Swimming For My Life

So the time has come to revisit this blog.  Quick update: I’ve moved to Canterbury to undertake my PhD, living with two boys (Nick and Trev) and two girls (Lou and Kat), and this section of The Mr Chris Saga is entitled The Christopher Tales, but I will blog the full updates on all of that at a later date.  For now however, I must talk about last night’s swimming...

I went swimming to the local pool with Lou last week, and noticed an advert for the City of Canterbury Swimming Club, apparently catering to all age groups and all abilities.  Thinking that I needed to exercise more regularly, and that I’m hopeless at structuring my own training, I thought it sounded like a good idea.  I took a quick look at the website and sent off an email to the club.  Their reply told me that the club had members in its Masters section (25+, but they’d make an exception for a man who is 14 years and 11 months) who came along to swim and chat, all the way up to members who are of an international standard, and that there would be somewhere for me to fit in.

Upon my arrival I spoke to two women on the desk and told them I was interested in joining, but that I wasn’t sure if I was fit enough, a comment which had them both almost crying with laughter.  They indicated that some of the Masters swimmers were stood behind me.  An indiscreet turn of the head revealed what can only be described as a pensioners picnic huddled close to each other (presumably for warmth, its very cold here at the minute).  Easy was the word that sprung to mind.  As we went into change I noticed a few ‘young ones’, so was somewhat happier with the situation.

So, changed and nervous, I stood on the poolside and was introduced to one of the coaches, who explained how the six pool lanes were split up.  They were as follows:
Lane 1 - People who swim on their own and do not follow a programme.

Lanes 2/3 - The easy programme

Lane 4 - The middle-of-the-road programme

Lanes 5/6 - The advanced programme

At this point, the two ‘young ones’ dived into lanes 5 and 6 (one lane each) and powered down the pool.  I decided against either of these lanes.  I had also decided against lane 1 (I can swim on my own outside of the club, should I desire to).  The coach (Sharon) suggested I swim with Robin, Peter and Dave in lanes 2 and 3.  Having been introduced to the three named guys, I was beginning to feel out of place.  Not only was I not in the ‘young ones’ group, I had been relegated to the ‘people old enough to be your grandparents’ group.  Without a word of a lie, I think these three men had a combined age of over 200 years.

Not wanting to give up at the first hurdle, I persisted and asked what the warm-up with.  Apparently the warm-up was in fact designed to kill me.  Bearing in mind that this is a 33.3m pool (a whole 8.3m longer than average, and you could tell), the warm-up was 6 lengths crawl, 3 back and 3 breast.  Now to me, that’s a full blown workout.  Add to that the fact that its easily been ten years since I swam backstroke, and I was now officially worried.  Aware that the three guys already had a two length lead on me, I pushed off.  The crawl was fine.  I was looking forward to swimming breaststroke.  The backstroke however...  Frankly, it was awful.  My backstroke looked more like a stroke of the debilitating kind, and I was going my absolute best impersonation of a beached ginger whale up and down the pool.  I even managed to hit a few people on the way, its hard to see where you’re going when you’re looking at the ceiling.  At this point I was ready to go home.  I was already tiring, I was embarrassed, and I was most definitely not having fun.  But I wasn’t going to give up.  However, Peter stopped me after my first of three breast lengths, to politely inform me that him and the other two were waiting for me, and I should just finish.

I undertook the next set of the lengths, albeit with some minor adjustments of my own to the programme.  I did four of the six planned backstroke lengths, three on crawl, and one just kick.  I had now skipped six of the planned lengths.  We then had three lengths pull/kick/swim which I managed, but the three subsequent sprint lengths left me trailing.  I sat out the next for before repeating the three pks and sprint combo, but was still trailing rather drastically.  By this point my arms and upper back were hurting, and I was considering throwing in the towel.

The next section was three lengths crawl sprint, three crawl non-sprint, then repeat.  During the sprint lengths I actually thought I was going to vomit into the pool.  I was dying, dying a very slow death at the deep end.  I managed the three easy crawl lengths.  I decided that I was going to call the International Court of Justice and report Peter as a slave driver, he was barely giving me time to rest in between each set.  At this point the gents of grandfather age told me how impressed they were with me, considering I’d not done any proper swimming for over two years.  “It’s surprising” they said.  “Well I’ve another surprise for you” I declared, “I’m going home”.  I could barely pull myself out of the pool.  I was bright red on account of my goggles, jiggling my beer belly, and unable to balance.  But I promised I’d go back next week.

I hope you’re all as amused as Gill and I were.  I called here when I got into the car, and the two of us proceeded to howl laughing.  But I am quite proud of myself.  Thirty-eight lengths of a 33.3.m pool is no small achievement, and I will go back.  I’ve decided that by the end of my three years here, I’ll be good enough to go into lanes five and six.

In other news, Nick had such a boring weekend that he decided to re-order the channels on our Freeview box.  Oh to have so much time on our hands!  Until next time...  x