For those of you that read about my 42km race, or the roughly 2,500km I swam from August 2019 until September 2021 this might not come as a shock.

After about one month of swimming with Masters after my long race, I could not lift my left arm. I had some discomfort during the month that I assumed was just soreness from swimming 13.5 hours. but on Sunday the 26th of September 2021, I was not able to swim more than warm-up. I made the mistake of kicking with fins and a board the 8x 400. When practice was over, I was not able to lift my left arm without a lot of pain. I tried to rest and only swim one 2000m workout a week in October, which led to not swimming at all in November and getting a Cortisone shot on December 2nd. This allowed me to swim the 50m breaststroke at Swedish Nationals, but that would later show to have been a mistake on my part.

I swam drills with fins for the rest of December and took a two week pause around Christmas. All of January I continued to only swim with fins, only swim drills and got out of the pool after warm-up. February 2nd I got a second Cortisone shot. For the rest of February and March I stayed patient with my swimming. Building up from only warm up to by May 1st swimming 5000m. (3700m pool + 1300m OW). The rest of May I took it easy in the pool with my only goal to be able to swim 75-90min OW in June. In June I only managed to get to the lake 10 times, but swam in a pool 5 times.

While in the US I swam zero meters. I didn’t even go out far enough in the ocean to get my whole body wet. So after 24 days of no swimming of any kind I have less than three weeks to test my shoulder, try to build up some endurance and decide if I am going to start my 7th Vidösternsimmet (5x 21km + 1x 42km). My problem is I am really looking forward to the Stockholm Golden in October.