Luckily at the end of the Project 65 run we get to take a ferry to France, I won't have this luxury on the 18th of July when I take part in a swim from Southsea to the Isle of Wight in support of Champion Behaviours. So in addition to my training for the 65 mile run I have begun to increase my swimming in preparation for the 4 mile paddle across the solent.
Saturday morning saw me arrive at a lake just outside worcester resplendent in my new wetsuit. All in all it was a revolting and deeply unpleasant experience. Openwater swimmers must be seriously troubled to choose to do this on a regular basis. I moaned and limped my way through 2 miserable miles before getting out (well crawling out) and shivering wildly for 2 hours.
Aside from that I had some good runs and my hamstring is nearly better, I ran the course for a new race organised in Putley by the Big Apple which was beautiful taking me down some lanes I hadn't run through before and down one arcade of apples which was so heavy with blossom and scent it was overpowering. On sunday Merlin and I ran another favourite route in the blackcurrant fields where I took a photo of a relic of an Innocent ad campaign from a couple of years ago, so far the conditions have been so lovely it looks like it will be a bumper year for fruit (of course given the english weather there is lots of time for this to change).
My overall mileage on my runs is someway behind where I would like to be with only 4 weeks to go so I suspect it will be a long 20hours to get to france, but nobody said it would be easy.