Most people who know me know that I am not really very sporty - in fact it would be true to say that I am not sporty at all!! I love watching sport on TV like Formula 1, football, rugby union, whatever's on the TV, but doing sport is another story! At least, that was until I got a leaflet with Guiding magazine about a sponsored swim. I decided that this was just the opportunity I needed to get fit and help others.

In August I started going to our local swimming pool to start getting into shape ready to do the Aspire Channel Swim. Basically this means that I have taken up a challenge to swim the distance of the channel (22 miles) in the comfort of my local swimming pool and over a period of several months! So between Monday 13th September and Sunday 5th December 2004 I will be aiming to swim a total of 1408 lengths of our local swimming pool! So far it's all going well and hopefully all this will also improve my general fitness as well as raise loads of money for a worthwhile cause becuase all this is being done to raise money for Aspire, a charity who help people with spinal cord injuries. If you want to find out more about Aspire or the Channel Swim Challenge please click on the links above.

So, how am I getting on?

Today is 6th October and I'm nearly one month into the challenge, and I've completed six miles! The schedule below shows how often I've been swimming and how many lengths I've done at each visit.

• 16th September - 32 lengths (½ mile)
• 17th September - 32 lengths (½ mile) 1st mile completed! Only 21 miles to go!
• 18th September - 64 lengths (1 mile) 2nd mile completed! Only 20 miles to go!
• 19th September - 64 lengths (1 mile) 3rd mile completed! Only 19 miles to go!
• 22nd September - 32 lengths (½ mile)
• 29th September - 32 lengths (½ mile) 4th mile completed! Only 18 miles to go!
• 3rd October - 64 lengths (1 mile) 5th mile completed! Only 17 miles to go!
• 6th October - 64 lengths (1 mile) 6th mile completed! Only 16 miles to go!