mutteringhousewife

I’m not surprised the Australian swim team were taking drugs, swimming laps is very very tedious.

I have a lot of reasons not to swim for exercise. My hairdresser doesn’t approve, for a start. He can tell if I’ve swum in the previous week, he’s more a hair whisperer than hair dresser, and has given me a whole system for protecting my hair against the evils of swimming pools. I have trouble not thinking about all those bodies in the water, all the oozings and flamingos goddamn you auto correct, not flamingos, flakings. It’s all very erky. Also I have a gym membership, so it hurts a little to scoop six dollars fifty out of the bottom of my handbag for non gym exercise.

But I’m STILL not allowed to walk for exercise, and running is so far out of the question that my sport doctor just gives a hollow laugh when I mention it. I like my pump classes and cycle classes, but they’re on at nine thirty and this morning I was child free at seven forty five ante meridian with a well equipped indoor Olympic pool right around the corner. It was like fate.

Because it’s so very tedious I break it up into five lap chunks. A freestyle, a backstroke, a freestyle, a backstroke and then a reward lap of breaststroke. I don’t know how anyone does all freestyle, it’s bad enough my way. And because it takes a bit of psyching up on my part to not only get to the pool, but to get in as well, I like to spend a bit of time there. I do thirty laps. I spend a lot of that time pondering the peculiarities of lap swimmers.

I don’t get flippers at all. If you’re swimming for exercise, why do you need flippers? Why why why? Probably half the swimmers today were using them, and not for stroke correction or anything, just to go a bit faster. It’s like putting a motor on your bicycle, fine if you’re trying to get somewhere but useless for exercise purpose. I’ll never get up the courage to ask someone, so if you know, tell me.
Then there’s the age old conundrum of the slow, medium and fast lanes. This pool has suggested lap times for each lane. I don’t know about you, but my vision is just good enough to kind of work out vaguely what time it is from the clock on the wall, I have no way of knowing how fast I swim a lap. I think to be in the fast lane you need to be wearing a swimming cap, but apart from that it would seem that all bets are off. I go in the medium lane, if you’re interested.
Is there a name for that stroke where you lie on your back and kind of do a breaststroke kick with you feet?
Isn’t lap swimming in a bikini uncomfortable?
Is there really any point overtaking me if you’re going to hit the wall at the same time as me?
Do you really need to keep hydrated with your fancy water bottle every few laps?
Don’t get me started on aquarobics, fortunately I was done before that started this morning.

Anyway, I’m glad that I did it, even though now I can’t lift my arms above my rib cage and I smell like I’ve been bleached. I should do it more often. But not often enough to buy a pass.