Wales!

Last weekend we were in Wales (Tenby) for Becks and Emma's wedding. Tenby is a beautiful place, but my god it's a long drive from Wandsworth. The wedding itself was a wonderful affair, with lots of fun had by all. You might think that weddings don't lend themselves to Channel training, but at least in this instance, you'd be wrong - given that a large percentage of the guests were triathletes, no-one raised an eyebrow about me going swimming in the sea. They did raise eyebrows about me doing it without the standard issue Orca wetsuit though.


Freda had told me not to do more than 30mins in any one swim in Wales, and as everyone in the Channel fraternity will tell you, you have to do what Freda says! (Freda is Alison Streeter's mother, and runs the beach at Dover for Channel hopefuls - she has incredible experience acclimatising swimmers and what Freda says goes. No ifs, no buts, no messing.) On Friday I had every intention of getting two swims in, but the first was in very rough seas, high winds and driving rain, so I called it quits at that. On Saturday, though, the weather was much better and I managed two sessions of half an hour each, with Matt keeping an eye on me from the beach. According to the Pembroke buoy the temperature was much the same as Dover Harbour, but it felt a little colder - whether that was psychological or the wind chill factor I don't know.


Only 9 or so weeks to go now. It feels like a very short time to get from swimming 45mins or so in the sea up to swimming 6 hours plus for the qualifying swim, but I have faith in Freda getting me there. I wouldn't dare think otherwise.