Keeping Young at Heart

On Thursday I swam in the ‘Young at Heart’ session. The session is for OAPs, disabled and those who are over 50. As you may remember I fall into the latter category. Just.
All well and good.

The pool wasn’t too busy: I went in as the Toddlers and their Mums came out, along with the rope that divides the shallow end from the rest of the pool. I was in the water and ready to go at three minutes to three, and in there with me were two men doing plodding lengths, one with his specs on doing only head-up breast stroke, while the other alternated between breast stroke and crawl, plus there were three women in various Delphinium coloured costumes with Marigold hats and another man in a floating device with two carers.

I am quite sensitive to smells.  As I swam past the man in the floating device I was aware of stale greasy sweat which seemed to float across the surface of the water and I felt it was a shame really that his session in the pool hadn’t been preceded by the required showering the rest of us are subjected to on entry. Not his fault, I’m sure, but surely the carers should have been aware of this?
Then as I swam past Mr Alternate I was aware of oil of wintergreen, which is a fresh clean smell, but a little overpowering in the water. I’m glad I had my goggles on. Interestingly I noticed no odours from the Delphiniums and Marigolds.

So, as I say, there weren’t many in the pool, but man in floating device with two carers took up centre stage in a random, therefore unpredictable motion which meant a slight detour on most lengths, two of the three women seemed limited to hanging around  at the side, pushing off and swimming back across part of the width, frequently just as I was passing and the third was doing proper lengths.
Over on the other side Mr Alternate-Lengths was fine, but Mr Spectacles seemed totally unable to swim in a straight line and kept deviating towards me in a rather disconcerting way, on one occasion brushing past me. In fact I became convinced that he was doing it on purpose, to the extent that I made every possible move to swim as far away from him as possible, even if it meant being potentially entangled with the Delphiniums at the side.

Anyway I was pleased when a few others joined us in the pool. There were a couple of women who got in and got on with the serious task of length accumulation, as least in fits and starts, interspersed with  a few minutes of intense chat at the shallow end and one or two other men, which meant it was easier to put other bodies in between Mr Spectacles and me.

So the first 100 lengths was interesting, detours and all. Usually I have my head down and focus only on swimming and counting, but the need to dodge changed all that. In fact The Floater didn’t stay in too long, and judging by the grin on his face as he was hoisted out it had been a very satisfactory session for him; but most people stayed about an hour, then there was a gradual change over, as the pool emptied and refilled with a different clientèle – never too full… and as the session moved on I was able to speed up a little and try to fit the number of lengths I had hoped to do, challenged by Scout, before the 5pm cut off.

At 16:45 a group of primary aged school kids came in and sat on the pool side… and I still had 25 lengths to go.There were only three of us in the water. I was afraid the attendant would ask me to get out at 5 to 5, leaving me short of my grand total, I sped up and did the last few lengths at a higher speed than all the rest – and just finished at 5pm. Success. 200 lengths to add to the total….
But I used the steps to get out.

‘Swimathon’ is creeping up fast… my pledge to do 1000 lengths (25km) before the dawn of 11th April is proving to be a hard task master.

Today I arrived at the pool later than intended and only had just over an hour to achieve as much as possible…. Spurred on by two younger chaps crawling their lengths I attempted to keep up with them, breaststroking. Of course I couldn’t – but the challenge added a certain pace. And another 110 to add to the total.

My total now stands at 860

Only 140 to go 🙂

Swimathon is an annual fund-raising event, held in the UK across many participating pools, and the chosen charity this year is Marie Curie Cancer Care , a charity which provides end of life care in the patient’s own home.

Author: Sarah

No time to lose. No, time to lose. Make time to stand and stare.... Did you see that? View all posts by Sarah