I joined the Swimspirational buddies group for the Santa Swim back in December and won a 1:1 coaching session with Vicky in the raffle.

After I’d been selected for the Henley Mile swim, I decided to use my voucher for a river swim in Dedham. I’d intended to use it as part of my training, to see how close to a mile I could swim in front crawl by now.

However, after a night out watching Giovanni Pernice’s show (he was amazing if you’re wondering!), a couple of glasses of wine and a bad night’s sleep, on top of my other wobbles, I wasn’t feeling all that motivated this morning.

Vicky and I had a chat about our session today before we got into the water. She understands about how putting pressure on yourself limits enjoyment as she’s experienced this too. She also understands about my focus on front crawl but we talked about how breaststroke is not an inferior stroke. Why do so many of us focus on front crawl mastery as a swimming goal?

In the end, we both scrapped what we’d initially planned for the session and just enjoyed a wonderful, leisurely swim on a beautiful sunny morning. No expectations, a mixture of strokes, walking a few steps where it got too shallow to swim, some chat and some cows!

I’m hoping Henley experience will be like this – maybe without the cows….

Did I mention that this girl just swam a mile?! 😄