It time to go back in the water (by Sarah)

Once again in the Arch to Arc, I have been able to enjoy everyone’s company and cooking at the team dinners. This has made up for the reality of the training schedule, which, as predicted, is quite gruelling and impacts family life. With the long hours he works, Julian often has to do the majority of his training at the weekend. After a long run on Saturday and a longer cycle on Sunday morning I often look forward to a bit of family time on Sunday afternoon, forgetting that just as we are settling in to it, Julian has to leave again for swim training at tri club.

Sunday evening is then a wipe out as Julian collapses on the sofa, barely able to move! We have certainly had our tense moments over this, when I have to remember that I did have the previously mentioned "opt out" clause. The most notable of these was on the day of our youngest daughter’s 5th birthday party in January. As I rushed around getting ready for a party of 20 children in the village hall, Julian’s main concern was organising his cycle training and ‘did I really need the car to transport food, decorations etc to the hall because he wanted it to transport his bike to meet another member of the team’! To be fair he did eventually abandon and come and help me - but only because he had a problem with his bike.

The time consuming nature of the training is set to get worse as the team head down to Dover this weekend. Jocelyn and I are going as drivers: the cold I mentioned before means it’s not safe to drive directly after a training swim in the sea in May. I am partly doing this to support the brave team, but also because Julian has never let me forget that I missed the first training swim of the Channel 5 relay in 2006 as I was on a girls’ weekend away. Never mind that I attended other Dover relay training swims and numerous of his solo training swims, including his first ever training swim in the sea – yes I know that stony Dover harbour beach very well indeed!!

Apart from the vicarious cold swimming, I have also had a tiny (more physical) taste of the training schedule of our intrepid lady participant –Sue. I have started to go to a spin class with her, on a Wednesday morning. In the first session, a few weeks ago, I was feeling quite smug, after being complimented on not vomiting by the teacher -apparently some people do when they first start! ‘It’s really not too bad’ I was thinking to myself, when suddenly I realised that when the teacher said ‘turn a circle’ she did not mean turn the bike (I had wondered HOW you could do that on a stationary bike) but increase the resistance. As we took a drink rest and Sue turned back her resistance knob about 20 circles I realised I had been freewheeling the whole way! Power to you Sue.

Good luck to the fantastic 6 on Saturday – your dedication so far is inspiring.