eff off I'm doing breaststroke....... with 485,000 metres left.

Having resolved the problematic piano lesson, I was free to work late and then make the Thursday night session at the new pool in Heworth. For any of you familiar with the aquatic establishments in Gateshead you will know that they have had a huge capital investment programme in swimming pools, Replacing pools in Felling and Blaydon and refurbishing the other three pools in the town.

This is the replacement for that concrete monstrosity which was Felling pool. Sadly the new pool is only a 4 lane 25m but that is a dramatic improvement on the initial plans for a 4 lane 20m pool. There is also an additional surfing thingy! learner pool and kids pool with a fountain and waterfall. I've never managed to make training there since it opened at the end of last year but very nice it is too, a great temperature, decklevel and wave eraser lane ropes so it makes a welcome change to swim in calm water rather than plod through the storm surge in the old Blaydon and Felling pools.

There were only 6 of us turned out for the session and only 3 of us were survivors from Tuesday night. I am also feeling a little smug because I managed to persuade my heart rate monitor to work properly and it finally downloaded all the pretty graphs. I'm not sure if it's not too clever though, cos when I downloaded Tuesday's session the calendar told me that I shouldn't swim on Wednesday (it was red) and today Thursday was amber and it told me that I could train but I should avoid high intensity work or races. I instinctively knew that, cos my body was telling me that I was too knackered to put any effort in, so it was a fairly steady swim and quite uneventful although I did react quite poorly to a suggestion that the 12 x 25's should be swum butterfly, "eff off" was my supportive comment "I'm doing breaststroke."

9 x 100 @ 2.10 warm up 100,free, 100 back, 100 IM x 3
6 x 100 25 swim, 50 catch up 25 swim @ 2.05
6 x 100 @ 2.05 breathing 8 strokes for 1st 25, 6 strokes 2nd 25 and breathing every 4 for last 50
12 x 25 breast @ 45s
12 x 50 @ 65s working on turns
300 pull swim down
Total 3300m
Cumulative total 15,000m