Water Music

Today is a swimming day.  My journey to the pool was, thankfully, less traumatic than for my equivalent swim last week - the tube strike has been called off, so I was able to get the train with no trouble at all.  However, I woke up this morning with an earworm - for the uninitiated, a tune in my head that won't go away.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you what my earworm was (in fact, still is!) because it is part of a top secret programme!  We have a choir where I work and we have entered the Legal Harmony Choral Competition, which is taking place at Southwark Cathedral next week.  We'll be competing against six other law firms and barristers' chambers and will be performing three pieces in the competition.  I'll let you know how we get on!

When I got to the pool, the earworm was still ringing around my brain and, as I was swimming up and down the pool, I realised that I was swimming in time with the music in my head and that this meant I was swimming very, very fast (for me, that is - I hadn't suddenly morphed into the Thorpedo).  As this was such fun, I tried it with one of the other pieces we're rehearsing and found that it was too slow and I wasn't really going anywhere, so I tried the third - an utter disaster!  This piece has a very syncopated rhythm, which meant that I was all over the place; I couldn't work out which arm I should be moving when and I must have looked pretty strange to anyone watching.  I decided that it would probably be best if I went back to the original tune and ended up finishing my swim much earlier than I had anticipated.

The other thing about today's swim was how warm the water was - it was the same temperature as normal, but compared to the Baltic conditions at the reservoir on Sunday, it was positively balmy!  Beginning to swim in the pool felt like swimming on a feather bed of water - soft and warm and cosy.  I'd better not get too used to it!

The session today was a relatively easy one: 2 x 120m breaststroke warm-up, followed by a main session of 240m front crawl, 180m front crawl arms only and 180m front crawl and then a cool-down of 60m breaststroke and 60m best stroke front crawl.  This added up to a total of only 1.08km, taking my swimming grand total to 14.48km.

On the way to the pool this morning, the sun was shining and it was warm enough not to bother with a coat.  I hadn't looked at the weather forecast and assumed it would be the same all day.  When I left the swimming pool, though, it was absolutely tipping it down, which, although my hair was already wet, was less than excellent.  It's sunny again now, though.  The rain made the market at Whitecross Street seem even more alive and colourful this morning - I love that walk to work, even in the rain!

Whitecross Street Market in the
early morning rain