More swimming

I've had it in my head for a while that I would like to get better at swimming again. I used to go to the Commie pool straight after work every week day when I was in my 20s - before running took over. And I wasn't great but I was strong and I was comfortable in the water. Peter was off to cycle to the Pentlands today to meet Ben so they could do a Skyline together. I offered to give him a lift but he needs to punish himself for going over 37 minutes at the Musselburgh 10K yesterday. Fair dos. Running the Skyline with Peter and Ben wasn't something I would ever have joined in with - at best I would have done an expurgated Skyline, retaining the highlights but without all the sheer thrash.

Today I thought I would bite the bullet and see how the Commonwealth pool's looking since it re-opened. I was never a big fan of going to the pool at the weekend because of ch*ldr*n and f*mili*s. (Sssh! I'm trying not to offend them.) Of COURSE the human race wouldn't exist without children and families but what a noise they make and they get everywhere.

And I even drove up to the pool. I am taking the lazy-ass life-style to new heights. The pool was much, much better. Yes I am kidding. It was the same, except that now instead of just going to the changing rooms you have to go to the family changing village, or you don't have to but that's where I went because there was no sign saying where the ordinary changing was. I was bewildered and roamed around for a while trying to get my bearings. At last I found somewhere that I could just change. Another thing that's changed is that instead of 50p for the lockers you now need a pound coin, which worked in my favour, as the person who used my locker before me was obviously so bewildered by everything that they forgot to take their locker money with them when they left. So I was a pound up. (I don't care if it was your pound coin, I'm keeping it.)

The British Swim Team are having an Olympic Training Camp at the Commie pool at the moment so there were 6 lanes set aside for them to use later on. They obviously didn't want the fusty skin particles of ordinary swimmers floating about in their water. That meant there were just the two lanes open and an open area for kids to swim about in random directions as they do. The fast lane and the slow lane were moving at about the same rates with a similar amount of traffic in each. I joined the slow lane. My hunch that swimming might be alright for me just now seems to be about right. To my surprise, despite never having swum a length in quite some while (probably since we did the NYD triathlon in 2007), I was not the slowest in the slow lane, not by a long shot. Most of the time I could swim at the pace I wanted to but on the last 2 lengths I got stuck behind some guy who was swimming so slowly he was more upright in the water than horizontal. This made my legs drop and its nearly impossible to swim like that. Still I am trying to practise the virtue of patience so I did my best to enjoy just dangling in the water like a sea-horse. I was pleased to complete a full 20 lengths of the Commie pool in a time only 9 minutes slower than it used to take me. I felt a lot better afterwards. I feel a bit light-headed much of the time at the moment and somehow being in the water sorts it out.

So I don't know if I can make a regular thing of pool swimming but I might. We'll see.