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An excellent session at the pool today, despite being a little late in (no fault of my own in this case — they were a bit delayed cleaning the reception area between shift changes).

I managed eighteen reps before having to skip one, and then got to thirty before skipping a second though I did briefly get a bit messed up between the two thanks to “traffic”. Two better than Tuesday before the first skipped rep and in fact the pace was higher as well so I’m very happy with that. My upper body feels exceptionally tired now 🙂

Didn’t manage to get to the pool yesterday because I had so much other stuff going on and today was quite odd in its own way. I took my usual cut-through to avoid the closed bridge to discover after half a mile or so that police were directing traffic and part of a tree had fallen across the road. Fortunately it wasn’t blocked completely. It looked as though someone had tried to take a large lorry down the road and hit the tree. Completely ridiculous really. It’s totally unsuitable for that kind of vehicle.

Once I managed to get to the pool I discovered my arms felt very tired, but I pushed on regardless and whilst my reps were a little slower than usual I did manage to complete sixteen before had to skip one and then had to skip another after twenty-nine, but that was enough to allow me to finish the session so I’m quite pleased with the performance overall — two more reps than last time before I had to skip one, and skipping one fewer overall.

No swimming tomorrow, and Thursday is all a bit up in the air at the moment. I have a somewhat garbled email from the sports centre operator that seems to be saying they’re legally required to do the test and trace thing with the NHS app and that everyone will be required to use it, but when I try to find the app there appears to be a suggestion that it’s still in beta test and some sort of activation code is required. I thought it was only restaurants and the like that were legally required to do the contact tracing stuff as of Thursday, too. Best I try to remember my phone when I go, anyhow. Living and working somewhere there’s no mobile coverage I rarely remember to take it with me when I go out.

Late again for the pool today, but only a minute or so. I could tell from the start that my arms were tired, but I was determined to make those first fourteen reps. I was absolutely gasping when I did though 🙂 I ran out of steam for reps 25 and 29 and had to skip those as well, but otherwise got to the end of the session. So a new target of managing fifteen reps without skipping for Monday. I’ll happily accept an improvement of one rep per session if that’s what it takes.

It turns out dropping another five seconds off my interval time makes my set quite hard 😀

Today didn’t start off well. I was late because the bridge that was being closed but hasn’t actually been fully closed for the last ten days was actually completely closed today, so I had to turn around and cut through some single-track roads to get to the pool. I have heard rumours that they were intending to keep one lane open, but having taken the surface off on the other side they’ve decided it really isn’t safe enough, so perhaps that’s actually the reason.

Anyhow, I managed to keep the reps on 80 seconds going until I got to fourteen at which point I really couldn’t control my breathing in time for the next and had to skip one. I also had to skip reps 22 and 33 for the same reason, though by 33 I was also getting pretty tired and only managed a couple more before running out of time.

So tomorrow my primary target is to complete fourteen reps or more without skipping one, and then to swim the session out without skipping more than three reps.

I had a rubbish swim on Friday, struggling for breath all the time and having to take regular breaks. I was pleased therefore when I hit the pool today and managed to swim the entire session on the same rest interval as I’ve been using for the last couple of weeks without any breaks. I didn’t get a great night’s sleep last night, drifting in and out of sleep after waking up at about 4:30am gasping for a drink, so I wasn’t expecting too much today. I did feel tired, but after the first two or three reps I settled into a rhythm and apart from one very brief stop when I lost track of where I was on the clock after having to avoid several other swimmers I got through the entire session with all but my last three reps at least a second faster than they were yesterday. I had the radioactive glow of a Ready Brek child when I got out 😀

I’ve decided they count as successes, so on Thursday I shall knock another five seconds off the rest interval and aim to leave the wall every eighty seconds. This isn’t too far away from where I was before lockdown, which really does make me happy. At the start of August that looked a very long way off.

I skipped Tuesday’s swim because I was feeling a bit under the weather. I think just the side-effects of sleeping very badly as a result of all the work stress that’s going on at the moment and my body trying to deal with the ramping up of exercise levels. I felt ok yesterday, though still quite tired.

I did swim again today however and it went much better than earlier in the week though I still did have to skip one rep, but that was mostly because my intervals all got a bit off due to needing to avoid people in the lane (there were actually five people in the fast lane today, and most of them were). And in fact the skipped rep was number twenty-one, so a big improvement on last time. Again I was a bit ragged towards the end, but only for the last three or four reps.