After an incredible month-long tour around Europe with Scott, I am finally back at home and back to training. Scott and I landed in CA on Thursday, my birthday, and no sooner than Friday morning was I back in at Laguna with Uncle Dan to take back our beach! We swam our typical course and it was a beautiful day. I had a few surprises for him out in the middle of the ocean. First, I brought out a hot pink underwater camera I bought in Gibraltar after seeing how cool Sakura’s camera was. I had swam with it in my suit and snapped a few great shots of our swim:

The next surprise for UD, as seen above, were chocolate mini rolls I had stashed along with the camera in my suit. These are all the rage in Dover, the beach where English Channel aspirants come to train. They’re similar to ding dongs: chocolate coated chocolate cake with white frosting inside. Very squishy and easy to eat quickly, and most importantly tasty. So we each enjoyed the mini rolls I traveled with and brought back home just for this occasion.

Next in my back-to-shape-as-fast-as-possible training schedule was a visit to the gym to do my therapy. With the schedule I have coming up to rectify one month of almost no activity, I need my shoulders to be as strong as ever. I will discuss my training plan further in another post, but basically I have 5 weeks to get back in marathon swim shape, and not much of a base. Physical therapy is essential for me to train the way I must to do long swims, and I need it more now than ever.

The next day it was off to the pool for interval training, another must in my soft condition, and then a short run. On Sunday, my mom (kayaking), UD, and Marlena joined me for parts of my 3-hour swim. Marlena did the first hour, and UD did the first 2. Of course, my mom kayaked the whole way :) The hardest thing was to turn around for that final hour and not swim in with UD and call it a day, but I managed to ignore my body’s pleading for rest and finished what I set out to do. During our swim, Marlena had quite the lesson in pacing. After 30 minutes, I stopped to the discouraging comment: “Wow, we REALLY slowed down after 10 minutes. Uncle Dan and I had to slow down for you, Jen.” After offering Marlena the option to swim ahead of us, I then jabbed, well you can swim the whole 3 hours with me if you want. That was quickly denied. Despite the picture above, I was not happy at all, and turned around for another 30. I noticed Marlena falling a bit behind, possibly trying to create space so she could swim faster and catch back up to keep warm, a trick I’ve used in the past with other swimmers. Thankfully though, when we stopped, she blurted “Oh Jen I was WAY wrong, I’m DYING!” This, as you can imagine, was music to my ears. Needless to say, Marlena will be joining me for a few swims to learn pacing :)