Last year’s exercise was all about getting myself through it. Would my body be able to cope? Could I reach my goal? Ultimately, would I get to the other end of the lake?
This meant that my training was nearly all about distance and endurance and getting on with it. The 1,000kms goal didn’t help as I wanted to achieve that, so kept looking to add distance to the chart I was keeping for that. However,with the swimming at least it was important to know that I could do the distance – it’s not as easy to stop and rest in a lake as it is if you’re out running, basically if you stop for too long you drown. But what I mainly did in my training last year was plod.
Well, it turns out I could swim to the other end of the lake, so now I don’t need to worry about that. Now I can push myself a bit harder.
I’ve decided that I’m going to try and work on speed and pushing myself hard over short distances / times in my training in the early part of this year. This particularly applies to the swimming, but also to all the other exercise stuff I do (cycling, running, weights). When the open water season starts again I’ll be able to get in the lake and do my long, slow (but hopefully not as slow as previously thanks to the speed work) swims, for now I’m going to work harder, but shorter.
And on that note, I’ve had a Twitter conversation with a friend about feeling the ache after a good session, his expression, which I love, was: “I love it when my body reminds me how awesome I am ;-)”
1000kmstowindermere 
Good luck with the training this year. Keep up the awesomeness ;o)
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