Glass man to Ironman

With about 7-8 weeks left now until the Dambuster I thought I would give an update on my training...if you can call it that! Unfortunately for me due to working and having a family its hard to stick to a routine so my training is very playing by ear so to speak, the only constant training I would say out the three I'm doing is the swimming due to never being in open water and the fear of getting in the middle of the lake and being out of breath/energy/drowning is constantly playing on my mind, so full focus on that to be able to do 1500m, currently at the moment I can do 900m broken up into small sets with a few breathers in between, then have a rest and prob do another 400m just taking it easy. Some days it will be like wow! I can keep going! other days I have felt like giving up...I go to fast, I struggle, my form goes downhill and I just want to get out the pool. I have started taking gels 20-30mins prior to going in, which I think has helped abit, or maybe its just a placebo? A

Last week I got my first taste of what my wetsuit was like, and I was totally amazed at how buoyant and easy it was to swim in it, totally felt like a cheat! Happy with my wetsuit I have decided just to shed a few lbs just to make sure its a snug fit. Now...yesterday I got a taste of the real thing, I headed down to our local lakes where one of the tri club coaches gave us an intro to open water... now this really was an eye opener!!! Temp of the lake was sitting around 10 degrees and it was raining! But we all headed in an did some basic sighting and drafting skills, I have to admit that swimming in a straight line ain't easy, so need to work on the sighting bit. After 25mins we got out and my hands an feet were dead! Hopefully ill go back for some more sessions before dambuster. Now I thought I would be able to strengthen my feet with the vibrams and vivo neos but I've had to hang them up for now, its too tempting to run long distances in them, I got up to 2/3 miles before I