It's all going swimmingly well.

Swimming last night.  As part of my quest to get ready for the half Ironman in June, I need to get my swimming up to scratch.  I've never been awfully good at it.  At school, I managed a respectable backstroke, coming 3rd at the swimming gala, or maybe second, whatever, it wasn't first because I would remember that wouldn't I?  Funnily enough, I had absolutely no sporting achievements at all (apart from the 2nd/3rd above) at school.  I didn't play for any school teams except rugby, and that was only because hardly anyone liked rugby and I did, so was picked just because there was no-one else.  I wonder if that's why I enjoy running and triathlons so much - because it's more about 'taking part' that 'the winning'.  If you enter a marathon with 20,000 people in it, you had better be good to stand a chance of winning, and that has definitely not bothered me in the slightest.  Having said all that, when I won the over 50s triathlon at Brigg, and then again at South Hunsley a couple of years ago, it did my ego no end of good so there must be some deep seated issue within me. Anyway, back to the swimming.  When I started triathlons about 5 years ago, I was, frankly, rubbish.  Mainly breaststroke with a couple of lengths of front crawl thrown in to get me puffed out, suffice to say my swim time was not good.  So, I managed to get a regular weekly swim in with son-in-law number 2 (who was much better than me), determined to crack the crawl for a sprint triathlon of 400 metres.  When I had done that, we both entered an Olympic distance event that needed 1500m of swimming and gradually got there.  Subsequently, I did some homework on technique using (mainly) a website call swimsmooth that advises you to swim as smooth as possible (the clue is in the website name).  So, I managed to teach myself bi-lateral breathing, high elbow arm raises, but, to be truthful, not much else.  But, after all that time, my swim time for 400m and 1500m has barely improved since I first started timing myself.  8 mins for 400m, 35mins for 1500m which is approx 30secs a length + a bit more for the 1500.  The half ironman is 1900m, so I'm guessing 38mins + a bit more, say, around 45 mins.  There - a prediction!  That's quite rare for me.