Early morning swim (#Janathon Day 13)

I don't think I have ever got up solely because I wanted to do some exercise.

Today looked like it was going to be a busy day and so I wasn't entirely sure when I was going to be able to fit some exercise in.

Inspired by Stellian getting out of bed yesterday to go swimming as it opened, I decided this was a good idea.

On stepping outside, however there was a thick layer of frost on the neighbours cars so I was glad I'd put the windscreen protector on Stellian's car when I parked it last night. Otherwise, I'd have lost a good proportion of my exercise time defrosting the window.

To say I got to the pool at the schedule opening time, I was surprised to see that there were some people already in the water. Anyone who gets there early obviously wants to swim and everyone was doing lengths, however as time passed the pool started to fill up.

I had originally thought about doing blocks of strokes and did 20 lengths breast stroke quite happily before moving onto backstroke. Three laps into that, however, I encountered a problem. Although I was swimming in a straight line and was sure my way was clear when I started the length, I managed to hit two different swimmers who were slowly doing breast stroke. After a quick apology, I went back to breast stroke myself so I could play dodgems if I needed to.

Mmmm - pies!

I wanted to get out of the pool about 9 to enable me to get home and changed. As I got close, I was around 61/62 laps. I knew I was well over a kilometre and was hoping to complete a mile. I worked out that 70 laps wouldn't be enough, but 80 would take me over both in distance and time-wise. Unfortunately, I was unable to work out which lap would take me over the mile mark. I therefore stopped at 70, got dried off and worked it out. 73 was the magic number, but that'll have to wait for next time.

Usually, I'm pretty good with my food. Stellian is doing weightwatchers so cooks decent food to help us lose weight. (Yesterday she made home-made pies from the Hairy Dieter's cookbook and they were delicious)!

However, today I was hungry. When our church does Messy or Cafe church, food is provided and today it was sausage baps. They were too good to resist and I demolished 3! I fear that's undone all my good work this morning!

From there it was onto the delights of a warehouse which contains one of the local soft play areas. You'd have thought that exercise followed by a warm church, eating hot sausage sandwiches and mugs of tea would have warmed me up. It was freezing! I took my coat off as I sat down and had to put it back on again within a couple of minutes!

I love soft play areas, they're a great way for kids to blow off steam, particularly when the weather's rubbish. Anyone who wanted to go on Fun House but never got the chance can now enjoy 'helping' their little darlings around a particularly tricky part of the play area (making sure you take the longest way in and out for maximum enjoyment).

A whole lot of fun, but no prizes to be won

I also hate soft play areas, especially when they get overcrowded. It makes it very difficult to keep an eye on the children. OK so the front door is monitored so they can't get out, and they'll find you if they want something (drink, loo or TLC because a ball has hit them on the nose). But I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to extract them from a birthday party they haven't been invited to (luckily always before they've started eating!)

We were there as S had been invited to a friend's birthday party. Despite a couple of protests when he claimed to be full, he did eat most of his lunch. Getting S to eat is not normally a problem, but I caught him sneaking another Sausage bap at Messy Church after I'd told him "No more" so I was worried he wouldn't be able to eat anything.

The afternoon wasn't as hectic as the morning had been and Stellian took herself off to the gym for a bit. This made me feel that perhaps I hadn't done enough exercise for the day, so when she got back, I took myself down to the bike. My heart wasn't in it to tell you the truth and I didn't set out with either a time or distance goal in mind nor did I set any resistance. In the end, I covered 5 miles in a 16 and a half minutes, but that definitely is it for today now.

Swimming:
Distance - 0.96 miles
Time - 44m 08

Freezing Play Areas: 1
Sausage Baps: 3

Swimming:
Distance - 5.00 miles
Time - 16m 30

Total today:
Distance - 5.96 miles
Time - 1h 00m 38

Janathon:
Total Distance - 107.07 miles
Total Time - 17h 29m 36
Miles remaining - 17.93