Famous day today with two of the squad swimming the English Channel. Cae Tolman left Dover at 0200hrs and Ben Hutt at 0300hrs, GMT. Start in the middle of the night, end in daylight on a French beach somewhere near Calais. Best of luck to both of them.

Back in Sydney it’s Wicked Wednesday in Victoria Park pool . Air temp is around 6 degrees so stripping off and tip toeing across the cold concrete pool deck is the order of the morning. Water in the pool is delicious – far warmer inside than outside.

Program today is warm up and drills to about 1,200m, main set of two times 3x150m, 3x250m, 3 x100m, total 3km. 600m warmdown plus a couple of extra laps thrown in to bring the tally up to 5km.

The squad swims the last of the darkness out of the night and slowly the sun rises through the palm tree fronds and assorted other foliage of Victoria Park.

The first burst of sun over the horizon is a decoy, a ricochet off a wall of glass on a high rise
somewhere east until, in full glory the winter ball of fire burns away all pretenders and emerges triumphant through the tree line.

Hopefully when the sun rises on the other side of the world Cae and Ben will be powering away mid channel with Calais firmly in their sights