swimming the English Channel
Sam Penny's journey to conquer the Everest of swimming
Monday - 5km Pool Squad Tuesday - 5km Pool on my own Wednesday - 4km Ocean on my own Thursday - Rest Friday - 3km Ocean Squad Saturday - 17.2km Ocean Sunday - Rest It feels strange to be starting a training campaign 18months out from my Channel Swim, but here I begin! I have decided that my next 6months is all about getting my confidence high before the full-on program starts in August (12months out). When I started my 18month program, I really wanted to do a big swim early on to see how it feels. I've never swum more than 10km, and I've only done that twice in my life. Once when I was 15 in a swimming squad (I still remember how buggered I felt after but also the send of accomplishment in going so far) and on New Years Day to blow the cobwebs out and to give 10km a go. Four Weekends of Racing I started this week coming off four weekends straight of racing; two pool and two ocean. My pool times were solid and happy with some PB's. My goal of getting under 1min for 100m Free fell short by half a second as two attempts saw me around 60.50secs. But very happy to get my Fly under 30secs for a 50m. I entered a 200m Free and took 4secs off to finish in 2:20min but didn't feel happy with that. I have speed but why can't I work a solid 200m? My ocean racing, however, really surprised me. Both Noosa and Mooloolaba World Series Swims I won my age group in four races and finished just outside of top 10 in all of them. This is a big result for me considering that I had never finished better than mid-pack in an ocean race. In the Mooloolaba Mile, I finished 13th out of 140 swimmers. Boom! Entering this week, I was tired but very excited. I have quickly worked out a routine that will slot in nicely with work, kids and home life. With four young and very active kids, it's sometimes chaotic. My first three days I'm aiming to do 5km each. 2 sessions in the pool and one in the ocean. Wednesday was super rough in the ocean so I cut it short by 1km as I had to drop the kids at school. Friday is my social swim day when I meet up with the triathletes from Sunshine Coast Triathlon Academy. It's a fun ocean swim with lots of sprinting followed by brekky. It's always fun sprinting against triathletes. My Big 17km Test But my big test was Saturday where Helen (my much better half) and I had planned a 15km ocean swim. We had planned quite a bit for this as this was our first time with Helen paddling the kayak and me swimming a distance far greater than anything I had ever done before. We met Simon Knapp on Saturday morning who is swimming the Channel one month after me. He joined us for the first half which was great because he is exactly the same pace as me. I can see we are going to do a huge amount of km's together. We left Mooloolaba Spit and headed towards Maroochydore Surf Club. We decided to turn at the Surf Club as this was an easy landmark to aim for. This turned out to be further than we thought giving us a total of 17.2km rather than 15km. A mental bonus! Our pace felt great and finished this in 5hours. The realisation that we just swam half the Channel was exciting! My shoulders were hurting in the last 2km but what would you expect when you've never done a distance like that? I think Helen struggled more with feeling uncomfortable. The flipper things on her Hobie kayak broke 2km in so she had to paddle for the last 15km. From my perspective she looked very uncomfortable as I saw her constantly trying to stretch her shoulders and back out. She's very fit but this was just uncomfortable. As I have never been an endurance athlete, I have never had to worry about nutrition during my session. I was lucky to be given a whole heap of Clif Bar products so decided to try them. They worked really well so will keep trying them and see if there are any flaws that crop up. Confidence is High At the end of my first week, I feel great. Particularly after a great afternoon sleep on Saturday! Shoulders are sore but you'd expect that. My confidence is high 18months out from my Channel attempt. Finishing in 5hours now makes me feel like a crossing (in the right conditions) could be under 10hours. But at the same time, I am accepting the fact that something on the day could go wrong and blow my time out to 15hours. This would be three times longer than my Saturday swim. Trying to get my head around that. The week ahead doesn't have anything as a stand out. Taking an easy week and hoping to get in a touch over 20kms. Who knows what the week will bring.
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AuthorSam Penny is attempting to swim the English Channel in August 2018. Follow his journey here. Archives
August 2018
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