Day 206: Swimming

These past few weeks have been full of things that I haven’t done in my adult life. First, it’s the surprising addition of shorts to my wardrobe, which I’m loving, and now it’s a trip to a swimming pool for recreational floating about. Morley Leisure Centre in the sixth form was the last time I entered such a place for a swim – I remember being the guy in charge of writing the times down at Morley High School‘s Swimming Gala in roughly 2001, I was in a race too if I remember rightly. Between then and now I’ve taken countless numbers of children swimming with schools, but never actually swum myself. Until tonight…

Mrs Pitts has been going swimming for a couple of months now, at first just one night a week, then progressing to two. However, one of those nights is for ladies only and the other is when I’m normally at band. However, having broken up for the summer, my Thursday evening was free to join her for a splash about.

There was some trepidation about going. If you haven’t done something in a while, it’s hard to recall if you are any good at it. It turns out, I’m a little faster than Mrs Pitts, but don’t have the same stamina she has. In the hour, Mrs Pitts managed to complete 40 lengths (less than her usual 50) whereas I only managed a pre-agreed target of 26 lengths. Still, 520 metres isn’t too bad for a starting point. I don’t feel particularly worn out, but I know my shoulders are a limiting factor – I’ve had pains in them on and off for a while now, so I expect them to be stiff in the morning!

Fun though.

In other news, I made a trip to the bank and paid in all the odd bags of coins I had laying around. £68.50 is the total of all the change worth less than 50p from the last two years. A nice little bonus…!