Bad News

Hello Bloggers. A few days ago my family had some bad news. Julie's father has been diagnosed withe a very aggressive form of Leukaemia. Hence for the last few days I have been juggling trips between my home in Cambridgeshire and Stoke-on-Trent, where Julie's parents live. Today, Ron went into hospital to commence 6 weeks of chemotherapy - not a great Christmas present for him. It was hoped that he could keep his Christmas plans of coming to stay with us at Wyton and go into hospital in the new year; however, treatment was needed immediately.

Julie is up in Stoke at the moment and I will join her tomorrow. I have not got access to the internet in Stoke so there will be a few blank days in this blog. That said, Jase Walkley lives near Julie's parents and I plan to get some training completed with him. Maybe he will let me use his computer to blog. Anyway, training has taken a back seat for a while whilst we all try and support Ron - your prayers for his recovery would be most welcome, thank you.

On the training front, I did manage to squeeze my next Swimshack coaching session in today. It was a good one, and we took another big step into changing my swim stroke entirely. I now have a 2 month period to work on some key aspects. I am very pleased with the progress so far but I am now working on changing my arm recovery. Changing an established muscle memory can be harder than learning a new technique so I must focus hard on the drills and continue to limit my full stroke swimming. The quest for fishlike swimming continues!

I doubt that I will get a blog completed prior to Christmas; so, everyone out there have a very merry Christmas. Train hard and recover well. Can't wait for the 2009 race season to get going.