April 13, 2009
The bad news is the wind howled all night. The good news is I was so tired that I slept through it like a baby. Sure enough, the cove was not swimable when we got up this morning. We grabbed breakfast and headed to a hotel in Victoria that had a large outdoor pool. It was almost circular (closer to square) with a diameter close to 25m with an island in the middle. The painful part is the temperature of the pool was also 16C (60F). We got in for some video taping and individual coaching by one of the guides. In between our turns at this, we swam around the island and did stroke drills. We are not sure what all the reasons were but just about everyone was colder doing an hour in the pool then the 2 hours in the sea. Some of the reasons might be that fresh water does "feel" colder then salt water at the same temp and we stopped quite a bit for instruction in the pool and it was seriously overcast with a wind. We made it to an hour (barely) before we got out. Amazingly enough, most of us had numb feet which we did not get when we swam in the sea for 2 hours.
Afterwards, we headed back to our hotel to grab lunch. The plan this afternoon is to review the video taping and then have more discussion on training techniques. The waves in the cove look slightly less at 2pm today, a good sign that the storm is blowing out and tomorrow we will be back in the sea.
Hi, just found this via the Facebook route. What a fascinating process, I'm glad to be able to follow it. I just read about how being very cold can stimulate brown fat reserves and keep you thinner. Probably not your goal right now, huh!?
ReplyDeleteI love the mental discipline aspect of this, so important for so many aspects of our lives.