Wet wet wet
The pool is getting a little crowded first thing in the morning for my liking. Cunningly, the management of the gym have tried to limit the numbers by cutting back on heating the thing but, to be honest, if you're mad enough to be in a pool before sunrise, you're mad enough to not have a problem about breaking a thin skien of ice to actually have your dip. I'm waiting for somebody to take me aside and have a word about my five minutes ritual screaming on entry.
Not that it's crowded as, you know, a public pool with real working class people in it, but it's small and so more than a few people can cause problems…especially as the lot that paddle about in my pool have no idea of lane discipline. They are very much the school of 'I've always swum gently back and forth in this lane and I'm not getting out of your way'. So what you have is a sort of slow motion, very wet game of chicken (chicken soup?), with some matronly type in a fearsome swimming cap moving through the water like a liner, while I bear down on her, all splutterings, thrashings and goggles. Frankly, I have to swerve like an otter sometimes to avoid the sort of collision that would result in a harassment case or a relationship depending on the disposition of the target.
Having said that, the pool empties out after the first half hour rush and it's wonderfully quiet, the only sound being my strangulated, half drowned gasps of breath as I attempt the crawl.
Forty minutes of lengths, widths and zig-zagging and I'm out and heading towards the showers…although I have added a new twist to my regime - the Jacuzzi is on the way from the pool to the changing room and, at that time of the morning, is empty. Now that's what I call exercise. Indeed, I may reverse my regime, forty minutes in the Jacuzzi, five in the pool. I'd save on goggles at least.
Not that it's crowded as, you know, a public pool with real working class people in it, but it's small and so more than a few people can cause problems…especially as the lot that paddle about in my pool have no idea of lane discipline. They are very much the school of 'I've always swum gently back and forth in this lane and I'm not getting out of your way'. So what you have is a sort of slow motion, very wet game of chicken (chicken soup?), with some matronly type in a fearsome swimming cap moving through the water like a liner, while I bear down on her, all splutterings, thrashings and goggles. Frankly, I have to swerve like an otter sometimes to avoid the sort of collision that would result in a harassment case or a relationship depending on the disposition of the target.
Having said that, the pool empties out after the first half hour rush and it's wonderfully quiet, the only sound being my strangulated, half drowned gasps of breath as I attempt the crawl.
Forty minutes of lengths, widths and zig-zagging and I'm out and heading towards the showers…although I have added a new twist to my regime - the Jacuzzi is on the way from the pool to the changing room and, at that time of the morning, is empty. Now that's what I call exercise. Indeed, I may reverse my regime, forty minutes in the Jacuzzi, five in the pool. I'd save on goggles at least.
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At the risk of sounding odd (I've already distinguished myself as such since I'm reading a strangers "Blog" and posting random crap about my own life on the Internet), I have recently started swimming again at my local gym, too! I often have to stop myself from rescuing the old men that float around my lanes. I admit, it takes me several lengths of the pool to decide whether they are actually drowning or not, and I figure that's what the lifeguards are paid for anyway...hahaha.
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