Monday after work I go home, make some chili and rice for dinner, but don’t have time to eat before my planned 18:00 swim. So while I am cooking dinner for the girls I make two hot dogs as a snack to make it through swimming.  I had skipped lunch by mistake and knew I needed something in my stomach to be able to swim 4500m.

I get to the pool around 17:45, change and make my way out to the lake just before 18:00. I never got any any confirmation that anyone else was going to join me, and I as look at my clock one last time before jumping into the lake I see that I only have 17% left on the battery.  Crap.  Oh well, better to try to record the swim and see what happens.  As I start up my watch I see Oskar W coming.  So I wait for him and we start together.

I swim nice and easy the first 65-75m to the first buoy. Then I decided to work on not sighting.  So I was doing my best to not look forward for 14-16 strokes instead of the normal 8-12 strokes. It actually worked well up to about 18 strokes.  I vary between 14-16 strokes between looking forward and manage to swim the first lap within 2m of the course buoys. As I round the last/first buoy I look at my watch and see my current pace is 1:19/100m. It didn’t feel like I was pushing that hard, so I decided to push it a little more. As I get to about 2000m I can feel my watch vibrate, and started to wonder why? I did not remember getting anything after 1000m.  So I slow my arm down and see a message.  I role over on my back to look, and it says my watch has gone into power save mode and asks if I want to close the recording.  I ignore the message and push on.  I felt my sighting was even better the second lap even thought it started pouring down rain.  I get the the end of the 3000m or second lap, swim in to the side, look at my watch and it was completely black. I chance it and hit a button.  I asked if I want to end or continue.  I click on end, and see my time 39:40!  I check the log and it only recorded until I swam 2058m, just where I felt it go into power save mode.  Damn it.

I know that I swam the full 3000m course. My splits for the 1000m were

13:09.9
13:33.9 – I slowed down as I was ending the first lap to look at my watch.
12:56.8 – I picked up my pace even more when the watch was going to power down.

It made me mad to not have the full recording, then I became depressed.  I have put so much time into swimming the last 12 months.  My only real race of the year was Karl-Oskarsimmet and I get cramps in my calves.  Vansbrosimningen that was to start Saturday was canceled.  I feel I am primed for a prefect race with no race in sight….

After all those emotions role around in my head I hear a long loud rolling thunder not too far away. I had really hoped to get in a third lap, but was not going to chance it.  I see Oskar still in the water so I make my way back to the pool but stand by the window until I see that he gets out of the lake.

I have two 1500m swims for time to get in before the 30th, one with and one without a wetsuit.  I might try one Friday evening and the other Sunday night.  That gives me Monday and Tuesday for a re-swim, if needed. Looking ahead to July I have a 3000m race and two 1930m races to be done at home. Good thing I have a large group of swimming friends nearby I can convince to swim with/against me.

On a positive note, with 8 possible swims left in June, I am only 3km from my June target and 65.5km ahead of my year to date target.  Looks like I will secure my June Ben & Jerrys tonight 😉