Swimming Blog

Training for the Great Scottish Swim

 Swimming Blog
Thursday 22nd July 2010

I like to have a focus for a blog, and this one has a focus as good as any. On 21st August this year, I will take part in the Great Scottish Swim in Strathclyde Loch. It’s a mile long in open water, and I hope to complete the mile within the hour. So – it’s all about the swimming. There may be moments when I become diverted from my main topic – and it’s an unfortunate coincidence that last night was the first episode of ‘Masterchef’ where John Torode and Gregg Wallace surpassed themselves by tittering and snickering behind Tessa Sanderson’s back, because despite her Olympian status, the silly girl can’t tell her parsley from her chervil and they can –nevertheless, I will do my best to concentrate on the details of my training, the effects upon my well-being and the thoughts that pass through my head while in the water.

Swimming is the only sport I’ve ever been any good at. I should perhaps modify that sentence as it paints an unreliable picture. The word ‘sport’ gives the impression that an element of competition might be involved and the word ‘good’ implies a level of quality. What I should have said, is that swimming is the only sporting activity in which I have participated regularly.

My dad taught me to swim when I was very little and then I attended lessons with Mr Parry at Spence Street Baths in Leicester when I was about seven or eight, but I can’t ever remember not being able to swim. I’ve never been a fast swimmer, but, being built on the lines of an aquatic mammal I can bob along indefinitely with remarkably little exertion.

I first took part in a long distance swim in 1991. That event was the 5km Swimathon, and the reason I took part was simple: anyone who entered and completed the course won a medal. Having never won a medal for anything, let alone a physical challenge, I went for it. I can’t recall where or when or how I trained, but I know I must have done something effective because I finished the swim in a respectable two hours and twenty minutes. The event was only slightly marred by my (then) partner refusing to come along and count my lengths for me. Familiar with my customary distaste for anything that might be counted as exercise, he didn’t want to be part of the humiliating scene where my waterlogged body was recovered from the deep end.

It was a different matter the following year. By the time of the 1992 Swimathon, the reluctant length counter and I had recently married. Suffused with a newly-wed desire to, you know, be there for each other, and safe in the knowledge that it was unlikely I’d bring shame upon him by drowning in public, we went off together. I received another medal for my trouble and he got a T shirt.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure that’s where our marriage went wrong - the Swimathon T shirt. It was pale blue, I remember, and emblazoned across the front were the words ‘Five Kilometre Swimathon’ and an artistic representation of choppy water. Wherever he wore it, it attracted attention. Men envied him. Women would come up to him and murmur admiringly ‘Wow! You must be very fit if you can swim five kilometres.’ running their eyes, if not their fingers, across the wording on his manly chest. He, not being the smoothest of creatures, would laugh nervously, uncertain how to deal with such full-on female attention and the seething wife next to him.
‘Not him!’ I’d shout in outrage, ‘Me! It was me! I swam the five kilometres! He just counted the lengths. He sat on a fold up chair next to the pool and ticked the boxes!’

No one ever believed me. They only felt sorry for him. There he was – athletic swimmer god, not only shacked up with a delusional fat bird, but unable to take any credit for his sporting achievements without some kind of marital scene. I had medals, yes indeed. But while it’s sociably acceptable to wear a T shirt proudly proclaiming one’s swimming prowess, clutching a set of oversized gilt medallions to prove you can swim 200 lengths without stopping, makes you appear attention seeking at the very least. Even Tessa Sanderson, who could, had she chosen, have waved her Olympic Gold in front of Torode and Wallace to show that actually, she was the better person, would have come out of it looking a bit needy.

Meanwhile, I was dismayed to see notice that John Torode and I are currently sporting the same hairstyle. And, to make matters worse, he’s pulling it off with considerably more success than I am.