5000 meters, 4 swimmers per lane, quickest time wins.

The Swimathon is an indoor national event held every year, and this year I was keen to end my indoor training with a bang. I felt having this indoor race would help push me to keep training hard lap after lap after lap. The hardest thing I found this winter was after swimming in a nice big wide lake, coming back into a small, short, tight indoor pool. Where as I could do two laps in the lake I would have to do 150 lengths in the pool.  I was doing this 5/6 times a week minimum for about 2 hour slots. So having this race to aim for, which also happened to be the start of the open water season was great way to keep myself motivated.

Before the race I was unbelievably nervous! I knew the distance was fine, there was no problem there, however thoughts of a slow time and a low place started flying through my head. I have taken the decision not to use tumble turns which greatly help a indoor swimmers time, the reason being that I’m training for life in the outdoor lakes and would never use them. As I found myself in a indoor race I already felt that somehow I had a slight disadvantage to the other swimmers who where using the tumble turns. There were also high expectations, it was home ground the place I train at on a daily basis (although it felt very different), I had trained at this length many times, and local rivals from my training sessions were already impressing in their races.

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