I HATE swimming ... Massive Fish, Weedy Bogies & BodyGlide

Let me write this down.

I HATE swimming.

There are 6 lanes in my local pool and even at 6am these are packed. There are at least 4 people to a lane and I can’t help thinking how much the pool must be filling up with urine. No wonder they have those overflow drains.

Apparently there are 3 lane speeds: Slow, medium and fast.

This is a LIE.

There are 2 speeds: There is slow. And there is fast. Narcoleptic-Granny-Breast-Stroke-Slow and Mad-Championship- Swimmer-On-Drugs-Fast. 

I can either go in the fast lane and get swum over, overtaken continuously and get in everyone’s way OR I can go in the slow lanes, spend the whole time dodging people, kicking Grannies in the boobs (accident!) or in the case of the last time I went, look ahead underwater to check I’m not crashing into the wall and get a horrible view straight up the swimsuit of a wide-kicking octogenarian. No thanks. Pass the mind bleach.

But ... I’ve had a revelation. It turns out I don’t hate swimming. I just hate swimming in POOLS.

After being talked into a relay triathlon by a twitter buddy and him letting it slip that it was an open water swim – in other words, thrown into a lake to swim the 500m - I decided I needed to get some practise in.

And that was the start of a brand new Open Water Swimming addiction! There has been MASSIVE fish, weedy bogies, BBQs, late night coffees, bodyglide, stones in feet, water in ears, new friends, long distances, duck poo, falling over, stuck on feet wetsuits, holes on bums in wetsuits, no-weeing-in-wetsuits-rules ...

And ABSOLUTELY NO SWIMMING POOLS.