Swimming day 525 - Wednesday 25th July 2012

Another beautiful day (and I am not sick of writing that).  Temperature at 6.30am around 18 degrees and set to hit over 25 degrees by the end of the day.  The sea was once again flat, although quite a strong tide pull to the east made it sluggish to swim in.  Big Bob and Sean wanted to head to the West Pier, but I didn’t want to today (just because!) so I bade them farewell in favour of twice around the pier (beach2beach2beach).  Thinking better of swimming without me they changed their minds and with Shoichi leading the way we headed of around the pier.  Sean was wearing his flippers today and that put him in second position to Shoichi, with bob and I a couple of metres behind.  My challenging mind kept saying “well he is wearing flippers” whilst my more practical mind replied “yes but he is almost 70”. My challenging mind then was saying “well he has been swimming all his life and I’ve only been swimming 2½ years ” whilst my more practical mind replied “yes but he is almost 70”.  Swimming is an amazing sport; not only is it a full body none impact sport (as long as you stay out of a rough sea of course), but also it can make time/age almost irrelevant in terms of speed/agility.  The fact that Sean is some 15 years older than Bob and some 27 years older than me makes no great difference.  Sure in truth his flippers were a big help to him as usually he is behind us (but he is 70 my mind screams as I write this!)  however to be doing an almost 2 mile swim at 7am is pretty impressive no matter your age, let alone someone in his later years. 

As for me (the youngster), I am also at the gym today at midday with Ross working on Abs, back and chest – no doubt no food will be taken before or after (so far nothing except a strong coffee consumed!) and then whilst the rest of Brighton suns itself on the beach I will be stuck at my desk trying to make headway into my Everest of outstanding paperwork – living the dream baby, living the dream