Crazy time in the house of Kaz.

Ok, I've done something rather bonkers.  If you know me you'll know that's not altogether unusual but this is way more bonkers than usual.  I got an email from Sport Relief mentioning their fundraising opportunities for next March. Cycle - never in a million years, run - I wish I could but I'd kill myself, or swim. Now, I can swim. It's not fast, it's not pretty but it gets the job done.

I've been a bit unwell since last summer with what turned out to be ME, or Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, if you want to know its proper name. It also turns out that the arthritis I've had for about 15 years is actually Fybromyalgia a whole other kettle of very complicated fish. Notice the term Myalgia in both conditions there? Myalgia basically means pain. Not good, right? At times it's very much not good. Anyway, as you can imagine, exercise and specifically swimming, really hasn't happened this year.

But there's a swimathon. Next March. 6 months, nearly 7 months away. Time to train myself up right?  Sounds sensible.  So I've signed up.  I've set myself the shortest distance, which at 1.5km or 60 lengths is a whole hell of a lot more than I've swum for a very long time. This is the bonkers bit. It's not so much the swimming, it's the distance.  I do also have to bear in mind that my silly body may well not take kindly to my proposed idea. So I need to be really sensible and careful about the whole thing and hope that it doesn't decide to throw a strop and put me in hospital, or in bed for a month or something nice like that.  But part of my ME therapy is to try and get me moving a bit to strengthen muscles etc so that my body can cope with things a little bit better than the wet noodle it's been behaving like lately. So I'm thinking this might be a good thing to motivate me and to aim for. Plus it's for charity so we're all good.

Friday 4th October - my first swim. It was not pretty, nor was it fast by any stretch of the imagination. But I blundered around in the pool, avoiding all the other (proper) swimmers while I tried to loosen up and get back into the swing of it. My neck has been giving me quite a lot of grief lately and I've even had an x ray to make sure I haven't done anything silly to it (I haven't.)  I'm most comfortable swimming on my back, but this isn't easy to do in a public pool when you can't see who's around you, and I'm not fast enough to swim in the shared lanes. My breast stroke is appalling, it has to be said but just now with the neck thing, my breast stroke is especially entertaining because every time I lift my head to breathe, it hurts. Not the greatest start, but as I went on I kept moving my neck to loosen any stiffness in between bursts of swimming and it seemed to get easier.

I didn't swim very far, probably about 100 metres all together, but it was a start and I'm hoping I can build on it and keep improving between now and next March. Well, here's hoping anyway. Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it. xx