Juneathon day 4: the calf strikes back (plus a cute cat picture)

Written Jun 4, 2013, tagged under post,amersham,calf,foam rolling,juneathon,swimming

Juneathon: "an annual festival of activity and excuses". I've managed a bit of each today!

While I was keen to get a run in today, my calf had other ideas: going down the stairs to get breakfast, it was clear that it wasn't much better than last night. So I would have to do some other kind of exercise.

Particularly after the fun of last weekend's open water swimming, a trip down to the Amersham Pools seemed like the ideal option. I learned front crawl last year, training for the Blenheim Triathlon - oddly enough, getting started after spraining my knee and being told swimming was my main option for exercise. I'm a little bit rusty now, but still really enjoy it, so headed over around 9pm when the pool starts to quiet down a bit.

With a mixture of front crawl and breast stroke, I managed my first 750m in about 20:30, reaching 1km in around 28 mins. It definitely got my heart going, and didn't give me even the slightest twinge in the calf: result! And I had a lane to myself much of the time, which makes it so much more enjoyable.

Twitter has been a supportive place today as far as calf injuries go. I've had helpful reminders from @wgal_uk and @Helen_10pt to stick at it with the foam rolling in order to encourage a speedy recovery. I'm aiming now for a good 5 minutes of rolling a few times a day; watch this space! Let's hold that physio appointment at bay.

And now, to the thing you've all been waiting for. This weekend, we went to the Van Hage garden centre near Chorleywood, and found a rather appealing "cat pot"; now it greets us every time we come home, and makes me giggle to myself. Do you like him?

Daily total: swam 1km in 28:00, plus about 15 minutes of foam rolling