My progress

I am in a bit of a schmozzle. Despite planning, diarising and organising I haven't quite managed what I had planned for Week 4 of the 12WBT. Noone to blame but myself. I knew it was going to end up like this but I have buried my head in the sand a bit. Nothing really that bad - I have just proven once again that I cannot be trusted with numbers.

I set three goals to achieve by the end of Week 4 (10 March). These are to:

• Goal: Lose 5kg
• Goal: Swim 1km freestyle non-stop in under 35 minutes
• Goal: Swim 200 metres butterfly non-stop.

So have I been a woman of my word and achieved them? Well, sort of but not really.

Goal: Lose 5kg
At this Wednesday's weigh-in my total loss after nearly a month on the 12WBT was 6.3kgs (7.3kg if you count the 1kg lost in pre-season). I have also lost 14cm in total from various parts of my body, including, joy of joys, my bust (-4cm) and upper arms (-2cm). So, yes, I think I can say: GOAL ACHIEVED.

Since starting on my fitness and healthy living program last September I have been recording my food and exercise. According to MyFitnessPal I have lost a total of 17.2kgs. My BMI has gone from 45 to 39.2. So things are going pretty well.

Now that all sounds pretty good. But the focus of all this has been on improving my fitness. Last year I ended up in hospital after an asthma attack. I hadn't had a bad asthma attack in many years. When I saw my GP after coming out of hospital she told me I could have died. I replied that I thought I was going to die. She thought I was being flippant, but I wasn't - when you can't breathe you know things are serious. And I realised I needed to start taking better care of myself. I don't 'do' diets. As soon as I feel like I am being deprived I start craving, I get frustrated and angry and I end up eating more than if I hadn't started on the diet in the first place.

So, rather than go down that old bumpy road I realised that what I wanted (and needed) to do was get healthy. And getting healthy is about more than just losing weight. That shift in my thinking seems to have helped a lot. My crazy thoughts no longer fight with my rational thoughts all the time. I don't feel deprived and some days are better than others. Socialising is hard and I do cook more than I used to. One thing I have cut out is sugar. I have not had any chocolate, cakes or biscuits since 17 September last year. Before that they were my raison d'être. Now, I am finding other reasons for my existence.

Goal: Swim 1km freestyle non-stop in under 35 minutes
Because I can't run, I did the alternative time trial in the 12WBT fitness test of swimming 300 metres. When I first did this test on Sunday 5 February I did it in less than 8 minutes which meant I was assessed as 'Intermediate' fitness for that part of the fitness test. That didn't surprise me as I had done a lot of work on my stamina since starting back in the swimming pool last September.

Last Sunday, 3 March 2013, I did the first Mini Milestone swimming time trial since that first 300 metre swimming time trial. My speed was absolutely amazing - going from 7min 37secs to 3min 30secs. I felt good in the water but I didn't think I was going that fast. But sometimes the fastest swims are actually the easiest. Yay, the old me is back, I thought. How good is that! Hang on, thinks me, something is wrong there. That really can't be right. So I do the time trial again. And I swim a few seconds faster. Maybe there is something wrong with the stop watch? So I do it again. A few seconds even faster. And I do it all with such ease. That's when the next warning bell tinkles. That is just too much of an improvement in less than 4 weeks. Those times are around what I was doing in my teenage years.

So I come home and mull it over. Then the penny drops - oops, I didn't swim the correct distance - I only swam half of it. A 300-metre swim in a 25-metre pool is 12 laps. I did 6. Bugger. (I need to explain here that sometimes the 50 metre pool I swim in is divided in half with a bulkhead, as it was last Sunday morning. And the problem starts with that, as I often get mixed up with my distances when swimming in a 25 metre pool. I can only think in 50 metre lengths, not 25-metre laps and when I try to think differently I inevitably get myself into problems, which I have done with both of my one-month swimming goals.)

What to do? I get out my calculator and some paper and do some figures. I double my time and work out that I have still had an improvement, and I have dropped around 7 secs on my per-lap speed, so that is good, but it is still only half the distance so I am not really comparing apples with apples. So I decide that just doubling the time is not good enough as it is not really an honest measurement. So I reschedule to redo it this Saturday. Bugger, bugger.

But it all gets even more complicated. It starts me thinking about my goal of swimming 1km freestyle in 35 minutes. I had based that on a previous timed swim I did  - 1500 metres in 37min 12secs (done 3 December 2012).

Then the penny drops. I have got my goal time and distance wrong too! Instead of having a goal of 1km it should have been 1.5km. Bugger, bugger, bugger! 

I need to digress here for a moment to explain something - and, no, I am not using an excuse - I have, to put it bluntly, stuffed up my swim distances, and this is why. Everyone who knows me knows that maths is not my strong suit. Add to that the fact that having been born in the 1950s I have never quite let go of the Imperial system. I can think in kilos but I still measure length in inches, yards and miles). So when I am swimming I think in yards, not metres. What this means is that when I set my 1km goal I was actually thinking of 1 mile, not 1 kilometre. And there is a big difference. A mile was the equivalent of 32 laps of a 55-yard pool. One kilometre is 20 laps of a 50-metre pool.

I did a 1km time trial on 25 February (and, yes, I am absolutely sure I did 40 laps of a 25 metre pool so I definitely did 1km). I did that 1km in 24 minutes. At the time I wondered why I did it so fast given that my goal was to do it in under 35 minutes. And then it dawned on me, I had set the wrong distance in my goal. I had chosen a 35 minute time on the basis of my 3 December 2012 time-trial - but that had been 1.5km not 1km. So, my 24 minutes for 1km wasn't as fast as I thought it was either! My basic maths was fine - the per 50-metre time I used to estimate my goal was fine. I just got the actual distance involved wrong.

What I should have written in my goal was either:

•  1.5km in 35 minutes (30 laps of a 50 metre pool; or 60 laps of a 25 metre pool = 1500 metres); or
• 1 km in 23min 3 secs (20 laps of a 50 metre pool; or 40 laps of a 25 metre pool = 1000 metres).

 So, what to do? Well, I am re-doing my 300-metre time trial and my 1km time trial again. Tomorrow, Saturday. In the morning. Before I can think too much about it. JFDI. And I will get someone else to time me (and to count my laps!)

Which leaves me to the last of my three 4-week goals. Which is the most challenging of the three goals and one I have been kicking myself for setting so early in the 12WBT.



Goal: Swim 200 metres butterfly non-stop
I have been totally frozen in trying to swim the 200 metre butterfly. Utter fear. Total anxiety about it. I have scheduled the swim and put it off and scheduled it and put it off. I didn't actually mean 200 metres when I set that goal - I meant 4 laps of a 25-metre pool (100 metres). But it was my mistake so I am going to live with it.

I have talked to my coach who says I can do it. I know I can do it. I have put it off and now, because I have stuffed up my freestyle goal and am re-doing that, I am going to have to do this the day after my other swim. Not ideal but I have had the opportunity to try for it all week and I haven't. So now the pressure is on. It is now in my diary for this Sunday 10 March. And it is going to happen. JFDI.