Today is a swimming day. I was in the pool before 8 a.m. today, ready to go. I started my warm-up and realised pretty quickly that my arms and legs felt like lead in the water. The water also felt a bit, well, weedy. Not in the sense that it suddenly had pond weed in it or anything, just that it felt like I wasn't getting any pull when I moved my arms through the water, so it felt like I wasn't really going anywhere. After a while, I got into it a bit more, but then I had the complication of having to do the first part of my main set - sideways kicks.
It sounds like I was doing some kind of underwater dance routine or, better still, nudging myself into the realms of synchronised swimming, but it was (rather disappointingly) just doing front crawl kicks while lying on my side, with a float at the head end to make sure I didn't sink. I say "just", but it is in fact exceedingly difficult - not the kicking part, that's OK, if a bit tiring, but rather the going in a straight line part. The idea is that you alternate which side you're lying on for each length, which means that for one length you're facing the lane rope or side of the pool and for the other you're facing into the lane. If you're facing the rope/side, you have the advantage of something to follow, but it means you can't see what everyone else is doing and, because you're only doing kicks, it makes you a lot slower than them. If you're facing into the lane, you can see everyone else, but there is a tendency to try to get out of their way and let them overtake, which means backing into the side of the pool or, worse, encroaching into the next lane just as a particularly speedy man is passing by. Thankfully (both for me and for the rest of the swimmers in the pool), I only had to do four lengths of this before going onto the next thing.
"And what was the next thing?" I hear you cry. The next thing was to swim 200m of front crawl without stopping. Yes, without stopping. I don't think I've ever swum 200m of front crawl without stopping before, not even when I was doing my swimming badges as a kid. I do remember that I had to swim 800m in 25 minutes as part of a challenge badge at some point, but that was definitely a breaststroke job. I had to wait a couple of minutes before setting out for this one as I would be too fast for the slow lane but there was a bit of lane rearrangement going on because the swimming lessons had just finished in the far lane, meaning that the overcrowded medium lane was thinning out as some folk moved over to the new lane. So, how did I fare? I don't mind saying that I found it exceedingly tough. I actually did 210m because of the 30m pool issue and by the fifth length of the seven required I was struggling and got overtaken by someone swimming breaststroke. I was determined to make it, though, and I did.
Next up (oh yes, there was more) was 390m of alternating 2 lengths breaststroke, 2 lengths best stroke crawl. This was actually much easier than I expected it to be, given the massive effort I'd just put in on the 210m non-stop, but when I got out of the pool at the end of this, my legs were like jelly.
During this entire time, something was lurking in the pool. It was my old friend the frogman. He was there in his wetsuit and flippers, with a nose-clip on, skulking around on the bottom of the pool. This time, though, he wasn't just lying on the bottom as he had been previously - he was swimming lengths. It was very disconcerting when I suddenly caught something moving below me out of the corner of my eye, and every now and then he'd make someone jump by popping up to the surface (to be fair to him, he is very considerate about not just popping up right in front of people who are swimming on the surface). This whole arrangement reminded me, for some strange reason, of films and cartoons set in The Future, where everyone has flying cars that go along on multi-storey airborne super-highways, so it made me think that the pool this morning, a bit like the sea I suppose, was a multi-storey swimming pool with different things going on at different levels.
In spite of my shock at the frogman popping up now and then, I still managed to swim 960m this morning (which confused me for a bit, because the training plan said today's session was supposed to be 1km and I knew I'd done slightly more than the plan required, but then I added up the plan's constituent parts and they only came to 900m, so I felt better!), taking my swimming total to 5.22km.
I've just realised that I haven't reported on last night's cycle home - it was amazing! My confidence on the road is growing and I even managed to cycle over the junction at Manor House rather than walking. I only had two incidents of note - one where a pedestrian walked out in front of me without looking as I was turning left (I reminded her, ever so politely, that the fact I was ringing my bell meant that I was there, but I don't think she heard me because she had earphones in) and the other where a car turning right onto the main road from a side road to my left just pulled out across my side of the road without looking - evasive action taken, no harm done. The best thing was that I made it home in a new record time of 34:33. This added 7.66km to my cycling total, making 73.61km of bike riding over all.
Tomorrow, the focus is going to be on the Big Match. Yes, the last netball match of the season. We have the chance (albeit a remote one) to finish second in our division, so all my energies will be going into that!
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