2020 is not the year that anyone saw coming. I am just happy that I live in Sweden and we have not closed down society or had a lock down.  Sure we have restrictions to follow like stay home when you can (ie only essential travelling), avoid contact with the elderly, working from home if you can, not more than 50 people at gatherings, high schools and colleges closed for home schooling as well as lots of companies had to send their employees home with materials for production could not be delivered. Swedish Nationals for Seniors, Juniors, Youth and Masters have been canceled. One by one open water races, bike races, runs, triathlons have had to cancel because of the travel restrictions and/or the max 50 people per gathering rule in place.

But for the most part our gyms and pools have remained opened. I am personally really grateful for that.  In a year of competitive disappointments I have been able to pursue my training goals for 2020. The main one being swimming 1,000,000 meters on or before December 31, 2020.

Over the past few years I have struggled to average 12 km/week.  Some weeks up around 16 km but others as little as zero swimming usually because of work travels..  The bright side of COVID-19 is that I have only missed three swim sessions because of work so far this year and only two because of family life.  This has help me maintain a higher weekly average.  I have only really increase my Wednesday and Sunday distances by adding 30 minutes to both of these days. I started to add an extra 3km solo swim each week, but it was not fun.  And when I was hitting my targets with Masters swimming, it felt like an overkill. As you can see below, there are reason behind each of the dips. Week 1 I didn’t know about the challenge, and it was our winter break. Weeks 11-12 I rested before our Nationals that was canceled, but we held time trials at home. Weeks 18-19 were the 3 workouts I missed because of work.  And week 27 is only after 2 days.

I wrote before that if I was 40-50,000m behind by the time I went on vacation that I would be able to make up the difference with Open Water swimming.  As of today I will be roughly 87,000m ahead of my target and looking forward to two big months of swimming.

Both July and August will be lots of time in the lakes, and if the weather does not allow for OW swimming I will move into the pool.  It would be fun to see if I can average 40 km/week when I am on vacation week 29-32. I don’t like swimming alone, but I think I have enough swimming friends in the area that I will be able to find a partner for most of my workouts.

With no 42 km race in August I have to decide if I am mentally tough enough to swim 42 km just for fun.  I have had the idea for weeks now. Swimming 3 km fourteen times would be 42 km.  I assume it would take 12-13 hours of swimming so roughly 14 hours including all the feeding stops.  I could make it into a Backyard challenge. Swim 3 km every hour on the hour starting at 07:00 and having the last 3 km start at 20:00.  Daylight will not be a problem as the sunsets just after 20:00 at the end of August.  More on that after I have had more time to think it through.