Training like a pro with the body of an amateur....

The "challenge" of training in your 30s is that age has intervened and it is definitely not as easy as in your 20s. That and not doing any for the last few years makes it a long and painful road back to somewhere approaching "fit" (well that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it!)
Not like there's any time pressure either! (47days 20hrs and 6mins but who's counting!?)

Something that seems to happen more now is that my joints crunch, my muscles tear and it's not quite so easy to push to the next level without something breaking.

Luckily I met Angela or as we lovingly call her "The Thumbs of Pain" :-S

You go with "a little niggle" and she digs it out with a shovel or at least that's what it feels like during and after.

Meet my new best friends, Theraflex and Biofreeze:

Pretty sure I didn't meet them in my twenties, or maybe I just had a more symbiotic relationship with my trigger points.

At least my knowledge of muscle anatomy has greatly improved, mostly through pain association!

So far my iliotibial band has been replaced by one not made out of cast iron, my piriformis has been coaxed out of spasm by brute force and the use of a tennis ball, I have torn my sartorius, my adductor magnus and have a gracilis muscle you could probably still play Vivaldi's four seasons on without too much difficulty.

I know the exact location of my sartorius because after Angela had been near it there was a distinct line of thumb shaped bruises along it's length. I've also had my adductors stripped and the crystal deposits ground out of my hip flexors which was at least as painful as it sounds to the power of 10!

.......and bar the beating my right tricep got yesterday she's only really been near one leg!

Whoever said that "Swimming is a gentle sport" is clearly a compulsive liar!!!


Either I am a crap swimmer or my body is too old for this shizzle :-S

When Harry met Sally..........

Sometimes in life you feel like you're connected to a predetermined grand plan, there's a kind of sliding doors moment when a chance encounter happens or doesn't and your life is changed or isn't.......

Sometimes you facilitate that change, sometimes it kind of just happens.

If I hadn't persuaded our Rotary club to let me create the club Facebook page a few weeks before I would probably not have come across the Rotary Club of Grantham........

If I hadn't come across them I would not have come across Paul Wilson, life would have been simple! I would not have spent 3mths of my life trying to persuade other people into doing precisely what I was still trying to convince myself to do.

But who wants life to be simple?

Simple is boring, predictable, safe. If you don't make yourself a little bit uncomfortable sometimes you don't grow as a person.

You can stay in your comfort zone and probably stay dry.

"Want to be part of the world's biggest synchronised swimming event, help raise a few thousand pounds for End Polio and start the year off becoming a Guinness World Record Holder?"

"You only live once right?"

Thanks to the efforts of the guys at Grantham Rotary club, Rotary Global Swimarathon on Saturday 25th February involved over 4000 swimmers swimming at the same time in 23 countries across more than 14 time zones. Not to mention that at Knaresborough we were trying in vain to keep pace with a couple of GB Paralympians Claire Cashmore and David Ellis. Turns out I am almost half as fast as a Paralympian (Who's already done a 2hr cardio session!)

With the current record smashed nearly twice over it was a great way to start the year and our Great North Swim preparations. Maybe this thing is doable after all..........

Oh and Paul Wilson is clearly as mad as I am and has now signed up to GNS as well!!!

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

                                                   R.Frost

Oh my God WHAT have I done!!!???

Not being a complete stranger to slightly off the wall challenges I am very often the "go to" person for most people I know if activities require increased levels of insurance and carry a higher than average risk of loss of limb/life/marbles.........

"Want to jump off a perfectly good mountain at 6,460ft?"                       "Yeah no problem"
"Want to hurtle down a mountain on a high speed zip line?"                  "Yeah no problem"
"Want to do some grade 4 rapids?"                                                     "Yeah no problem"
"Want to do some vomit inducing ariel acrobatics with a parachute?"     "Yeah no problem"
"Want to go walking in the jungle with tigers and sloth bears, never mind the crocodiles, elephants and rhinos or the fact Lonely Planet has dedicated a specific paragraph to the reasons why this is not to be advised"......        *I've got a stick*  "Yeah what the hell"


Thanks Jessica:
"Want to swim a mile across a freezing cold fish infested lake?"......."errrrr Yeah no problem" :-S
"Hang on a minute......... You want me to do what???"


#1  Pretty sure I don't like deep dark water
#2  Very sure I don't like sharing my water with fish
#3  Not sure I can actually do a length never mind a mile
#4  Have reverted to using terms like "front crawl" and "lengths" like a muggle
#5  Pretty sure I don't want to be in a wetsuit much less a swimsuit in public, never mind on TV
#6  Very sure I don't want to be winched out of Lake Windermere live on Channel 4
#7  There's rats......
#8  There's no vaccine or reliable cure for Weils disease......
#9  There may or may not be eels.......
#10 My head/hair is too big for average sized swimming caps
#11 I am now over 30 and should clearly have grown out of this madness by now
#12 Not at all sure this is a good idea........
#13 Hopefully you're now convinced it's not a good idea.........
#14 Having 13 reasons is not a good omen!

"Dear Sarah Bosomworth,
 Your payment has been successfully authorised and you have now registered to take part in the British  Gas Great North Swim 1 Mile 2012."        

                                                                                 Wednesday, 2 November 2011, 13:29

Good so with no proper job I have now spent £40 I don't really have on registration for an event I have no money to pay to train for....... haven't been in a proper sized pool for at the very least 10 years, don't have a proper swimming costume, much less a wetsuit. Wetsuits cost HOW MUCH!!!? Good, great plan, one of your better ones, well done...........

Still at least I will get to stalk my childhood swimming hero:

You see even he's looking incredulous..........

Didn't you used to be a swimmer?

Ok so I used to swim a bit...... I swam a few races for sea cadets, I did a couple of swimming galas, I refused to go on holiday if there wasn't a pool and I have been known to do the odd 100 lap session before school. There might even be certificate based proof in the bottom of a draw somewhere.
This does not make me "a swimmer" ........not to mention it was 20 years ago!

"Swimmers" are part man part fish, they get up at what most sane people consider to be the middle of the night, swim endless laps (lengths to you muggles) while doing A level maths to work out their stroke rate/lapcount/efficiency, eat enough to require world food programme intervention and have abs you could do your washing on.........
I will categorically NEVER be a member of the "6am club" (besides most "swimmers" consider this a lie in....)
There are definitely no gills behind my ears, and if you so much as mention carb loading my errr abs resemble a bag of washing.......
After getting over a broken foot and living with a compulsive feeder for 3 months, not to mention the fact Christmas was a few weeks away it was time to get back to the gym.
Gym instructor turns out to also be a swimming teacher....... right there! that's when it happened, the Gods of Karma or fate or just general bloody mindedness set the wheels (or rather flippers) in motion to get to the point at which I find myself 6mths later........