It's all going swimmingly

I love to swim. There is something about getting into a pool, or a body of water, and just feeling the freedom of floating. I tell people I’ve been swimming since I could walk, and although that’s probably not strictly accurate, it’s not far from the truth. I was lucky enough to gain access to a swimming pool on a regular basis when I was younger and encouraged to learn to swim all the strokes there were. When I went to school once again I was lucky enough to have a school that had a pool so in the summer I spent the majority of my free time there, often getting in the pool twice a day, although I’m not sure exactly how much swimming I did and how much messing around I was doing instead! Enough swimming was done for me to be the fastest at backstroke, and I often won races (although I lost a couple by turning over at the end to make sure I didn’t crash - sorry!).

My one regret when I went to university is that I didn’t stick it out in the pool. I probably had far too much fun going out and discovering the internet (which was a relatively novel invention in those days) and “didn’t have time” for swimming club. I did go swimming, every now and then, but it wasn’t particularly structured or intensive. Once I’d moved away from the swimming pool, I went less and less frequently. When I moved to Cambridge, I didn’t go at all – instead I played really bad badminton, a game I have now given up due to me being far too bad at hand-eye coordination to carry on with!

So we move to the present day. I’m now at my fittest I’ve been for a long time, but, once I’d signed up for the triathlon, I kept saying “I must get back to the pool”. I’d joined the local gym specifically for their pool but found that I was too slow for the fast lane and too fast for the slow lane, a very frustrating set of affairs. Once I’d moved to Woolwich I was five minutes’ walk from the local pool. But it took me nearly six months to get there. Why? Well it didn’t help that I was cycling 20 miles to work and back. By the time I’d got home, I was tired and hungry. Going swimming was the last thing on my mind. At weekends I’m often busy or tired. I still had faith in my ability to swim, despite the fact that I hadn’t actually been in a pool and done more than 20 laps (most of which breastroke) for a very long time.

I went along to the triathlon training day, and had a bit of a shock. Admittedly I had put a lot of effort into the running session prior to the swimming, but the sudden transition into an environment where there were no walls to hang on to and the fact I couldn’t see where I was going through the murky water totally threw me. My “strong swimmer” status was incorrect. I resolved that I had to start going to my local triathlon club to start swimming every week with them to improve my swimming style, fitness base and confidence in the water.