THE pool

I am not a swimmer. Every trip to the pool is a struggle and when my sister is present – an embarrassment to her. Despite her numerous attempts to teach me some sort of technique and style, my swimming still resembles modified doggy paddle at its best.

On Friday, however, I decided to bite the bullet and check out my local pool. It had been on my “to do” list for a long while but as could be expected, no tick had appeared to that box.

After a minimum of procrastination I packed my things, hoped on my bike and pedalled the less than 10minute journey to the pool.

£3.99. Not bad in London standards.

I placed my things into the locker and moved towards the showers. Definitely bad in UK standards.

However, I could not spend the whole time in the hot shower so I picked up the pieces of courage still in me and moved to the pool.

Swimming? No way.

I asked the lifeguard if I could aqua jog, IF I stayed very very close to the wall on the slow lane. I was given green light..

So there I went. And the water was warm. Not bad at all. No shattering teeth. No goose pumps. Excellent.

I received some strange looks when pottering slowly forwards but this did not bother me the slightest.

Unfortunately my trip was cut short as after 45minutes they closed the lanes for competitive swimmers. Something I had overlooked when skimming through the timetable.

Oh well. More next time.

As I made my way home I realised that I no longer had any excuse or reason to not go to the pool.

Bummer.

But a good discovery nevertheless.

(this morning I was at the pool at 7AM and did some training before coming into the office…surely that cannot be good for me…)