Wake at 3:00 am, unsurprisingly after sleeping most of yesterday afternoon, but my stomach feels OK, so meditate for an hour or so and then drift off until 8:00. I have no duties this morning so I can take my time, breakfast is going to be smoked salmon with cream cheese on rye toast with coffee. Put the kettle on and the bread in the toaster before hanging out a line of washing, it's a cold grey day with a northerly wind, but at least it's dry. Over the hedge it's business as usual for the rabbits, nothing bothers them. After breakfast, I need the toilet but it seems everything is back to normal, so yesterday's problems are just a stomach chill and not the dreaded winter vomiting, norovirus. After washing and dressing drive to the leisure centre for about 10:30, half the pool is being used for schools, but there are only two women swimming either side of a double lane, and they are happy for me to squeeze in between them. We agree to revert to a clockwise rotation if anyone else joins the lane later and after calming my breathing down, decide to warm up with ten easy lengths of freestyle. As I have pointed out before, the warm up helps you determine how you really feel, and after an illness it is essential not to overdo things until a full recovery has taken place. I started off breathing bilaterally and soon settled into a fluent 13 stroke per length pattern, but after 4 lengths had to switch to 2 stroke breathing as I felt short of breath. Nevertheless, completed the ten lengths, maintaining the 13 stroke pattern, but still didn't feel 100 percent, so did an extended warm up with a further ten lengths easy backstroke, holding a 17 stroke pattern. After this I started to feel better and did ten lengths breaststroke holding a 7 1/2 stroke pattern. Everything now felt loosened up, including my lungs, so did ten lengths butterfly, with a ten second breather after each length, as I haven't swum fly for a month due to illness and the Swimathon. Having confirmed everything was working normally, swum 8 x 100m individual medley, focussing on smooth, fluent power, and an even pace. The trick here is to maintain a low stroke count whilst applying more muscular effort. If the stroke count goes up efficiency is lost in the attempt for speed, but you don't really go much faster. To warm down, swam a very easy 4 x 100 IM, but still holding to the same stroke count, in Zen swimming we never practise poor technique. As I'm rehydrating after the session, an instructor is trying to teach a youngster to swim in the school half of the pool. The boy is very tense and rushing at the exercises she is trying to get him to follow, it doesn't work, she gets frustrated and he feels like a failure. Their session ends and I ask the boy if he knows how to float, he doesn't, so I ask him to try lying on his back and just relaxing, wiggling his toes to keep some movement. He manages this, first time, and I ask him how it felt, "easy, nice," he says and I tell him to practise floating on his own for a while next time he comes. He seems happy when he leaves.
After my swim call and see an elderly friend in Beverley, she has put her back out and can only hobble, so I fetch fish and chips for us both from Pisces on Lairgate and we eat them out of the container, drink tea and chat. As I walk back from the chip shop a fine drizzle sets in, and although the walk is only 100 yards it wets me through. The washing will get an extra rinse. When I get in I catch up on my paperwork and in the evening read more AS Byatt. Tomorrow is forecast to be cold and clear, nice weather for a run.
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