Loath though I am to admit it, three weeks exile from the pool and ‘forced labour’ in the gym has had some sort of effect.
Today was Liberation Day when the pool was finally reopened after the (extended) period of Maintenance work. This grim period usually extends over a fortnight, and I can just about tolerate the regime of light-use machine work that I devise to fill up an hour of exercise. But this year the work was over three weeks, and that extra week was almost unsupportable.
With the liberal use of Kindle on my mobile phone for the bike and the walk, I am usually able to get through to the end of my stipulated period of torture and feel justified in my monthly payment which is specifically for Gym & Pool, so I am entitled to be there, in spite of my pointedly ignoring the gym for eleven-and-three-quarters months of the year.
Yesterday I ritually knocked the dust from my shoes and vowed that my return to that particular circle of Hell would be no sooner than one long calendar year’s time, when the Maintenance work must begin again.
Meanwhile, at 6.30 am this morning I was first into the water of the newly maintained pool and relaxed into the comfort of an adequately heated environment and started my swim/exercise that starts my usual day.
And this is where what I have been doing for the past three weeks (apart from a few carless days) comes into its own.
I start my ‘swim’ with physio approved exercises that when I first did them just after my knee operations made me yelp with pain. Pain that was stonily ignored by the physio themselves (they were a moveable feast of considerate torturers) as they urged me to further exertions. Now, using the cushion of the water’s hold, I can do the exercises with some ease, even the knee bends that at one time I thought would be impossible short of general anaesthetic!
After about 30 minutes of stretches and bends and a couple of leg paddle lengths using floats, I start my swim proper with a push off from the end and crawl with my face submerged. At one time I could do a length and a half with no real problem, but I have struggled to complete 20m of the pool in recent times. So, it was with considerable surprise that I effort-fully managed to do a full length of the pool, which surely indicates that I have not been wasting my time during the pool closure.
My swim was engagingly interrupted by other ‘regulars’ indicating by voice and air pumps their appreciation of the re-opened pool. And, I should add, I do not mean to give a one-sided picture of the facilities of our city. There are other pools that we could have used, quite apart from a chunk of the Med that runs along the southern edge of Castelldefels and an outdoor community pool for our houses. But Our Pool is different, and to use other (lesser) pools (or seas) would be, somehow, verging on the treacherous.
There are five lanes in our 25m pool, and, in theory, they can accommodate three people in each lane. In practice, this is not true as the side lanes have steps leading into the water restricting the width, and more than two swimmers in those is uncomfortable. Therefore, in total, the pool will work best with (at maximum) about 13 swimmers – if those swimmers are doing lengths and not socializing.
It was, therefore, with some degree of horror that a mother and two young children arrived and entered MY lane. If anyone needed a definition of sacrilegious, then there it was, in every splash. I will reserve my wrath, unless this becomes an habitual invasion!
Luckily by the time this invasion occurred I had reached the end of the swim part of my time and I was doing the final set of exercises, so I was able to complete my time at the opposite end of the pool, and propriety was observed.
I am relying on the fact that this was the first day of the reopening of the pool and that the numbers generally tail off as we regulars soldier on.
Lunch today in the Pool’s restaurant, was preceded by a glass of Cava, a tradition that could (I mused) be extended to cover a glass before my swim each day.
A passing thought. Though a tempting one!
