stepping up

Sorry to anyone who actually reads this for my absence in the past week or so but my time to write has been limited.

This post is all about good news tho. On the fundraising front things have been going really well. Things have slowed down after an initial surge but i am really happy with how things are coming along. i now feel confident (as long as people continue to be generous) that i will comfortably make my total. I'm also now in the process of trying to organise my jelly wrestling event which, should i be able to get some people together, should be great.

On the training front things have been going really well. Despite a severe lack of sleep due to the lovely Eva (1yo yesterday!) i have been working really hard and achieving some great results. I was feeling down last week as the head coach told me the lane i was in was right despite the fact the other guys in it could not even complete the drills we were given (we are grouped by skill level in separate lanes). after that i decided to show it was not good for me and made sure i kept up with the level of intensity with the next lane up. After that he approached me and told me i needed to definitely go up a lane and said i was progressing really well. I also put myself into the stronger group at the beach and haven't been the slowest in it. it's actually been really good as the intensity is much higher and I'm finding the challenge really rewarding. On Saturday we swam probably a little over 2ks but with a couple of stops in between. it felt great and was a real confidence booster for the big 2.7.

I've also been trying to swim in the ocean every day and have been largely successful. it's becoming quite addictive, not only the exercise element but the beauty of being immersed in the water for half an hour or so watching the fish or even just the ripples of the sand at the bottom of the water. i occasionally pop my head up and think 'crap I'm in the middle of nowhere' and also when it's a little murky have some irrational thoughts about sharks but on the whole it's an awesome experience.

So for the week ahead I'll be trying to swim as much as possible and hope (finances and time allowing) to do the bilgola big swim. although it is only a 1.5k race it will be hard as there is no headland and no benefit of rips. it will also be good practice for swimming in race conditions.

I'll let you know how it goes.