They think it's all over... it is now (#Janathon day 10)

Tipton Swimming Centre

Tipton Swimming Centre - Interior

You'll be pleased to know that I'm talking about my holiday as opposed to quitting Janathon. My body is obviously getting ready to go back to work as I managed to sleep through the 06:00am and 07:00am alarms! (To be fair, I heard the one at 6, thought "That's loud" and went back to sleep again). If I don't get out of bed until 07.30am tomorrow like I did today I'm in trouble as I'll miss my train!

In sticking with my plan not to use the gym today, I checked the times for the swimming pool and was pleased to see that public swimming was 07:15am until 11:00am. Stellian was due to work from home today, so I convinced her, it would be a good start to the day to take a dip. She cleared it with her boss beforehand, but said that an hour would be the maximum she would be able to do without taking the mickey.

The plan was to drop the kids at school and then head straight to the pool, however Stellian got an urgent e-mail at just the wrong moment, which meant I dropped the kids off and then came back for her. It was pretty cold outside and I was suddenly questioning the wisdom of going swimming as the pool building is quite old and the changing rooms can get quite cold.

We arrived at 09:00am to be told that the swimming session would finish at 09:30am as there was a school group coming in to use the pool. This posed a dilemma as it was nowhere near the length of time we wanted, but I decided to go in anyway.

Yesterday, I had mentioned to Stellian that I could run home if I wanted to stay longer than she did. The temperature this morning, led me to question the wisdom of this decision, however I made sure I had all my running gear with me to keep my options open. The decision was promptly made for me when Stellian decided that 30 minutes wasn't really going to be a benefit and that she was taking the car home to get on with some work.

With only half an hour to play with, I decided to go for it - as many laps as I could get in within the allotted time. The pool felt busier than the other day and there were a fair amount of side-to-side-ers, which made doing lengths quite tricky. Every so often I'd come across a mobile chicane as the person in my way wasn't there when I started the length. Doing breast stroke, I looked at my watch as I passed 19 laps (the 400m that I did as a part of the triathlon swim the other day) and the time was showing roughly 11 and a half minutes, which is faster than I did last time. I decided to see how close I could get to 50 laps in half an hour. When I reached 32 lengths, it was looking distinctly unlikely, but fortunately, the pool was clearing. This gave me the opportunity to switch to front crawl. This was quite tiring, but was getting me closer to my target. At the end of every other length I'd check the clock and glance at the lifeguard to see whether I'd be told time was up. When they didn't, I'd set off again, giving backstroke a go to try and preserve some energy. As I reached the end of my 48th lap, my luck ran out and was asked to leave. (In the end, it was just as well as a class full of hyperactive boys came barrelling into the changing rooms just as I finished getting changed).

At Tipton, the new and old Birmingham mainline canals meet. This provides a variety of opportunities with regards to routes home, ranging from 1.3 miles to 2.98 miles. My iPhone was quoting the temperature outside at a balmy 1°C, so given I still had wet hair, I decided that the shortest distance would probably be best. It wasn't the most comfortable run I've done (which is clear from my pace - 13:10/mile), but it served its purpose (I got home)!

As a reward (and to warm me up), I nipped out to McDonalds to buy a couple of coffees. I swear she took her time to take my order at the drive through to give me enough time to look through the breakfast menu. I was good and resisted the urge to order a sausage and egg mcmuffin meal, remembering that Thursday evening is my weigh-in day. I'm just hoping to have lost weight this week given I put on last week.

The walking total may increase later if I decided to track this afternoon's pick up from school, but in case I don't I've still done over 2 miles today. Depending on how things go, I may need a new total mileage goal for Janathon as I've got less than 25 miles left and we're not halfway through the month yet!

15:33 Edited to add:
I had been looking at some of the local pubs online, but none of their menus were highlighting what healthy food they were service. We thought we'd try The Village in Dudley as we hadn't been for a while, but the prices were much higher than we wanted to pay for a lunch. In the end, we settled on Pizza Hut, which would be our main meal of the day. We both went for a Pizzetta (which was only 460 calories) and helped ourself to the salad bar whilst we were waiting. The unexpected bonus was that Stellian found an offer through Vouchercloud to get both our meals for the price of one. Result!

I was feeling rather full after that so the extra mile walking to get the kids from school both contributes to my Janathon total and starts to work off a delicious lunch. Hopefully the scales will be kind later!

Walking:
Distance - 1.38 miles
Time - 24m 27

Running: 
Distance -1.3 miles
Time - 17m 11

Swimming:
Distance - 0.65 miles
Time - 29m 04

Total today:
Distance - 3.33 miles
Time - 1h 10m 42

Janathon:
Total Distance - 86.49 miles
Total Time - 14h 04m 31
Miles remaining - 23.51

Acknowledgement:
Photograph of the interior of Tipton Swimming Centre taken from http://www.slt-leisure.co.uk/leisure-centre/tipton-swimming-centre