Karen writes: Pool

I have just left Kate surging professionally up and down the Otara pool swim lanes.   I did half an hour (about a km) and declared myself exhausted, she was still on her warm-up which looked more energetic than my whole swim effort when I absconded to the showers.  The new facility is fantastic, and early in the day it was relatively quiet. I do recall with some degree of sentimentality the shabby old Otara pool with its intermittently functioning community showers and toe-cringe inducing slats on the floor. My fingertips remember the short and shallow indoor pool where if you dug too deep you hit the bottom...what a difference now.   I do rather miss the old glassed in roof though, my main distraction when swimming was looking at the light patterns refracted through the (sometimes suspiciously cloudy) water onto the floor of the pool, now I shall have to find some other form of entertainment while I slog out length after boring length.  Yes, indoor swimming isn't really my thing.

Anyway, today...got up with the first buzz of the alarm and got everything organised to get out the door early, thanks my darling whanau.   Got to the pool, Kate was already there looking energetic.  The warm water felt wonderful, after the first little while of huffing and puffing and trying to find a speed I could maintain forward motion at relatively comfortably (ie, not sink or gasp for breath), I got some sort of rhythm going, then I played with my flippers and hand paddles. I am glad I am not right back to where I was this time last year when I could barely cope with freestyle one length...breaststroke one length, but I have lots of ground to catch up.      So now that I have gotten over my inertia, I must do it again, some-what more regularly than I may want to I suspect.  I shall hear the worst when I catch up with Trainer Grant for the next 8 week segment of the training programme later in the week.