Just Keep Swimming...

Wednesday 28th October was a pretty good day.

I was off sick recovering from the latest bout of cholecystitis and had decided to take the specialist nurse's advice and go for a gentle swim. I treated myself and went to Hengrove Leisure Park which boasts a lovely pool and also a spa with jacuzzi, steam room and sauna. 

I'd been expecting to pay quite a lot for the combination of a swim and spa but was pleasantly surprised :)

I got myself changed ready to hop into the pool and pulled the box that kept my goggles in from my bag. Now, I am a bit short-sighted. I say a bit. I'm very short-sighted. Once I have put my glasses down, I need someone else to find them. Everything goes super fuzzy and I start walking a bit funny and very slowly so as not to bump into anything. Because of this, I have prescription goggles so I don't end up causing a pile up in the pool. On this day, I pulled my goggle box out of the bag to find it  ... empty! Nooo! I rummaged through the bag and found Cauis' goggles. Nope, don't want those, throw them back in. Rummage again - Cauis' goggles. Calmed down and put the bag on the seat and looked through sensibly. There were definitely two pairs of goggles in the bag and an empty box. Both pairs of goggles belonged to Caius. I braved it and went round to the pool in my glasses with Caius' goggles. It's difficult to explain how weird it is to see things so unclearly. I made my way to the pool and sunk into the slow lane which was nice and wide and there weren't too many people in it. After the first length though, it was clear that the few who were in the lane had no idea how to use lanes for swimming. They were swimming sort of side by side and instead of going up one side and down the other, they were happily taking up the whole lane. This was not going to end well for me as I couldn't see anyone until they were pretty much right on top of me! Thankfully another lane had cleared and was empty but for one person. 

As a youngster, I loved swimming and was pretty good. I trained regularly and competed at regional level. During my initial diagnosis, I was forced to stop training as I was too exhausted. Despite this, whenever I get into a pool with lanes, I get the urge to swim fast. I want to push myself in the pool and each time I want to improve on what I did the time before - a few more lengths in a little less time. Today however, I really had to calm myself down. I was here to granny swim. I always give myself a goal when I go swimming; either a number of lengths or an amount of time. Today it was 30 lengths. On a good day, I could have got through this in probably under 25 mins. On this particular day, it took me 40! But, I had achieved something. I'd got some exercise and felt really good about it. I then thoroughly enjoyed myself by relaxing in the spa. 

This kind of day is something that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation. Swimming is a very therapeutic form of exercise. The warmth and support of the water is beautifully relaxing, especially if you do take the swimming slowly and gently. (The spa afterwards is definitely worthwhile too!)

I spent the rest of the day relaxing and taking it easy yet still found myself pretty knackered at the end of the day. I creaked into bed and once more whimpered my hopes that my phone would ring soon.