Education, education, education.

4 laps of the lake yesterday evening.  That's about 2 miles if my conversions are correct, although I have rounded up - more like 1.988 but I didn't count the first 50m so I'm not losing sleep about that.

I half intended to do 5 laps, but had other things to do last night and what made my mind up was when I raced another swimmer for the last 250m.  He had been gradually creeping up on me for the whole lap, and overtook me at the far end of the lake but didn't really get in front, so I decided to put a bit of an acceleration on, overtook him, got severe cramp in my calves where I had to keep my ankles at 90 degrees, let him get past me again and I limped back to the jetty as my calves settled down.

So, a few lessons learned there:
1. I can go faster if I want to
2. When I go faster, I risk cramping up and slowing down
3. When I get bad cramps, I can carry on swimming albeit a bit slower and recover