10.18 a.m.
Two hours before I leave for the pool on Swimathon day, and I’m feeling like a caged lion – I can’t wait to get in the water and get swimming, even though I’m by no means in peak condition at the moment. It’s the same feeling I get before a musical performance – a kind of dangerous cocktail of adrenalin, nerves, and all the other psycho-chemical things your brain does to prepare you for the extraordinary. I say dangerous, because it’s not a feeling you can focus, identify or control, it’s just a kind of overheated preparedness for just about anything. I woke up feeling like the last thing I should be doing today is swimming, and only a couple of hours later, I feel like an overwound spring. It’s moments like this that make me realise I’m a ‘performance’ kind of person who loves the adrenalin. No wonder I was crap at ‘projects’ at school.
Dan invited me to come and do a pre-swim video at 8.30 in Raynes Park this morning, which certainly helped gear me up for the challenge. He’s been a great encouragement in all of this, and when I was really fat & smoking a couple of years ago (sounds like a pork chop on a griddle, but you know what I mean) it was he who got me back in the pool for the first time in ages. It brings back happy memories of being on tour with ENB in Athens in the summer of 1993, and larking around in the pool with Chris, Dan & Rachel Hunt. (Tomorrow, I’ll reveal why that’s such a strange coincidence).
All the same, I’m nervous. I had to stop training a week ago, because I could feel a nasty throat/chest infection bubbling under the surface again, and so I cut down all activity to a minimum since last Sunday. I’ve got a deep-seated fear that I’ll get to 20 lengths and have to stop from exhaustion.
