I’m just out of another weekend Loch Lomond training swim with Big Chris and a cameo visit from Fiona. Due to a few uncontrollable reasons we decided that a shorter swim was in order today; we looked at the weather for the weekend and there was an easterly wind across the loch so decided to start our swim from Luss and use the shelter of the islands to ensure we achieved a smoother swim than fight the chop from our usual entry point at Balloch. The following “MapmyRun” visual doesn’t show the islands in the Loch so if you visualise islands to the right of our swim route you will see the shelter we sort after and achieved.

One of the other reasons we decided to cut short the swim today was the fact for the second week running i was swimming with a world record holder, no James wasn’t with us again but my partner in crime Big Chris “Shoulders” McGrenary was drafted in on Thursday to be part of a Loch Lomond relay team who were trying to break the record for 24 miles, each of the 4 members of the team had to swim an hour leg at a time in only their Budgie smugglers and goggles, needless to say they smashed the record in a time of 9 hours and 20 mins. I was delighted for the big man, but he was feeling his shoulders today so needed to ease back into the distances.

I have to admit i am starting to get worried looking at the longer term forecast over the next 10 days, its a period of temperamental weather which probably means that we wont be taking on the big challenge until into August. I’m no weatherman but we could do with a few days of high pressure over a weekend ideally starting on a Thursday to enable us to confirm the day the journey will take place. Maybe i am worrying too much, we set our projected date as August 3rd so hopefully anytime in the next month will be perfect!