Saturday was a big day for me. I headed out for my 6 hour swim, my qualifying swim. It was hard. I had it in my head to go for distance and not think about time. That didn’t last too long though. I did my first 5k in a little under 1:30, but the wind started kicking up and the water was pretty rough at one end. It’s like a conveyor belt sometimes, one way is super easy and the other way is awful. I was super hungry during my swim. When your training, you go two hours then you get a cup of drink with maxim, a carbo loaded energy drink, then every hour after you get a cup and a couple bites of food. I could probably eat a steak if someone gave me one. All the water polo training, I can stuff my face non-stop. I once remember we were eating pizza while doing shooting drills, anyway…. Back to the swim. I kept going, never got too tired or cold and felt great and finished up my swim. Qualified!
When I got home after eating my face off. I found out I was expected to do 7hrs today! (Sunday) So I ate non-stop, seriously all Saturday afternoon and night. Got a good nights sleep and got up to swim again. I really never felt good today though. I got cold early which surprised me cause I haven’t been cold, but I kept going, and later my shoulder (right) started hurting. I changed my stroke up where I wasn’t pulling across my body but doing a straight arm recovery instead, hoping to use less muscles in my shoulder, but it didn’t help enough. I ended up getting out after 5:30. I was pretty disappointed with that. I was supposed to do the 6/7 so I would have done a channel split. I’ll just have to pray for good conditions and a lot of strength on my actual crossing so that the 6/5.5 might be a split. I have been eating non-stop all day today and will go to Kingsdown again tomorrow. Kyle Davis, my water polo goalie gets into town tonight, so that will be great too. I’ll be taking him along to Kingsdown for his first taste of fun.
