Pills

"Have you heard about that new retirement place?  They got a restaurant, they got a cinema.  Everything!"

So it is that I find myself in the changing rooms at Two Riversmeet, Christchurch's premier (some might say only) municipal leisure complex, at 9am on a Wednesday.  It is populated almost exclusively with OAPs - I am the youngest by at least a generation.  In the changing rooms, three elderly gents exchange thoughts about retirement homes. 

"Best thing is just not to get old" is the eventual conclusion, "keep taking them pills."

In my own little effort to stave off the advancing years, here I am, back in the pool for the first time in many month.  In fact, it's my first swim since the Bournemouth Triathlon.  Without cash, and with £5 being the minimum charge for using a card, I'm forced to buy two admissions to the pool, thereby ensuring that I shall have to return with my inkjet special "pre-paid swim" voucher within the next month or face losing £4.35, although it's a close run thing as to which would pain me more.

It's no secret that I don't like swimming, and not surprisingly nothing has changed in the intervening period.  I labour up and down the pool, well aware of the folks 30 or 40 years my senior zooming past strongly.  It's almost like my very first visit to the pool, when I could barely manage more than a length or two without being exhausted.  On the plus side, I'm delighted to find that I've retained at least a reasonable ability for bilateral breathing, but I'm pretty sure that my swim stroke is hilariously inefficient, all flailing arms and sinky legs.  With the prospect of having to swim 1500m in August however, I'm clearly going to have to put in a bit more effort than before. 

Resus

It's been a little while, dear reader, and it's had it's ups and downs. From a fitness perspective, mostly downs.  The Thruxton Duathlon served as the last event of the year, and following that, and with a bit of work travel thrown in, my diet and exercise has not been a paragon of discipline.  My weight slowly creeps upwards, not dramatically, but enough to gently tip back over the 14 stone mark, at which point I promise myself that I need to do more to get it down again.

So I do what any self-respecting person would do - I drink two bottles of wine, and drunkenly sign up to do the London Triathlon, except I elect to do the Olympic distance, which is double the Sprint distances I've done until now.  That should keep me going for a while anyway.