Fitter than 20 years ago

Well, when a friend signed up the Swimathon 2012, I had a moment of madness and decided to do the same. It's an amazing year, so why not have a challenge. Ali decided to sign up too, when at the time she struggled to swim 20 and I hadn't actually have done any proper swimming since a child, and last did the Swimathon 20 years ago! After months of training, it was time to swim.

I was slightly nervous, probably more becuase I had done it before and worried I couldn't still do it. Waiting for what felt like eternity, it was into the pool and picking the same colour hat I've worn for every swimathon, red. This was my 4th Swimathon, 3 between the ages of 9-12, but the pool had always been closed but this time we just had one lane for everyone, the one mile swimmers and the 5k people. This took my mind off the first 64 lengths before the mile swimmers got out as it was like having a slow pacemaker in a really wavy pool as the kids on floats caused waves in the water which mean I swallowed about half the swimming pools worth of water. 100 lengths done in 1 hour, 4 minutes so I was well underway for my goal to finish below 2.5 hours.

At length 150 I hit the wall, my knee was killing me, my shoulders were siezing up and all I could think of was that I had to get as close to 2 hours as possible. Lengths 150-160 were the worse but as there were only 3 of us doing the 5k, and Ali and I were 2 of them, it was a quiet lane. I finished first in 2 hours 10 minutes and 20 seconds but as Ali still had 50 to go, I stayed in and completed another 50 with her. I was so proud of her as she doesn't like water, has never swam very much, nor has much upper body strength so I'm so pleased for us both.

The last time I did the Swimathon in 2 hours, 22 minutes so I've proved I'm more fit than when I was 12 and swimming most days. However, I don't fancy feeling like this again, I don't remember every muscle hurting like this last time.