This morning I was supposed to be at the pool at 7am. I was supposed to do 2600m. I was supposed to get used to this whole time difference thing and get it over with, but it didn’t happen.
I got to the pool at 7:45am. And although this wouldn’t pose a huge problem, it did mean that one of the sets I had to do was going to bite the water and fly off to a land of never-happened-never-will.
The first surprise when I got there was the complete lack of other people in the pool. Normally there is a crowd of at least 8 people in just the lane I’m swimming in. This morning, there were 3. And one of them doesn’t really count because all he does is get in the pool, let the 2 bottles of cologne that he put on before he came to the gym wash off him, and then get out.
So there were 2.
As I finished up the warm-up, the girl swimming in the last lane (she was completely alone, but I didn’t think it would be fair to get into that lane at the time I got in), got out and so I moved to the lane she occupied and started my swimming session.
My arms joined the rest of my body in rebellion and felt like 20kg of lead had been strapped to each of them. It felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and like each 25m was taking me at least a minute (okay, so it didn’t take that long, but it sure felt like it!).
Around the 10th length I glanced back to the lane next to me. Mr Flipper-Man had arrived while I hadn’t noticed and he was swimming right next to me! He gave me the much-needed motivation to get going and I attempted to get into a better groove. Mr Flipper-Man must have sensed that I was doing this and sped up. I went with him. He sped up some more, I chased. We reached the end of the lane and if I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn we were doing synchronised swimming. We both flipped and repeated the previous length’s pattern. After 200m I had to stop and he carried on for another 50m.
I started about 50m before him on the next 200m. Once again we tried to match each other up and down the lanes.
As 8:45am arrived I knew that if I didn’t do some form of cool-down, I was going to regret it. I barely did 400m as the lifeguard started to blow that dreaded alarm that tears through every inch of your being until you want to cry out for mercy and rushed to get to work.
I’m still not sure when everyone else got out of the pool. All I know is that when I got out of the pool it was just Mr Flipper-Man that was still in the pool with me.
And right now, my shoulders are killing me.
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