Not sure whether it's registered in the
consciousness of my readership yet (all 3 of you), but there has been a
distinct lack of Bingeing in swimming pools and blogging as 2013 drew to a
close.
But there's something about the human condition
that when January rolls around we resolve to make a fresh start and to
immediately break all of the bad habits which have been ingrained into our
psyche for decades?
You could call it a triumph of hope over experience
but this year was no exception as I resolved (yet again) that I was going to
take swimming seriously, get fit and for the third time of asking complete my
mile a day challenge.
My starting point for this year’s campaign was to
download a copy of Trondi’s spreadsheet (which can be obtained from the
swimclub.co.uk site) so that I can track my progress over the year. I enter
590,000 metres as my target distance and the programme starts to shake,
convulse and snigger and then reports to me that this is not a sensible
target. I realise I needed to rediscover the swimming habit and pretty quickly.
So returning to work after the holidays and
during my first lunch break I tear myself away from the post Christmas divorce
rush, for my first swim of the year. I had anticipated that as it was still the
school holidays the pool would be busy, but not in the least, clearly the kids
were still wrapped up with their Christmas presents or put off by the weather.
The pool was surprisingly tranquil with about 6 others most of whom were head
up breaststrokers.
I chose the empty lap lane but was soon joined by a
bloke who insisted in swimming next to me rather than in a chain. This guy had
a good stroke, a fair turn of speed, tumbled and was easily out pacing me. I
did try and hang on to his feet for a while, I just couldn’t help myself,
particularly when he said in a rather patronising tone that he was “impressed”
that I was tumble turning! but despite this additional motivation I was quickly
left floundering and overwhelmed by the effort.
As I was swimming along I tried to justify my poor
performance by the fact that he was doing 2 length sprints and I was swimming
an 800 warm up but I finally just resigned myself to the fact that any come
back was going to be a long, painful and probably humiliating process.
800 warm up alternating 66 free swim, 66 catch up
8 x 100 pull @ 1:55
6 x 33's @ 50 secs
200 swim down
2000 metres
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