It took a few weeks ago to get over the ‘weak as a baby’ feeling, aided also by some helpful soul suggesting that maybe having a drink with me in the pool might be a good idea. The temperature at the pool in which I train is in the high 20’s, which is fine to stop casual bathers getting cold too quickly, put pretty lousy for others swimming hard for any length of time.
I then spent the summer and autumn slowly increasing the length of my swims, 100 m at a time, cutting out the back- and breaststrokes (aka extended rests), until by Christmas I was able to knock out 120 lengths of the 25 m pool in about an hour including a couple of short rests. This was pretty major stuff for me, and I was starting to feel fitter. A couple of inches came off my waistline during this time, and muscle bulk in my upper body started to build. The scales tipped at more like 108 kg now, and I was starting to get hooked. At this point you find yourself wondering what you are actually capable of: how far, how fast?
Of course there are always bumps along the road, and we’ll meet a couple of those next time, but at that time, around Christmas 2011, I was feeling pretty good.
