Back to the Pool

I bought a set of bikini from Esprit yesterday. My sister called me up to inform me that they were on 70% discount, so I went down to take a look. I would have bought all if all the designs had my size, but in the end, I only bought one set. With a new bikini set, I needed to well, basically make use of it, don't I? Couple with the adidas goggles I bought from the factory outlet store in Herzogenaurach, I needed to use all those stuff I bought right?

And well, the growing tummy and fats around my arms and thighs were all signalling me to head for the pool like soon.

Finally I got my fat ass of the marble chair (I'm using the dining table as my workdesk recently), and went for a swim. My target before heading down was to hit 2km, which after some very difficult calculations, I figured that that would have to be 80 laps in my 25m pool. It took me like 20mins to figure out how many laps I was to swim because I think my brain stopped knowing how to process mental mathematical calculations.

I swim with my contact lenses. I always find this an amazing little nugget of mine. I'd wear my contacts under my goggles to swim. Actually, if I don't wear goggles, I can still swim with my eyes opened in the water, just that I won't wear my contacts, but I'd still be able to see stuff just very blurred images. I like to open my eyes in the water. Actually, my eyes are also able to take it if I swim in sea water with my eyes opened. I think that's a reason why I never have any problems with my contacts since my eyes were trained since young to be very hardy. hahaha~

I like to be able to see where I'm heading to and what's in the water, but sadly, my pool is damn dirty, all I saw was dirt and grime in the water. ah well... And more sadly, there aren't any good looking guys in the pool. My pool is only used by two kinds of people, kids under 6, and retirees over 60. It's so crap lor.

I guess those between 6-60 if want a swim would head to their clubs to swim. I think probably all those who swim regularly would have a membership with the Singapore Swimming Club or the Chinese Swimming Club.

Thinking about these made me think about some past events when I was still a kid. I remember since young, I always went swimming in our pool alone. My mum can't swim, so she doesn't bother going down to the pool with me. I know she does look on me from the window often, but well... Nevermind. It's also very comical that my mum grew up in a family of swimmers but she doesn't know how to swim. All her other family swims well, think two or three of my aunts used to work as lifeguards when they were younger.

I also first started swimming because of my aunt. She brought me to learn how to swim. Then I started training in my pool under a private coach. But after a while, after getting all those bronze, silver, gold, gold star thingies, I stopped swimming.

I started swimming again in primary 5 when I was talent spotted by the teachers in charge for my school's swim team during the annual swimming meet. At that time, the school's swim team had two kinds of swimmers, school swimmers and club swimmers. School swimmers meant that the swimmers trained with the school's coach, club swimmers were swimmers who trained privately under their own coach, they're called club swimmers because they usually train in SSC or CSC. Because I stopped training with my private coach, and also because I think my school didn't recognise him because I don't train in a club, so I ended up being a school swimmer. Another thing about the school swimmer is that we swim only 2 times a week, being a club swimmer you need to swim at least 3 times a week.

Because of this disparity, and also because club swimmers train in smaller groups, club swimmers are better swimmers than school swimmers, and hence the club swimmers were sort of in this upper class from the school swimmers. In our annual swimming meets, the club swimmers are also the ones who fare better, and in the annual nationals, the club swimmers are also the ones who bring glory to the school. (hmm... I realised that I'm writing in present tense... Maybe subconsciously I think this is still prevailling in the swim team.)

The time I had with the swim team was a very fond memory of mine. Everyweek twice, I'd have big baggages with me in school. And being part of the sports people community, I can wear the PE kit instead of the horrible pinafore even though I can pack my pinafore, I never did, and because I can use "I had training" as an excuse to get away with it. lol~ And it was great meeting all those people. But a pity was that most of the guys were club swimmers so we don't really get to meet much, but boy were they hot! The swimmer's built is like the most sought after in the field lor. Just think of those ACS swimmers... Actually, my school's boys team were quite good on national scale, but the girls team was quite bad. We always paled in comparison to the boys, but well, it was glory to the school, so to us, we had fun and that was it.

I remember those perks we had, swimming suits from TYR, caps, goggles, t-shirts, all those goodies. It's really great being in a sports team which did well in nationals and can have greater subsidies and funding from the school. And it did help that my school was a pretty rich school, although not on par with like ACS or the likes. But unlike ACS, or MGS (the schools which had good swimming traditions), my school was co-ed, so it meant that we could bring 4 teams into the competition instead of only the two divisions.

With the swim team and the trainings, I managed to come in 14th in my division for my event. It wasn't that good a position, but to me, that was the result of all the hard work I've put in in the past year, and it wasn't really that bad since there were many more participants (I think usually there's about 6-7 heats).

It's a pity I stopped after I went to secondary school, or should I say it's a pity I went to a secondary school without a proper swimming team.

Anyway, back to present, I managed to swim 2.5km just now. Which makes it a grand total of 100 laps on my 25m pool. (I did the math correctly, I hope) I shall up my target the next time I swim. Wait, I think I should set a target when would be the next time I take the pool. bahaha~

You know, I really like swimming. I feel like I'm flying~ Flying in the water.