Marathon Monday

I'm only just blogging Monday night's training session because I've only just warmed up from it.

Well not quite, but Jen, Kerry, Tom and I had a bit of a gruelling Monday evening.

We arrived at Hampstead Lido for 6:45pm with the water and air temperature both at 15 degrees. Pah! Nothing we thought - the channel was 12 degrees at the weekend.

We got stuck in, with some of us doing up to 70 minutes. It was definitely chilling down quickly towards the end of our session, but we didn't quite realise that we'd over done it until we got out.

Jen was so cold she went to bed at 10 still freezing, shivering and wearing ski-gear. Kerry hobbled to the tube with the shakes so bad she couldn't keep her shoes on. And frankly, I'm gutted I missed that bit because it sounds hilarious.

I chose that night to go for my medical which I needed to send to the official Channel swimming people. Noticing I was shaking somewhat the Doc took my temperature and to my surprise, and certainly his, he found it was too low to register on his electronic thermometer. I had to sit there wearing a duvet and a hat while I warmed up. We finally got a reading of 34 degrees. Three degrees below normal and consistent with 'stage two' hypothermia. After some rigorous questioning of how long I would be in the sea and at what temperature, he passed me fit.

Amusing in retrospect, but perhaps we should be a bit better prepared even for lido swimming sessions after work.