On April 20th, Tom and I took Jay out for his third sea swim of the year.  It was still 9 degrees out in the bay but we wanted to Jay to start pushing on early on in the year. 

After a 90min swim 10 days ago, our aim was 2.5 hours and see how he felt.  Just like his previous swims, Jay became stronger after an hour or so. 

It was quite lumpy out their due to the SE wind so we swam him into Portland Harbour for a bit of shelter.  After 3hrs, Jay climbed back into the Enduroboat with a big smile on his face. 

"This shit is awesome" were the first words out of his mouth.  What more can we ask of a swimmer?






It was Tom's first outing of the year.  In 81 years, Tom has coached over 80 athletes to swim the English Channel and has coached the youngest ever person to complete this feat (12 years old). 
Tom is great asset for Enduroman, and his extensive experience mixed in with the Enduroman's successful Arch to Arc CV is a great recipe for the A2A wannabe.
Personally, I have been recce'ing numerous Deca courses around the country.  It will happen, and in the end, I know that our patience will pay dividend.  I also ventured back onto the athletics track on April 11th at the Bournemouth track and field open meeting.
 



I entered the 400m and the high jump (mainly because my 15 year old nephew (Alex) entered the same events)).  Also, I really felt the extra 2 stones, it was great to be back on the red springy stuff again, and I cursed my Achilles once again for taking this great sport away from me prematurely 18 years ago. 

With that said, it was good for smugability to stand toe-to-toe with athletes more than half my age and still come in 3rd in both events. (Although I couldn't walk for a week later).







Paul Casey - unlucky mate...  the US Marine attempted the Enduroman 5-Iron a couple of weeks ago.  After a 15ish hour swim and a 22 hour first day on the bike he pulled out on Day 3 when he realized that he was not going to make the cut-off time.