Fat swimmer

I've taken up swimming. Well I say taken up swimming but that makes it sound as though I can't swim. And actually I can't swim very well, and that's my point.

I swim once a week now because it's an exercise that I can fit into a relatively short period of time. On Thursdays I have two hours to myself. If I were to go to the gym I'd have enough time to get to the gym, work out and get home, but no time to shower and feel human again. A swim, on the other hand, takes less time and allows me to get to the pool, change, swim, shower, change back, get home and have a swift cuppa and magazine read. This is a more efficient use of time and therefore the preferred course of action.

Going back to my first point....I can't swim very well. I can manage breast stroke but not the professional looking breast stroke with goggles, nose clips and head under the water. Mine's more of the old lady breast stroke where someone doesn't want to ruin their perm or shampoo and set. (I hope it's not necessary to point out I have neither perm or set.) The head is definitely above the water but only just because my technique is so awful that it takes a fair amount of effort not to sink.

Breast stroke is a fat swimming stroke and I take up a lot of space when I'm swimming.

The swimming lanes that are available at the pool are the width of a racing swimming lane which, in my defence, I consider to have been designed for one swimmer. If one tries to cram more than one swimmer into one of these lanes, then things get a little crowded. This isn't generally a problem if swimmers are doing the crawl because crawl is a skinny swimming stroke. When two breast strokers meet then arms and legs are likely to come into contact. Even if I'm swimming and encounter a crawler in the other direction, a collision is possible.

The thing is, that it doesn't matter how much swimming I do, I'll still be a fat swimmer.