Scott Ragsdale

woke at 4am (slept ok)
SWIM:  30 minutes easy

Comments:  I had a nice easy 30 minute swim, just focusing on my feel for the water.
I have been eating a lot to try and gain weight.  Crazy, but I dont seem to be gaining much.

woke at 4am (slept ok)
SWIM:  90 minutes open water (nearly, all my training swims are open water)

Comments:  I have good feel for the water, but my shoulders were sore for the first 30 minutes …  I noticed at the end of the swim the soreness had gone.

woke at 5:00 (slept terribly)

SWIM:  90 minutes

Comments:  To ensure I have some fat to protect me from the cold during the swim, I am trying to gain as much weight as I  can, as fast as I can.  I eat a lot and very often feel like absolute shit for parts of the day.
I do not sleep well — I look forward to getting this swim over with and going back to my vegan diet.

Easy swim and my taper has begun.  My shoulders are sore.  I think its worth noting that during the time  I was a vegan (8 months) I seemed to recover a lot quicker after serious training — i read many vegan athletes mention the same thing (quick recovery).
I changed my diet about a month ago – to try and gain weight for the swim and since I notice my shoulders are sore after long swims. 

For the past 3-4 weeks, since I stopped being a vegan, I sleep very poorly, extremely irritable and do not recover as quickly as before.  I decided to go back to my vegan diet starting today – to gain weight, I will just focus on eating lots of pasta and carbs.

woke at 5am (slept poorly – my upper back was sore and the pain woke me up)

SWIM:  3:45
comments:  I was scheduled to do a 4 hour swim, but I finished 15 minutes faster.
I swam from the Castel Beach in Nice  — the same course as I swam yesterday

my shoulders were sore, very sore the first hour, but seems to become less after an hour or so.
good feel for the water – but the water is not cold at all, thus I am missing the most important part – cold water training.

I am eating as much as I can – trying to gain as much weight as I can by sept 2nd … after my swim, I went to Barqblue and had a pizza, pasta, coke, and desert … now I feel like absolute shit!

woke at 6 am (slept ok, but drank too much wine the night before so not a good sleep)

SWIM:  7:15
Comments:  my last long swim — I had a dinner party friday night so mentally and physically was not ready for a long swim.

On the drive to Castel beach in Nice, I discovered that I had to go to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for a meeting on Monday so my mind was not focused at all on the swim.

Once in the water – I got into my rythm and the swim was ok.

I stopped after 3 hours for a water break (where i left my bag) and called my assistant in Dubai to hear about my flight details — that took 10 minutes … then got back in the water, but this time i got stung by many jelly fish and the time crawled by.

I will need to be much more focused and mentally tough to finish the channel.
Today was a long swim, but no where near the quality and focus it should have been