The Art

Usually when people find out about the amount of training necessary for a half or full Ironman they ask a series of standard questions. They go a little something like this:

• Are you married?
• Do you have kids?
• Do you have a job?
• Then, how do you find the time?

I think the answer probably varies from person to person, but for me the answer is that I have a very patient and understanding family and a fairly cruisy job. However, sometimes that isn't enough. Sometimes, like around Christmas for instance, when there are lots of other demands on your time, fitting in training becomes all about the art of compromise.

Which is where today's training comes in. I was supposed to run today, with a swim tomorrow morning. With various things that have happened yesterday and today, that run didn't happen. But I was able to fit in a swim, so that is what I did. The plan is to do my run in the morning, and I am pretty sure that will happen.

The swim that I did get to was good. I have been slightly guilty recently of neglecting my open water swimming. I have had a few sessions that were programmed to be in the open water which I ended up doing in the pool. At the time I am sure I had compelling reasons for doing so, but in the end the best way to practice open water is to swim in open water. With that in mind I headed down to the river today to bang out some miles in Bicton Baths.

I find it strange with swimming in open water. Sometimes you head down to do 3km and it feels like it takes forever, like you are counting every 100m. However, sometimes you are swimming and before you know it you have swum a kilometer and then it seems like before you turn around you have swum two. You find your groove and it just flies by. That is what I had today. In the end I did a bit over 3km because the swimming was feeling good. The chafe didn't feel so good, but that is a different story. It was a great swim from an open water practice point of view. Just enough chop to make swimming a little uncomfortable, but not enough to make it unenjoyable, good for sighting, working into waves, all the skills. I was very happy with how it went.

I have a small confession though, it wasn't as complete race practice as it could have been because I didn't end up wearing my wetsuit. I ended up doing the swim in my new Huub swimskin, just to get some open water time in it, which I haven't had yet. There is a narrow band of time were the Swan River is warm enough for me to swim in it without a wetsuit and that time is now. So I thought I would take advantage of that and get some swimskin time. I am glad I did, it reminded me just how good it is. It also helped me find the various points that the suit rubs. Not so much of a worry for a Half Ironman, the chafe wasn't too bad around the two kilometer mark. But for a full Ironman,  I will be wanting some lubrication or something. I can see that it would be painful over 3.8km.

Little lessons learnt all the time can make a big difference sometimes.