In June 2007 I rotationally dislocated my left elbow, shredding almost every ligament except for one.  The elbow is a tricky joint, and there are only 5 surgeons in the UK who are capable of performing a reconstruction.  Thanks to the genius of Simon Lambert my elbow was restabilised using a procedure quite similar in nature to a knee ACL operation.  I don’t think I realised how much I bilaterally used my arms until my injury, and following surgery in some ways my left arm is even better than my right.  And clearly it is strong. 

Good surgeons can perform miracles, and Simon Lambert is amongst the best.  Thank you Simon for helping me to reach this huge milestone.