April 5km Swim with Thyroid Cancer
Waking up at 5.15am is not my

The early morning drive to the beach was not great, I got a flat
Turns out it was a slow puncture, the moral of the story is check my tyres more often – one thing I am not very good at, I just get in the car and go!

The view at Balmoral beach when I arrived was stunning. Why is it that the thought of getting out ot bed to see the sunrise does not appeal, but when you do it you wonder why you don’t do it more?
You can see in the photo above that two of the pink buoys are already out ready for my April 5km swim. This course was two laps each about 2.5km. Not my
Leading up to this April 5km swim there have been a few hiccups. The bulging disc in my back in February forcing me out of the water for three weeks, then the thyroid cancer diagnosis at the end of March both have meant that, yes I have been swimming, but not enough to do my March 5km swim as well as this APril one. I plan to make up the March swim later in the year. In the meantime I felt that I had to get my April 5km swim in,

On the beach with lots of CanTooers (I’m in the black cossie) I didn’t think to get someone to take my photo, so I only have the back of my head!
I felt calm going into the race, despite the flat
During the race I wasn’t concentrating as much as I should have, I managed to take 4 wrong turns. That is I’d be swimming on my own get to a buoy and think I am sure that I turn here, turn only to have a water safety person come up to me about 25-50m later on a board to tell me I was going the wrong way! The first time I did this I thought I can make this up, but after the second and third

While swimming I
Home Straight
On the home straight turning right to take the last 400m into the beach I started to see more swimmers and there was one thought in my head – I am not going to let anyone overtake me! On that last
On the Beach
Luckily for
I want to be honest here on my blog in the hope that it will help others who are going through something similar. I did too much last Sunday, the emotional strain of being told I have thyroid cancer along with the physical and mental stress of swimming 5km (regardless of whether I have done it before) just tipped me over the edge. There was a lot of crying. Looking back I am not surprised, I felt I was very relaxed about my whole diagnosis and it had to come out sometime. Friends afterward were amazed that I had actually done it given the circumstances. My thoughts are that FACT: it wasn’t my best 5km, but I did it. I have another nine 5km swims to complete this year and there is lots of time to get faster and better results once I get
Now it is time to enjoy my swimming until the operation, one more 5km swim has been ticked off and I have much more glamorous (Marseille) swims to come and I need to fcous on getting better for them.
THANK YOU for all the support so far, I do really really appreciate it, now help me KICK ovarian cancer by donating to my fundraising page 🙂
Love, Lara xx