Something Fishy
Every time I go swimming I write a little S on the calendar and every time I go swimming I swim a mile. Well, slightly over a mile, actually - I do 66 lengths instead of 64, in case I've counted wrong.
So I thought I'd count up how many miles I've swum this year and it is 56.
Fifty-six miles! I guessed it would be about sixty since last November, when I started swimming in the early mornings, but it's clearly more than that if it's fifty-six since January 1st.
Fifty-six!!! (Yes, I know, I just keep right on mentioning it). It's a bit hard to believe really. I keep checking my toes to see if they're becoming a trifle webbed.
Sadly it hasn't given me a figure like Cheryl Cole's, though I know I have got a bit thinner.
But my blood pressure is good and low - a hundred and twenty over sixty-four when last checked. And I've been working so flat out lately that I think I must have got fitter - otherwise I don't think I could have done it.
I'm no athlete. I'm short and stocky. A Russian peasant build, constructed for carrying sacks of anything heavy. Broad shoulders (getting ever broader no doubt with all this swimming) and broad back.
The Communist was short but amazingly strong. When I was a child it was my proud boast that my Dad could lift anything. And I am his female equivalent. Sadly women aren't supposed to be good at lifting heavy things - they are supposed to be all willowy grace, and I'm not.
So I can't run, and I can't jump. I can walk for a long time, though never elegantly.
In the water though, I can move. I feel free. I am not a fast swimmer but I am fast enough to negotiate other swimmers. For the first ten lengths I feel I'm just getting going and they're slightly hard work - - but when I get to forty lengths or so, I feel I could keep going for ever. When the pool's not too crowded I look at the clear water ahead of me and pretend it's the sea in Florida, with pelicans diving nearby!
And when I think back to how I felt before I started swimming so much - - yes, I do feel better now. There's something in this exercise lark and I'm delighted to say that I think I've found it. By about nine o'clock tomorrow I'll have done fifty-seven miles. I love it.
So I thought I'd count up how many miles I've swum this year and it is 56.
Fifty-six miles! I guessed it would be about sixty since last November, when I started swimming in the early mornings, but it's clearly more than that if it's fifty-six since January 1st.
Fifty-six!!! (Yes, I know, I just keep right on mentioning it). It's a bit hard to believe really. I keep checking my toes to see if they're becoming a trifle webbed.
Sadly it hasn't given me a figure like Cheryl Cole's, though I know I have got a bit thinner.
But my blood pressure is good and low - a hundred and twenty over sixty-four when last checked. And I've been working so flat out lately that I think I must have got fitter - otherwise I don't think I could have done it.
I'm no athlete. I'm short and stocky. A Russian peasant build, constructed for carrying sacks of anything heavy. Broad shoulders (getting ever broader no doubt with all this swimming) and broad back.
The Communist was short but amazingly strong. When I was a child it was my proud boast that my Dad could lift anything. And I am his female equivalent. Sadly women aren't supposed to be good at lifting heavy things - they are supposed to be all willowy grace, and I'm not.
So I can't run, and I can't jump. I can walk for a long time, though never elegantly.
In the water though, I can move. I feel free. I am not a fast swimmer but I am fast enough to negotiate other swimmers. For the first ten lengths I feel I'm just getting going and they're slightly hard work - - but when I get to forty lengths or so, I feel I could keep going for ever. When the pool's not too crowded I look at the clear water ahead of me and pretend it's the sea in Florida, with pelicans diving nearby!
And when I think back to how I felt before I started swimming so much - - yes, I do feel better now. There's something in this exercise lark and I'm delighted to say that I think I've found it. By about nine o'clock tomorrow I'll have done fifty-seven miles. I love it.
posted by Daphne at 8:00 pm
6 Comments:
By the sound of it Daphne - you have missed your sporting vocation but it may not be too late for you to figure in the British women's Olympic weightlifting team in 2012.
How many miles have you done?? *g* You keep right on swimming. I just might have to get on board with this exercise lark too!
YP - - I'm thinking about it. But not very hard.
Debby - - that'll be 57 now!!!! Thank you for asking!
Webbed is good. Here in the states there is a parody song of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" march that we used to sing on the band bus:
Be kind to your web-footed friends,
For a duck may be somebody's mother;
Beware of the denizen of the swamp,
She's a dilly through and through;
You may think that this is the end,
Well, it isn't 'cause there's still another chorus...
(modulate a half-step higher and sing again. On final iteration:
You may think that this is the end,
Well, it is.
Also, the company I worked for in the pre-feminist days had a policy that a woman could lift up to 25 pounds. After that, she had to get a man to do it for her.
How many miles have you swum?
in B&Q if you ask for help loading something into your car, they put out a call for a male member of staff; usually ending up with a weedy youth who hardly looks capable of lifting his eyebrows.
So, you're doing a bit of swimming, then Daphne?
Bob - yes, my Mum taught me that spoof song too. Did you ask how far I've swum this year? Fifty-seven miles, since you ask.
Dfo - Yes, just a bit of swimming. But I'm too modest to mention it much.
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