Cold..... So cold open water....

So Tuesday night after a sort but energetic session in the pool (assuming a 10 close to get there at half 8 and find it closes at 9!) I decided that the drugged up bright red eyed look I was getting from having no swimming goggles needed to be rectified.

Black and red the best look!

Luckily I had some Amazon voucher money left from Christmas so the price I actually had to pay was the 9p that is did not cover. Ended up settling on a pair of "Aqua Sphere Kayenne Goggles" from now on to be known as my batman goggles. They ended up being what I think are a good pair for me after looking around at price, average review etc. You can feel free to tell me I'm very wrong and should have bought goggles X or goggles Y if you know better!

Decided to try a mini tri (sprint distance) in the gym just to see what its like doing different activities one after the other. Although completely out of order with run first then the bike with the swim coming in last. Rough timings are as follows:
Run 32 mins 5k
Bike 41 mins 20k
Swim 20 mins 750 meters (30 lengths)

Still in one breaststroke, one freestyle mode for swimming (this was also pre arrive of batman goggles). It wasn't to bad, the swim at the end was more effort than usual due to the pre exercise going into the pool. The time on the bike was painfully boring, I will biking outside from now on I think and similarly for the run. As much as I love watching a fat sweaty me running perpetually towards myself in the floor to ceiling mirror I would much rather be running along the path round the rowing lake, river Trent or lakes at Rushcliffe.

The crowning achievement of this week was Saturday morning with my new park run time of 24:56. This is a cut of almost 2 minutes of my 5k race time and further confirms my suspicion that the Lincoln course is much faster and flatter! Even with that being said I can feel that my race pace is increasing and I can go for longer and harder every time I go out.

So Sunday morning I got up to go for a swim in the lake in Lincoln. I was expecting it to be cold, I mean its February 4, maybe 5 degrees was about where I was expecting. I had not counted on it being 0.5 degrees and covered in sheet ice in places!

Photo of the lake, after I got out of it!!

In my defence I got in a swam, all be it for only about 3 or 4 minutes before the cold had taken over my hands to the point I could barely move them. I can only hope that the water in the rowing lake on race day might be a few degrees warmer but I'm not entirely convinced!

So this was a day late but I've been trying to catch up on uni work I'm behind on and this is one of the first things to take a back seat. Until next week.

Alex