Swimming #3

Today, the third effort of August's Project, was a visit to Bourne Outdoor Pool for a spot of swimming. Although I've lived in Bourne a number of years, today was my first ever visit to the outdoor pool. I was pleasantly surprised. The admission price was £4 and this allows you to stay there for the day. I saw a number of families who had obviously been there all day: blankets, chairs, picnics, books and no end of other stuff.

It was a lovely day today, very hot, therefore the place was very busy. At one stage the noise of kids screaming and enjoying themselves was incredible (cue the exaggerated simile), like the Olympic Stadium celebrating ANOTHER Team GB gold medal. I was amazed how big the actual pool was, and deep, you can dive in without fear of a lifeguard whistle.

I went with Amy today, and we had a great time. She even treated me to a cup of tea. She even got herself some curly fries because apparently you can't go to the outdoor pool without buying curly fries…

Overall, the swimming seems to be getting slightly better. I still struggle with the breathing, but my actual technique is a lot smoother and less splashy. So although I'm a fair way off challenging Thorpedo to a race, I feel as if I'm getting somewhere. Actually looking forward to the next session….

 

Swimming #1

We move into August, which means another monthly project: swimming.

Now I can actually swim, not particularly well, and not particularly fast, but I could survive being dropped into a lake. Therefore the purpose of this month's project is to learn to swim better, maybe with the distant idea of completing a triathlon. My initial plan was to swim 2 or 3 times a week. But I have now decided to also include a 'tour' of the local pools in an attempt to give me more to say in this blog.

So #1 took me to my local pool at Bourne Leisure Centre, swimming is £4.45 a session. It is what they call a 'leisure pool', this means it has various 'fun' stuff going on: flume, wave machine,water spouting out everywhere and 1000s of kids. This makes swimming in a straight line rather tricky, and I use the term 'swimming' quite loosely. Now I can swim a kind of breaststroke, even my backstroke takes me from one end of the pool to the other. The problem I have is trying to do the front crawl, I have trouble breathing, it really knackers me out AND my hair gets in the way!!

A couple of things that have come out of session #1: I maybe need a couple of lessons to sort out my technique and I need to get my hair cut!