…a mantra that I should have been singing to myself much more often for the past few months. Sadly, I didn’t, and now I find that I can’t.
Okay, maybe a slight overstatement as I clearly can still swim, but nowhere near as well as I once could. The annoying thing with swimming is that if you don’t keep it up on a twice or thrice weekly basis, the skill quickly begins to evade you. A few years ago, I swam upwards of 2km twice a week with my triathlon club in South Wales, at a pretty respectable pace. Currently, I’m struggling to keep that pace up for anything longer than 200m.
I find swimming the most intimidating of the three triathlon disciplines. Maybe it’s because it’s the most dangerous, but also maybe because it’s the discipline with perhaps the biggest leap between ‘good’ and ‘freak of nature who should have been born amphibian’, and I certainly don’t fall in to the latter category. It’s also absolutely bloody knackering. But, with 10 weeks and counting until my first race of 2020, I suddenly realised that pottering along in the 25m school pool just wasn’t going to cut it. So, I decided to trial for a swim club of sorts at our local fitness freak gym complex.
Now, I’ve seen these people swimming. They’re bloody good. Two years ago I would have had no qualms going for a trial, but now… well, let’s just say I let the pressure get to me a bit.
I organised the trial for a Sunday evening, planning to go straight from work to the pool. I conveniently realised on the way that I needed petrol, and that I would have to battle my way up the bottleneck of Hessa Street in order to get there. There was just no way I was going to make it. So convinced was I of this terribly unfortunate situation that I thought I would pop by the pool anyway, just to introduce myself to the coach, express my deepest regret at how long it had taken me to get fuel, and promise to be there next week. I sincerely hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm.
In the event, I actually got to the pool with enough time to get changed and sprint to poolside, and so steeled myself for the trial… only to arrive at poolside to discover that some thoughtful child had neglected their pre-swim toilet routine, resulting in the pool being closed for 48 hours. Such a shame.
However, this now meant that I had to re-steel for my trial this Tuesday. On the day, I got home, did a hill set on the turbo and reasoned with myself that really, I should go to the trial fresh, having not done any training so… I’ll just curl up on the sofa. Luckily, my hero of a husband came home, and in a firm but loving manner, hoofed me out of the door. I arrived at the pool and introduced myself to the coach who as conducting the assessment. We talked through my background, times etc, to which he responded that I would probably be put in the Beginner Fitness Class. I’ll be honest, my ego was crushed. He hadn’t even seen me swim and had already written me off as a non-swimmer! How dare he?! So in I got, determined to show him how good I was (note use of past tense here). In the event, after watching me swim a few lengths, the coach got me out and stated that, actually, I should definitely be in the Advanced Class. Ego rebooted, I switched to the lanes next to the aforementioned class to complete my own set and to have a nose at theirs. They were doing IMs. For the non-swimmers amongst you, this stands for Individual Medley and consists of butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. Back to back. Flat out. On repeat. I haven’t even attempted fly since I was about 12. I haven’t needed to! Ego back at the bottom of the pool, I completed my set and dejectedly made my way to the changing rooms. My first session with the club will be next week once I’m back from the UK. Let’s see if I can persuade my very weak upper body to ‘just keep swimming… butterfly.’.
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