Officially I was still in Norfolk during Week 14 of my career break but I reported all of that last week.

This week has mainly been about training for the upcoming Great North Swim that I will do with Anne from work in just over a weeks time. My registration packs arrived with my numbered swimming hat, my timing chip to be work on my ankle during the race and also a nice leaflet talking the the procedures.

The leaflet made interesting reading. It makes quote like ‘you should have already swum more than the distance you have entered for, non stop’ and ‘you should have swum in open water before you race’. Interesting. As I read it I thought ‘Ive not swum a mile let alone more than a mile non stop’ and ‘I’ve never swum in open water other than with my surfboard’. Scary.

I thought I better get some training in especially since I’d also never swum in my wetsuit that I’ve bought especially. So Thursday I popped down to the Jesus Green Lido in Cambridge, it’s a 100yard or 91meter outdoor pool. Most people have probably never seen a pool this long. A normal pool is 25meters, an olympic sized pool just 50m, this is almost twice as long. In a normal pool a mile is 64 lengths, in this pool it’s just under 18.

So my first session was an eye opener. I’m used to wearing a wetsuit but this was different. It’s built to help your legs float so breast stroke is out for me as my legs stick out of the water when I kick and so I go nowhere. I wasn’t going to swim breast stroke anyway luckily. Then there’s the fact that it’s difficult to turn your arms. This is a problem, it takes a load of effort to swim crawl. So in my first session I had to stop every length to take a breather. My arms hurt both in my forearms and my shoulders. I walked away a broken man.

I thought I would try again on Friday. It was much better. I still was stopping every length but I was swimming faster. New problem now though, the wetsuit has rubbed my neck raw and I’ve got a nice scab. No swimming for the weekend.

Monday and I’m back in the pool. I’ve psyched myself to do three lots of 6 lengths with as short a break as possible, just enough to time each set. The first is 9 mins 10 seconds. The second and the stopwatch is showing just under 20 mins total. I finish in an elapsed time of 28 mins 53 seconds. Brilliant. A sub 30 min mile is a massive achievement. I celebrate with another rubbed neck and a nice new scab, lovely. Anne’s called off the race between me and her and has started calling me Speedy in emails and texts. Chicken.

Other than training I got a new skateboard for my birthday. It’s nothing flash, just something to have a go on to see if I like it. The new tarmac bridleway through the village is a superb place to skate. Helena’s worried I’ll be visiting A&E very shortly. Watch this space.

I’ve also been getting stuff on Gumtree to sell from Mum’s house. It looks like we have sold the house itself (subject to contract) so we now need to get stuff out. I managed to sell her car on Monday which was superb but not without incident. Helena and I went over, spent a while trying to work out how to get it out of the garage with a totally flat battery, not easy when it’s an auto and in park. We eventually achieved this and cleaned it up, lowered the roof and waited for the people to come and see it. It was all going swimmingly until we tried to put the roof back up. It wasn’t budging. For about 15 mins I thought I’d lost the sale and also had a car I now couldn’t close. In the end it just started working and we made the sale. Brilliant.

The weekend was obviously BBQ time with Helena’s family over trying out the new Red Truck we’ve bought them to take on holiday when we all go to Devon. The kids will be pulled down to the beach and they love it.

If you want to sponsor Anne and me for the Great North Swim that would be fab. To those of you who have already, thank you so much.