What's the swimming equivalent of a saddle?

Well, whatever it is, I'm back in it.  Ever since my epic trip to the London Metropolitan Archives, I've more or less been putting my feet up and doing just about nothing.  Last week was supposed to be a consolidation week, but I took it to the next level and, apart from a short (by today's standards - it was still 780m!) swim on Wednesday, didn't train for a whole week.

If I'm being honest, it was in part due to laziness and busyness in equal measure, but the main issue was that I had a bad back.  I think the problem was caused by overdoing it on the day I went to the LMA and the day before (all in all about 30km of cycling and 1km of swimming) and then not stretching properly.  After a couple of days of stretching and ibuprofen, it was OK and by Wednesday morning it felt good enough for a bit of a swim, but then I rested it for the rest of the week as a precaution.  This meant that by yesterday evening, I was climbing the walls at home (not literally, it would scare the cat), so it was a bit of a relief to eventually get in the pool this morning, even though I really didn't want to get out of bed when the alarm went off.

There were two very noticeable things about the pool this morning.  The first was that it was very, very quiet, which suited me very well; presumably a lot of folk are still on holiday or having to deal with "first day back" issues.  The second was that it was very dark - so dark, in fact, that they had to put the lights on.  The pool is normally lit naturally by a sky light that covers nearly the whole area of the pool.  Today is the first day since I've been training that it hasn't been sunny (or at least bright - it was foggy a couple of times), and it really makes a difference to the feel of the pool, and my mood on leaving.  The drizzle today is like the permadrizzle I recall from my student days in Manchester.

In any event, by the time I left the pool, I had done 4 x 60m breaststroke as a warm-up, then 300m with the pull buoy and 7 x 60m front crawl, followed by a couple of lengths each of breaststroke and front crawl as a cool down - another 1.08km chalked up.  When added to the 780m from last Wednesday, this takes my total distance swum up to 9.21km.  This means that next time I swim (most probably Friday), I'll be going over the 10km mark - please sponsor my milestone swim by hitting the Justgiving button and donating a few quid to Marie Curie Cancer Care!