Swim, DG, Swim!
Thursday, February 08, 2007

After years of dithering, I finally took the plunge, literally, and signed up for swimming lessons. I had been wanting to learn for a long, long time. In fact, my school had this really fabulous pool and the water would look so blue and inviting. But after standing awkwardly in my pink swimming costume and feeling gloriously out of my element, I found other interesting things to do during my swimming periods.


But it has always been something I wanted to master, especially because it is a major dream of mine to go white water rafting. Since moving to England six years back, I have been quite keen to start lessons but when the push came to shove, something kept me back. I kept telling myself that once I rid myself of my podgy middle, I shall jump in the pool before anyone could blink.


Well, making my tummy disappear was easier said than done and I gave up trying to imagine myself in a costume but just decided to bite the bullet and do it. Signing up was the easy part. Getting out of the changing room to pool side on day 1 was the hardest journey I had ever done in my entire life, bar none. After shivering away for a few minutes whilst I waited for the ladies from the previous slot to make their exit, I finally waded into the warm teaching pool, all the while aware that the water level barely reached mid thigh. So scrabbling about like a crab was the best way to hide myself in the water.


First objective: to float, which in my case became try not to sink. Whilst I couldn't do any strokes or anything during my school swimming lessons, I could at least float competently. Fourteen years and twenty kilos later, I sank like the proverbial stone in a teacup of water. After swallowing about half the volume of the pool, I came up for air and thankfully my head hit the bobbling floatation device. Grabbing hold of it for dear life, I tried turning the various tricks my teacher suggested I did.


It was day 4 yesterday and whilst I still haven't learnt how to float from end to end without the aid of the brightly coloured pieces of foam, I am loving every minute of it. I will never be a threat to Ian Thorpe but for the first time in my life, I don't care. I have finally rid myself of a personal demon - of constantly comparing myself with the others in the class and coming up short. Last night, I really enjoyed my time in the pool and though I did swallow couple of mugfuls, I felt quite happy.

At the end of the day, that's what counts, right?

Posted by DesiGirl 7:42 am    

Labels: lessons, swimming

2 Comments:

1. Emma said...
   8:31 pm  
   Hi, well done on learning to swim, I am currently looking to take lessons (I haven't been in a pool since I was 11 - almost 10 years ago). I also had a confidence problem but since losing 5 stones in weight I am quite happy to slip into a swimming costume. I'll be watching your blog for further updates!
   Thinking Cramps said...
   7:01 am  
   well done. the best way to fight fears is to confront them, and all that jazz...u reminded me of my traumatic (!) swimming lessons at age 16. think i will blog about that today :)

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