Brutal Honesty

I get a bit sweary in this post – don’t read this kids.

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My recent post on my Windermere swim has had quite a few reads so far and it seems to have been well received. The two main comments I’ve received from people on social media are:

1) That it was an ‘honest’ post

2) That it was a successful swim as I managed to complete it, despite it being so hard

Although well meaning and well received, both of those views are wrong.

1) I didn’t aim for ‘honesty’ in the post in some artsy attempt to be ‘real’. Instead I just told it how it was – although I accept that kind of is the definition of honesty. But it seems that people see this post as more honest because the swim was so hard for me and I admit that. However, I’m not sure the post was honest, as I don’t think I was telling the whole truth.

2) And where I wasn’t telling the whole truth – and the reason it wasn’t a successful swim – is that I fucked up. I wasn’t beaten by the conditions, or the day. I was beaten because I didn’t train enough, I didn’t plan enough and I did a lot of things that were almost guaranteed to mean I had a shit swim.

Since my SwimTrek trip in April I hadn’t done a single swim that was longer than three and a bit hours. In fact I was so complacent I even took a two week holiday just a week before Windermere. Instead of knuckling down and training – and also using longer swims to test my feeding plan – I focused on pool stuff and speed and pissing around on the edges. Now life stuff may have been a contributing factor, but not an excuse. And yet there I was still arrogantly assuming I could hit my seven hour target.

That’s the truth and that’s why even a few days later I can’t see this as a successful swim. Ultimately I’m just fucking annoyed at myself.

Thanks you all for your support and your good wishes. In the wider aspect of things, positives will come from this lesson. But I refuse to see this swim as anything more than a stupid, stupid, shit swim – and all my own fucking fault.

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Thank you, normal non-potty mouth service will be resumed following this post.

 

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