Tried out my latest swim gadget this morning - the swim snorkel.
I would recommend this to anyone. I bought mine from http://www.swimshop.co.uk/. It has the benefit of allowing you to focus on your stroke and glide without the hindrance of breathing out of the water. It also highlights how erratic your breathing can be - which in turn burns a lot of energy and forces up your heart rate. There's also a side benefit caused by the snorkel making it a bit harder to breathe - you end up swimming with a hypoxic effect - similar to breathing every 5 strokes. It looks a bit weird when it's on, but hey, the whole concept of swimming when your not an aquatic creature is bloody absurd, so go figure.
The down side is that it sounds like you are the unhappy and unfortunate outcome of a drunken one night stand between Jaques Cousteau and Darth Vader! Try not to dwell on that unsavoury image too long...
After swimming, went out with Paul, Simon, Sarah and JP, (all doing IM Wales), for a long ride after the swimming. Total of 85km up hill and down dale through the lanes in bright and cold conditions - perfect riding (despite the odd ice patch), excellent training, top people - what more could you want? Bike fitness has lost the cold edge of last year, but that's to be expected after the monstrous onslaught of eating that I enjoyed over Christmas. Also the H/R limiting went to hell on a hand cart, but the overall average worked out at 140 bpm over 3.5 hours of riding, and that will do nicely. So I won't be getting too hung up over it. All things considered this was a good day of training and firmly marks the card for the long haul training.
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