Earlier this year a kayaking friend suggested entering the Dart 10k swim, on the basis that we’d swum a lot of the Dart, having fallen out of our boats on various rapids. I thought that this sounded to be a good idea and so entered. She didn’t, she was joking.
I like swimming and challenges so I decided to see this through. Evenings have been spent in the pool and at a former shipping basin of the Thames. As well as many swimming pools I’ve swim in Lake Michigan, Lake Tegid, the Thames, a small lake off the garden of a B&B in Belgium and Dutch waterways. Distances have varied. My first outdoor swim was in Arizona and Europe hasn’t quite matched it temperature wise.
On holiday I was joined by a 13 year old who set her alarm so she could come swim when the pool opened at 5.45am and she stayed with me for 3.2km!
I’ve got to know different people from work through swimming and discussing Radio 4 comedy and I’ve also got to know that if I try and swim too much for too long in training I break myself, like totally break.
One theory is that with MS the body has to work much harder to carry messages around so you get tireder quicker and when you do its not as simple to reboot. It can put you into a bit of a spiral in that the tiredness can run you into a relapse and then you get tireder….
Some weeks training has been a real struggle and got me close to giving up and taking a day off sick, but I haven’t. Some weeks I’ve wanted to jack it in and take up something dry.
Rupturing a tendon in my ankle slowed things down as has the fatigue after a couple of heavy weeks training. I’d have liked to have done more long swims (6km plus) to prepare and it sounds a bit weak to say I just couldn’t but it just stopped me functioning.
Anyway we are where we are and the safety briefing starts at 10.55 this morning so in my next blog you should get to hear how this goes.
DizzyBlonde 