Today saw me drag my summer cold suffering carcass out of bed at 5.45am to go to Henley to participate in the Henley Mile swim. This event is one of the newer ones (the Henley Classic has run since about 1895) in the Henley swim season is a mile downstream starting outside the Remenham Club (I was there a couple of weeks ago but today's sartorial choices were very different) and finishing at the end of Temple Island. 

I'm feeling pretty guilty about swimming at all today as I was supposed to be sailing in the Edinburgh Cup on Monday and Tuesday but with two weeks to go to the big swim I bailed out of that one on the basis that I need to be fit and back up to speed and yacht racing with a stinking cold is no way to go about that!

So anyway. I swam. It felt pretty slow, I didn't ever really hit a rhythm ... cold impeding breathing, wetsuit not on quite right on left shoulder etc etc ... but I did it. 1.6km in 38 minutes with a printout, hat and medal to prove it. 

I had a chat to Greg Whyte afterwards (mostly to see if he was planning to do any lidos in his 50 swims challenge - the answer being he hasn't planned any but quite fancies Bude and Brixham sea pools later in the year). One of the things he said to the interviewer (not me) was that every training session is a deposit in the Happy Bank ... ie that you'll enjoy the challenge you are working to much more if you train properly for it as you'll get to cash in all those deposits on race day.

So here's hoping that with two weeks to go I get to put a few more deposits in the Happy Bank and that the balance is looking healthy by the time I make the big withdrawal on July 23