Two Way Windermere - The Training Diaries - Part 1
Monday 26th November 2018 saw me start serious training for Two Way Windermere! I’m really pleased to be working with Mark Kleanthous again. I worked with Mark for a few sessions back in 2017 together with Rosie at Strive Fitness when I was training for Windermere One Way.
Back in the pool and swimming sets and drills was an awesome start to the week; I loved it – coming in at 3500m it was good to start to think technically about my swimming again and not just the steady up, down and repeat swim sessions that I often do; don’t get me wrong I love those too but change is good.
I chatted with Mark on Monday night and we covered topics including the swim sessions, strength sessions and pre and post swim nutrition. As ever I know that to succeed at this I need to be super organised so off I went and got my swim stuff together for the morning. I had said I was going to make some overnight oats for pre-swim nosh but I set off to bed having forgotten to do this – oh boy I wish I hadn’t.
Tuesday morning came round very quickly and I realised that I hadn’t made the oats so headed to the bagels and proceeded to slice one (don’t they normally come sliced??) – it was early I am not sure my eyes were completely open and as well as slicing the bagel I managed to take a fairly decent chunk out of a finger too! A shout out to Charlie (my husband) and he was there with the steri-strips and plasters and the ever so positive words of “I don’t think you’ll be swimming this morning!” Humph, I was far from amused with my own actions but I knew he was right – the last thing that split needed was an hour in chlorine – so I resigned myself to a gym session and headed off with a throbbing finger! By the time I had finished there was a very bloody plaster on said finger so the decision not to swim was the right one.
Woke up Wednesday to a whinging core, testament to the fact we may have been ignoring each other for some time and that as a non-kicker I have become over reliant on the pull buoy keeping me high in the water! All my programmes seen to date have a much-reduced relationship with my pull buoy and an increase in the use of my core and kick! Drills in the pool on Wednesday morning saw me as superman, chicken wings and my own variations of what I am sure Mark envisaged being beautifully engaged core and body parts working in unison! A quick check that my finger hadn’t dropped off and it was home for a second breakfast of scrambled eggs atop of a more carefully sliced bagel whilst reading Thursday’s session.
Thursday was both a winner and a loser of a day! First up I remembered just in time that my 50m pool swim session was going to take place in a 32m pool – some poolside maths to get as close as I could to the sets and a change of watch setting and in I get. All is going well until I bob up after a 400m set to find my programme missing! Who the heck would have wanted that but I hope they enjoyed it. I had a vague recollection of another 400m set and a cool down remaining and crack on regardless wondering how I could avoid this in future; its never happened before so this was a new challenge to me. On exiting the pool and heading to the car I start munching on a Maxi-Muscle ProMax Lean **** SALTED CARAMEL **** bar – absolute winner at 20g of protein and just 184 of those pesky calories and to top that it actually tasted amazing too.
That evening I’m chatting with Charlie about the programme conundrum and we come up with the idea of elastic banding it to my water bottle; I am sure I am not the first to do this, but I was mightily impressed with this solution. Bag packed, and programme secured I was all set for the morning which was a 3000m set with some pull-buoy and paddles action thrown in for good measure.
I’ve clocked up just over 10km of swimming this week and it has made me wonder – how many training kms will be swum to get me through the 34kms on the day??? Feel free to come over to Instagram @lakes_lidos_lanes and leave me your training kms best guess. Active rest for me this weekend and some weights in preparation for week 2! For those of you swimming this weekend have a great swim.
Liz x
