andy’s english channel swim: august 2007

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A month of gala’s (1st in provincial masters champs in 200m individual medley & 3rd in the national master’s champs in 800m freestyle), a safari to my colleague Renault’s wedding in the Eastern Cape  and the  distractions prior to it, resulted in an interrupted training schedule for a month, as seen in the missing "teeth" in the total Manhattan.

However, the show is now back on the road. A good consistent 3 months training from April – June will break the back of the monster ahead. The tri-althletes in the training squad at the Point gym inform me that 16 weeks is the required training for the Iron Man events (3.8km swim, 180km cycle and 42km run), assuming an appropriate base to train from. The Iron Man event takes between 8 hours and 15 hours to complete – similar to the Channel swim. I still have 20 weeks, so have ample time – provided the time is used wisely.

My target for April is to consistently swim 25 km each week. This will be the last month of indoor, warm water squad training in 25m pools, which I have been doing on Monday/ Tuesday, and Thursday/ Friday. Then the switchover to outdoor 50m pools, which will start the cold water conditioning for real. In addition, I am looking forward to some of the great open water swims around the Cape peninsula and Robben Island in particular.