Saturday rolled around again and we were back on that delightful road to Dover. The car was chatty as we headed south - helped a little by the better than anticipated weather (i.e. it wasn't pouring with rain!). However as we came over the hill and began to descend down to the harbour, an awkward silence fell.
We had enquired - for planning purposes - of our trainer, Freda, how long we might be swimming. The news wasn't good. Perhaps she would have relented in the intervening days and would only gives a little bit more than the 45 minutes last time. And don't forget the water temperature had come up a tad...
But however you positioned it, it wasn't going to be good. We finally admitted defeat and got changed on the beach, ready to receive our vaseline from Barrie and our instructions from Freda. ONE hour...ahhh.
Once again I was swimming with Sue who despite suffering the worst from the cold - that will teach her not to get so fit running and cycling...you need those extra fat reserves in the swim - was still at the front of the team heading into the water.
From my previous week's adventures, I was not looking forward to following her in. The cold water is horrible - but my body soon goes numb. It was the tooth that I was worried about. I had taken a couple of Nurofen in anticipation but I knew that an hour later when I finally emerged from the water, I would have 15 minutes of shrivering before I was rendered horizontal by tooth ache!
So why hadn't I seen my dentist? Well I had. His verdict - probably microfractures from grinding my teeth or a nerve which was freezing and then defrosting. He tried artifically freezing it - and the experiment worked...a painful tooth resulted! To resolve the issue, I had 3 choices: 1. whip the offending tooth/teeth out; 2. major reconstruction work; or 3. Lots of Nurofen. Not being a fan of dental work, I opted for the Nurofen.
And so I struggled up the shore after an hour, got dressed, took 2 more Nurofen and promptly passed out. 30 minutes later I was able to converse normally again - albeit my team mates were generally still defrosting.
75 minutes after the first swim and we went back in to repeat the entire exercise. Sue achieved a personal best this season of another 30 minutes and then I headed down the harbour to complete a full circuit to both walls. This took me an extra 45freezing minutes due to the wind, waves and tides - making it in total a very long 2 hours 15 minutes of training.
But somehow the extra 45 minutes of freezing swimming wasn't quite as bad when it delayed the inevitable- 30 minutes of tooth pain. And what was worse, I calculated that I had now had the maximum dose of 6 Nurofen in a 24 hour period.
You know things are REALLY bad when you sit staring at a packet of Nurofen considering whether taking another 6 pills - and suffering the consequences - would really not be preferable to having to wait for the tooth pain to subside...
Oh well...we get to do our 2 hour qualifying swim soon. Ahhhhh.
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