Camping Weekend. Best training week since May. No scales.

Spent two nights camping in the English Country side to enable me to drink at Gloucester Masters annual bike ride and Bar B Q. The original plan was to spend a long weekend camping with Mrs Tewson and at the same tome attend a Swim Club social event. I do tend to miss these events, a drawback of living over 30 miles from my club. Made a decision not to attend the bike ride which I wish I had once there. Mrs Tewson didn't make it as her shifts changed (her excuse). So apart from popping to Cheltenham on Sat to attend our outdoor lido session I had a lazy beer affected weekend. The good news is I have no scales to keep a check on my weight at the moment. (They gave up the ghost last week). I am sure I am holding my own but I am away again in a week or so and I need to careful.

Had a good training week over four sessions this week. Compared to most masters swimmers my vol has been quite low. Last week was 10,600 Metres. Best weekly total since May? when I achieved a 14,000Metre total. I started swimming again (after surgery induced 4 month lay off) in Feb and have only managed a total of 179,800Mtres (25 weeks) I really should be up around 250K which equates to 10K/week. Still using pain killers but less of them. Can only swim Free style or breaststroke. Too much pain for Fly or Back.

So in summary life and training quite good but will need to start all over again after anticipated repeat surgery hopefully in August but no date yet. I was told I should have two weeks notice so should hear soon. Recovery could be anything between  two and six months depending on what they find and/or do. I am guessing end of competition for 2011 but hopefully a winter of training ready for a better 2012. Sorry if this is all repeated dialog but I am frustrated at not being able to plan anything going forward. Back to Gloucester this evening for Sunday's training. I keep telling myself that the fitter I am prior to surgery the quicker I should recover. ??

I am a bloody poor blogger. Three weeks of silence. 10 Decathlon Events !!

Well not much positive tales to blog I'm afraid. Three weeks training achieving Week 1. Nil Mtrs. Week 2 4800 Mtrs and week 3. 5500 Mtrs. In total not enough for a decent week of activity. I had a weeks holiday when I took my swim gear but never found any time to get to a pool. Two more weeks with excuses for not getting to the local pool not really bearing repeating here. The coming week looks promising for a renewed effort to get back on target. My diet has managed to stop the rot and I have not increased any more. No loss either but not surprised based on the amount of meals out and some great home cooking (For home cooking read high calorie great tasting food).

Any swimming I have done has been with the aid of ibuprofen. The shoulder is getting worse in term of pain if not in terms of mobility. Even managed to swim 50 Mtrs of backstroke one day (See competition report). No news from the NHS re a date for the next exploratory surgery so I am assuming it will be at the end of August. Should hear in the next 2-3 weeks.

Two events swam recently. In fact approx 3000 Mtrs of my training total was warm ups, swim downs and events at these meets. The first was the Wenlock Olympian meet at Much Wenlock. We needed to swim a sprint distance (25, 50 or 100M) for each stroke as well as a 100M medley to score points to win our age group. I managed to swim 25 M back as well as the back leg of the medley. (Not been able to do one stroke since.). In a poorly attended meet did quite well even managing a seasons best for the 100 IM.

Last weekend attended the Barnet Distance meet !!  Yes you read correctly. I know I am not known for swimming anything above 50M at least not well ! but I needed a distance event to complete my ten decathlon events this year so did my annual 400m 16 seconds faster than last year but still two slow to publish here or anywhere else.. I also managed my first 100 Fly for the year and a 100 Free slowly to finish off the day.

Really liked the pool at Barnet, nice and cold. Hard to tell if it was fast based on how and what I swam.

Nothing else entered as I waiting for surgery dates. Plan to swim the Gloucester Counties Masters and Western Counties Masters Sprints in Sept  if the surgery proves to be later than August. Really hoping for it to be on schedule so I can train from November onwards for next year. World Masters in Italy next June is a nice comeback target.

Hopefully will blog more regularly if we can all stand it.