The next day, it goes without saying really, that my back wasn't really feeling better. If I'm honest, it was feeling worse. But the crevasse didn't open, it was just hot and achy. I didn't bother telling anyone why that might have been, the expression "you've only got yourself to blame" was high up in my relevant catchphrases. I had a meeting in London, and biked to the station for a 7:50 train, only to find that I'd left my bike lock at home. As close followers on Facebook will know, I don't tend to leave a lot of wiggle-room on train journeys, so having spent a whole 5 seconds debating the likelihood of my bike still being there if I left it with no lock, I watched the train pull out, turned around, and went back home to fetch my lock. I thought the cycling might be good for me, so I came back to the station, and caught the next train, and even did a little running to my meeting, which I was now late for. I really noticed the stairs in the underground on the way back that evening.
On Tuesday, I thought, swimming is the answer, and I don't care what the question is... I decided I could damn well get back on this beast, and get that mile in that I'd been going for last Thursday, and because of this, I reckoned to go after work, so that I wasn't pushed for time. I was disgusted to note that, once again, the lane-swimmers were all going painfully slowly. I've noticed that they have a way of leaving once I get in the water though, so I didn't over-think my strategy. Sometimes I count backwards from my target, so as to help me not lose count, but I wasn't sure where the target would be tonight. I had just over an hour, as I got into the pool a little after 6:40, and the session finished at 7:45.
I was interested to notice that the slowest swimmer in our lane was actually walking up and down, which seemed very peculiar. I was trying to figure out whether she thought that anyone else actually believed she was swimming. She was pretty good at getting out of the way, though, I'll give her that. Every time she saw me coming, she simply traversed across, switched direction and carried on. It seemed odd, but she didn't annoy me unduly, and I was content to monitor her progress as I swept passed. I did, however, lose my temper with a girl who initially hung all her weight on the lane divider (which actually just makes me worried that it'll rip out of the wall). I glared at the lifeguard to see if he was going to intervene, but he appeared to be in a coma. I went passed again, and she was still doing it, but now leaning well into our lane. I made sure my crawl legs were extra-splashy. Then she decided to join our lane, swimming. She was wearing a quite lurid purple costume, and seemed to have a lot of angry black curls. She was swimming behind one of the slow blokes, who was artfully dodging me by allowing me to pass him at lane ends, the way civilised people do. She was not civil, or civilised. She overtook him, three times, as I was approaching him, head on to me. I didn't stop. The first two times, I brushed past her. The third time, the lifeguard woke up and kicked her out. I felt like an unstoppable force of nature.
I was going well and seemed to be making good pace, the back wasn't really hurting, and I felt strong. I guess that's when it went wrong really: I thought I could maybe either do two kilometres, 80 lengths, or possibly just keep going till time. I was on about 50 when a woman joined our lane. I'd got the 3 blokes quite well trained at keeping behind me, one guy was about the same speed, I could leave him behind on my front crawl lengths and he'd catch up on my breast stroke lengths. The others were straggling. Then this woman came in, and I swear that in the second I clocked her as I came up for breath on a crawl stroke, I thought "she'd better be fast!" - (like, fast enough to swim in MY lane) some sort of swimming prima donna had overtaken my body! Anyway, as it turned out, she WAS a very strong swimmer, but exceptionally annoying. She kept stopping at the lane end, and then literally starting again as I was a metre away from the end, so she always started right in front of me. It was very peculiar behaviour, and fired up something in me. I was not going to stop. I kept coming, and kept coming, thinking all the while "I'm getting pretty tired now, and my back is hot, again... but I'm not slowing down.". At one point I got such bad cramp in my toe that it curled and I couldn't move it, but I didn't want to lose any distance, so I kept going. Both my calves were shrieking at me, the one part of my body I absolutely couldn't afford to injure. I was at 74 when she stopped at the shallow end and said "Do you want to go ahead of me?" I didn't pause, but I gave her a grin. Mwah ha-ha-hah. Victory was mine. I stopped at 80, and swam over to the steps. For one thing, I deserved them. For another thing, it was the only reliable way of getting out.
The calf muscle thing would probably clear up.
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