First Week of Training - And Still Standing

This week was the first week of training with our teams and we were very impressed by the training group. They were very organised and will be an extremely valuable part of our preparation for the race. Our program includes two sessions - one in the pool during the week, and Saturday's session at Bondi beach - and will help us being the endurance and ocean knowledge needed to survive the race (literally and figuratively). Our weeknight training is in a pool in the city (Cook & Philip) where they have three or four lanes blocked specifically for our group. This first session was a wake-up but wasn't too horrible. The Wednesday group (with Amanda and Mel) swam 800M and it seems they wanted to push Thursday's group a bit more as we swam 1.2 K.

The real awakening came at Saturday morning's surf training - which started promptly at 9AM. At this first session we were given the overview about the rips - those dangerous currents which have a tendency to pull unaware tourists out to sea - and how we will eventually learn to use those currents to our advantage. Once we actually were in the water it was a bit of a shock at first. A shock with the cold water, having to get adjusted to swimming as normal in the ocean water, and entering/exiting the water with hordes of people (there were 130+ there this weekend). In the end it was great to get a bit of experience and begin the journey of how this will all play out. For me the most interesting part was the fact that with goggles on we can see what is lurking below us... given yesterday's workout was simply to practice swimming through the surf and back we didn't see much more than sand, seaweed and an occasional rock. What worries me most is what we might see once we get out a bit further...

Stay tuned as we update the blog with team bios and progress reports on our fundraising and training goals.