Thursday 13 June 2013

May (T-minus 2 Months)





Oh to fall from grace…..ok a little dramatic, but that is how it has felt for me this month. The worst, by far, in all the months of training in the lead up to the Channel.  It started straight after the 24 hour swim, my right wrist was pretty painful.  I thought it was just fatigue and would clear up after a good night’s sleep.  The next day I went to the pool for a gentle swim, to help stretch out the stiff muscles.  On the first pull of the water I felt the pain in my arm, but again thought it would pass, I managed a handful of lengths but had to concede that the pain was not going to pass.  At that point I noticed that the wrist was pretty swollen and decided to head to the jacuzzi instead and rest it some more.

 

A couple more days of icing the wrist and taking ibuprofen and not swimming helped, but didn’t do away with the pain completely, I decided to seek medical advice, which was not the best. Basically I had De Quervain's tenosynovitis – essentially a form of RSI that made the thumb tendons in the wrist really painful.  The advice was to continue with the ice and painkillers and wear a brace on the wrist, but here was the killer line – don’t do any swimming for 2-3 weeks.  I baulked at this, but managed keep panic at bay.  I was optimistic that I would be back swimming before that…

The next day I jumped in the water and did a kick set, now if I disliked kicking before I really wasn’t happy about it after that sessions.  Five days later I was still doing kick sets, by this point I absolutely hated kick sets!  However, I was able to start to incorporate some drill work so it wasn’t so bad! Ten days after the diagnosis I did my first ‘proper’ swim set and it felt …. alright.  I could feel that I had lost some pace and definitely lost a ‘feel for the water’.  I couldn’t believe how much a couple of weeks out could have such a negative impact on everything.  At this point the negative thoughts started to kick in, would I be able to make it across the Channel are my arms going to hold up.  And still I have these feelings to some extent....

The positives for this month were that I was able to start open water swimming in earnest and did my first sea swim of an hour in 9c (approx), which I was happy with.  Following it up with a 2 hr swim the following day in the Serpentine (10C).  So, that was good, throughout the rest of the month my wrist hasn’t felt 100% and I have started to have pain in the other wrist as well which has made each session a lottery as to whether or not it would go well or not.   I have not been able to re-find my pre-24hr swim form and am not hitting anywhere near the pool times I was before.  This has been a bit soul destroying, but I keep telling myself the longer the dip in form, the bigger the rise will be when it comes…..