Tri-ing to catch a break

Its been a while since I last blogged, and the last you heard I was having a moan about my foot not being in good condition. Well I'm glad to say that cleared up and I was able to train on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. That's not to say that the training went particularly well.

Friday was a bit of a shock to the system ... I got into the pool and wasn't comfortable at all. A 300m warm-up followed by a 750metre 'go' at the race distance. The time? A disappointing 19 minutes. Not good, considering that in open water that'll be slower. I followed that up with another 350m warm-down but I wasn't happy, not happy in the least.

Saturday added to the woe. I had little time on the spinner, and as it turned out little energy (I did my workout on Friday in the late evening and did my spinner workout early Saturday morning - early by my standards i.e. 8am - which is when the gym opens - but considering that we went to pick up my sister in law from the airport on Friday night and got to bed at 2:30am, it was early). I managed 35 minutes, at a struggle ... granted it was on a high gear and all that but still ... I once again wasn't happy. The race was then 10 weeks away and that just wasn't good enough.

There were however two things that cheered me up on Saturday - I finally picked up my wetsuit (at long last) and we spent the afternoon watching 7s rugby at Twickenham, which was a blast.

Sunday arrived and the splendid weather meant I was in a good mood going into my first session with my swim coach. The session didn't start off in the best of ways ... we got mixed up with the timing of the session so instead of starting at 10:30 (which I had arrived 10 minutes late for anyways - shame on me) the session actually started at 11:30. In the meantime, once I was suited, I did a 4oom warm-up, followed by 2 2oom sets. Only then did the coach turn up for our session. He critiqued my technique (I never knew there was such a nice way of saying "your swim technique is rubbish") and put me through some paces. After which he brought out the paddles and we ended up doing about another 1km or so (possibly a bit more) together with technique and breathing being the focus. I enjoyed the session thoroughly and could literally feel the improvement. By the end of it I had a slight tan, very tired arms and an almighty rash on my neck from the wetsuit (occupational hazards).

I got home and washed it down to find that the seam on the neck had split!!! I'd barely owned the damn thing for 24 hours!!!!! (I'm now posting it back to the retailer I got it from who were very nice (and quite shocked) when I told them what happened). And that was the sugnal that the 'fun' of my long weekend was to end.

We went for dinner to Clare's sister, spent a wonderful relaxed afternoon there and on the way back (and this had nothing to do with the food, the food was great) my stomach decided it hadn't played up in a while and that therefore it would. I spent the whole night tossing and turning in pain, unable to take deep breaths, unable to find a comfortable position and above all unable to sleep. At 4am I managed to doze off (after 5 hours of tossing and turning). Monday was a Bank holiday and to my mind an excellent chance to put in a training session ... but my stomach thought differently, the pain continued (and continues still, though much less). I think its a case of IBS ... yes I know, I seem to have an injury/illness log from hell, I'm perfectly aware of that. Basically no training yesterday, no training today (I would tonight but we have tickets to the theatre) and another week's training scheduled buggered royally. AND THE RACE IS ONLY 9.5 WEEKS AWAY!! I'm starting to panic. I'm hoping and praying I'll be in a position to train properly tomorrow morning. Pretty please with a cherry on top!!