So I had not been swimming for more than a year. I prefer to run, cycle, walk and do pretty much any other exercise – rather than getting in a cold pool to swim lengths. But I am planning to do a few triathlons next year so I needed to get back into the swimming thing. (In fact, I’m hoping to do a few qualifiers to see if my old lady body can hooft itself into gaining a place for the 2013 World Age Group Triathlon Champs! There, I’ve outed my, frankly ridiculous, plans!)

I have been swimming a couple of times a week for a few weeks and I’ve be amazed at how much I have enjoyed it. I’m not a natural swimmer but years of tri club coaching have helped to improve my technique so that I can swim all my lengths in a comfortable-ish freestyle (crawl).

Then, today, I met up with the Mighty Vickster for a swim. She is a superb swimmer but she had been complaining that she was out of practice – and that she wasn’t swimming well. On our first few lengths she seemed to be swimming like her usual dolphin self but she said she wasn’t. She was still beating me by quite some way, and it was just a warm up!

The fact that she’s better than me doesn’t bother me in the slightest. She’s a fantastic athlete and when she puts her mind to it she wins World Age Group Championships! She did this some years ago in Canada. Also, MV is about to become my coach again as I make a bid on those 2013 Worlds. It is a wonder just to watch her in the pool – and she is great at offering swim technique tips.

However, I had to laugh this afternoon. There we were doing a set of lengths. After the warm-up we progressed to 3 x 100m at easy pace. Then 3 x 200m at harder pace. Followed by 400m at race pace. During each set MV and I did out own thing and then stopped for a quick chat before the next set.

It was during the 200ms that I thought I must be doing really well with my swimming. At the end of my 3 x 200m with 30 seconds rest between each 200m I only seemed to be 2 lengths (that’s 50m) behind the Mighty One. So I blurted out: “There, I’m not doing so badly. I’m only a couple of lengths behind you!” Now MV is never a show-off and she is one of the most modest athletes I know but even she couldn’t resist her reply: “Actually Fi, I was swimming 250ms while you were doing 200ms!”

So that means that while I splashed out 600m with 1min 30s of rest, she managed to 750m! That puts my swimming into perspective. And, as MV told me, she’s not in her finest swimming shape just now. Oh dear! It looks like I have a lot of work to do on my swimming to get it up to scratch for next year’s qualifiers! I will be reporting back with progress on swimming, cycling and running!