I learnt to swim while I was at school. If I recall correctly, we used to wear dark coloured swimming costumes. To jazz things up a bit, we were encouraged to sew badges marking our achievements on to our swimming costumes. It was a proud day when I achieved my 10m badge. At times, I have considered this to be the pinnacle of my life’s success, but then I realise that I have been passing as an adult for the last 14 years. No one has figured out that I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and that really it’s all a big mistake. Sadly, much as I enjoyed swimming, I was never particularly fast so I was never able to adorn my swimming costume with the most coveted 1000m badge.

Bathers

Coming back to swimming as an adult has allowed me to make a truly exciting discovery. I do not need to swim longer distances in order to bring colour to my swimming costumes. Oh no! There are a multitude of websites out there on t’internetz that allow me to buy brightly coloured swim wear and have it delivered straight to my door! Brilliant! I have been swimming for 5 months now, and this is my ever growing collection of bathers.

All of my collection have been bought as me-to-me (from me, to me) gifts, and they all mark something significant. Going swimming every day for a month, swimming continuously for 30 minutes… That kind of thing. Ultimately, I suppose it’s a form of self-bribery, but who cares?! Look! Pretty bright sparkly things!!

I’ve just remembered that I’m supposed to be writing about how my training is going, in addition to telling you, dear reader, my life story. My training this week has been going well. When I say going well, what I mean is that I have turned up to the swimming pool most days, done a few lengths, chatted to people, done a few more lengths, and then done my cool down stretches in the junior pool. I have not drowned, accidentally drunk the whole pool, or caused a tsunami when entering the pool. All in all, I’d say that’s a pretty top notch week.