..Is it down to the lake, I fear? Thank you Haircut 100. Next week, I'm taking part in the Great North Swim, and I'm worried. I watched last year as my wife, my son, my daughter and her boyfriend, all took part and made it look, if not easy, then definitely fun. I was inspired. I'm not the most confident swimmer and up to that point the most I'd managed in a pool was between 20 and 30 lengths, not even half a mile.
I didn't learn to swim until I was 19 years old, at teacher training college. I was training to be an English teacher. I had wanted to teach PE but I was turned down because I couldn't swim. I had actually begun swimming when I was 4. I went with my Dad every Saturday to the Northumberland Baths in Newcastle, and I'd just begun to doggy-paddle my way around the shallow end when, one Saturday, I walked in and saw some older boys pretending they were drowning, kicking around and splashing in the water. I'm told that at that point I stopped swimming and became terrified of getting out of my depth. I remember that I struggled with this fear throughout my childhood. I kept going to the pool, and I convinced myself every week that I would be ok, and as soon as the water came up to the top of my chest, or if I lifted my feet off the bottom and tried to float, I would panic and fight to get out. When we had swimming lessons at school, I had a fight with a lad who jokingly tried to push me in at the deep end. When I finally learned to swim I think I felt relief rather than joy, and I still retain some of that fear and mistrust of water, so resolving to swim a mile in England's largest lake represents a real challenge for me.
A year ago I knew that I wanted to do the swim but I still didn't know if I could cope with the distance, or the depth. I started going swimming regularly with my wife at the Manchester Aquatics Centre. 3 times a week we'd get up at 6am and go down there before work. The depth in the pool is a uniform 2 metres for the lane swimming sessions, so I can't touch the bottom, and 50 metres looks a long way when I first get in, and at the start I felt scared and clumsy in the water. However, by Christmas I was swimming 20 lengths of the 50 metre pool (1km in total) twice a week and 32 lengths (1 mile) on Saturdays, and, most importantly, I looked forward to getting in the water
We managed to maintain that regime until May. Since then I've lost my momentum. I ran the Great Manchester 10k, picked up a nasty calf injury and found it hard to get back into a regular training pattern. As swimmers have to wear wetsuits in the Great North Swim I should have had more practice in open water in a wetsuit. So far, I've only been in twice, once in Rydal Water and once in Lake Bala.
And now I've got a horrible cold. 5 days to go and I feel lousy. I've felt so confident until the last couple of weeks. We went on holiday to Majorca earlier in August and I swam at least 40 lengths of the hotel pool every day. I even swam in the sea, and dived off a pontoon moored out in the bay. That was a major event for a water-wimp like me. I know I've come a long way, and on Saturday I really want to be part of that wave of swimmers splashing their way around the course in Windermere. Time to feel the fear and do it anyway.
