Slowed down by a baby cow !

Moooooooo !!!

Out of nowhere, last friday night, I had the most painful calf cramp in my left leg......ever !

The following day it still hurt a little bit, and the day after that it still really hurt. So I hopped along down to the internet to check out the symptoms and to be honest its still a bit of a mystery to me. Firstly, its apparent that these cramps are the result of a mixture of dehydration/lack of salt/magnesium. Secondly I'm not sure what really happened as there is often pain for a few days after a bad case of cramp, but also there could have been some damage.

So to be sure I've been rested up for most of the week making sure that I don't aggravate anything in the meantime. Last night I dipped my toe in the water so to speak and went for a twenty minute swim at the local pool. There has not been any after effect which has given me some comfort, because to be honest I've been climbing the walls all week.

Lets hope I can get back out over the weekend..

Open water swimming is bloody cold !

Oh Yes....

I can tell you exactly how warm it is in our lakes and rivers today.....its a chilly as you like 12C !!!

I had my first go at open water swimming today when Triathlon England arranged a free swimming session at Holme Pierrepont near Nottingham. To be honest it was a warm sunny day today, so I was completely oblivious to the fact that I would soon be freezing my nuts off !!!

Thankfully there was only a small group of us today and once we had all changed into our wetsuits, (mines great by the way...when I received it.....eventually !!!!), we had a fifteen minute information/safety briefing, and then it was time to jump into that lovely warm water !

Did I mention that the water temperature was a nut freezing 12C ??? Yes...well I'll proceed...

We floated for a while, then we put our faces under the water (it freezes faces as well as nuts), and finally we went for a bit of a swim. Now the good thing about a wetsuit is that it gives you extra bouyancy and a higher position in the water, the downside is that the suit is restrictive and coupled with the temperature made swimming very very hard work.

This is apparently normal, and we were told that we would get used to it after about five sessions.

After this I'm really looking forward to doing more, but hopefully the water will warm up and my nuts will grow back !!