Long Course Weekend is coming and a New Nemesis!

This weekend it is the Long Course Weekend (LCW) in Tenby and according to the timer on their website, it starts in 1 Day 5 Hours 56 Minutes and 11seconds ,sorry 10 seconds ,sorry 9 seconds.

Splashing about in the Reservoir

Pool training is all well and good, especially when you live in the North of England but shockingly most Olympic distance and up races don't take place in a pool. They're open water based and in affront to common sense, they aren't willing to put pool sides to kick off from every 25 or 50 metres. So although my pool training was going well, I realised I needed some proper time in water where I can't see the bottom.  So how and where do I go about doing that? After a quick google I knew exactly where.

Oh No, H20!

Which one is me? Which is Dan?

So far I haven't covered swimming very much on this blog and that's because I haven't done any yet. I'm not sure if its the cold weather or the fact I can't find practically indecent racing shorts or some other reason but I just haven't been yet.

I love swimming, although I'm not particularly good at it. Its this cut off of the 3 disciplines at Ironman Wales that I'm most concerned about. You need to be on your 2nd lap after 1hr15 minutes. Each lap is 1.9k, (then a K run in between, sheer lunacy). So the 1st lap needs to be done at a speed of 25.33 metres a minute. Now I put it like that, its not too bad. I think last time I checked I was doing about 25 metres in about 35 seconds, without too much of a push. And its been so long I've no idea what stroke that is with. I tend to favour Breaststroke but then Crawl does seem more sensible for the whole endeavour.

I'm tempted to start having lessons like Dan but the inflexibilty. I also need to get some experience in open water and especially sea swimming. So if anyone knows of any good places to swim in the sea or sea based races (Preferably somewhere near very landlocked Sheffield), let me know in the comments.

The swim is where I'm planning to use the arms most. Everything will be involved in every part of the race but my arms will be taking less of a battering on the cycle and run so let's use them as much as possible in the swim.

I am every so slightly terrified of the mass wave start, I've visions of it degenerating into this

Okay prehaps not that bad, but I have heard horror stories of getting a good clonk from another over enthusiastic competitor. So the plan is to stay wide, and closeish to the back. Anytime lost can be more easily made up on a later discipline.

Hopefully after these next two half marathons, I'll find my fish legs again. Also I still need to try out my Waterproof MP3 player and get it to stay in my ears.