Last updated at 15:15, Wednesday, 02 May 2012

WHAT a fortnight of highs and lows. In the last two weeks, I have managed to almost hit the magical 64, donned neon pink goggles in the pool and been labelled a slapper.

Who said swimming was a pedestrian sport?

Almost immediately after writing my last column, I took to the pool with a new sense of purpose. Just 40 minutes, and a couple of mouthfuls of water later, I was on the brink of hitting my target distance.

Rather than feeling the strain of my longest swim to date, I was fired up and coursing through the water with determination. I could have continued. I could have hit my target – I could have basked in the glory of swimming a mile, six weeks before my target date.

Instead, however, I stopped. Keen not to peak too soon, I left the final four for another day and left the pool safe in the knowledge that 64 lengths was more than achievable.

Skip forward a week or so, and I found myself taking to the pool in less than favourable circumstances. My lunchtime haste to have a dip had seen me leave the office and dash to the Park Leisure Centre, arriving just 25 minutes before the session ended.

As I pulled on the mini man trunks to which I have previously referred, I realised my goggles had gone awry.

The young lady on lifeguard duty was more than happy to help, rifling through a cupboard in the search for a spare pair I could borrow.

And so began the single-most humiliating swimming session I have ever had.

More humiliating than when an old lady beat me over a length at the start of my swim-a-mile journey. More cringe-worthy, perhaps, than the time I accidentally punched a disabled man in the face as I powered through the water during one of my more manic sessions.

Miss lifeguard struggled to suppress her giggles as she handed me the neon pink goggles. I considered rejecting them, but I was changed, showered and ready to swim.

So on they went, as pink as pink could be. They caught the y eyes of more than a few of my fellow swimmers. I even had to laugh myself as I swam up and down the lane. But my chortles turned to a grimace as a noticed that, while I had been concentrating on my stroke, a group of mums and their babies, alongside a class of 30 or so school children, had assembled by the poolside.

They had spotted my pink monstrosities, and it was clear they found them more than a little amusing. I felt emasculated and the urge to beat my chest while letting out a tarzan-esque roar – to counteract my feminine goggles – became almost irresistible.

I suppressed the inner beast, however, and instead meekly pulled up at the end of the pool – in full view of my assembled spectators – and took my pink goggles off.

As I handed them to the same lifeguard who had kindly loaned them to me, swimming coach, Dave Webster was on hand.

He asked me if I was ready for his critique, to which I replied I had just swam for half an hour in pink goggles. Anything he threw at me would be water off a deputy editor’s back.
He told me I was ‘slapping’ the water and had a left arm which was reaching too far in to the centre of my swim path.

Good advice from an expert in the field which I will take forward in the next few weeks.

So all thrown in, it has been an interesting fortnight. And pink goggles or not, progress is being made.

First published at 15:03, Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk