Thursday, 29 January 2009

My swimming endeavors

One fine day during my 7th standard days, I got into a well in my uncle's farm with my uncle, with a lot of zeal to learn swimming. Seconds after I stepped into the water, I was holding my uncle so tightly in fear that he was almost drowning and he couldn't even swim! That was the day I developed fear about swimming,deep waters and drowning.

After a bad wrist sprain in gym while lifting weights, I was advised by doctor not to touch weights for another 2 to 3 months. Just when I was wondering what to do, I was convinced by my colleague (Niranjan) that swimming will be best thing to do during my couple of months break from gym, considering the peak winter time. After so many years, finally I learnt swimming. As a matter of fact, I am able to swim better than I expected. Now don't ask me what was my expectation about swimming :-) I always used to think that floating in water without drowning itself is a big thing :).

Thanks to Niranjan, Saji, Manish and his wife who helped me to learn swimming and break all my myths and fears about drowning and deep waters. The 3 big enclosed and well maintained warm water swimming pools of Ipswich Borough Council are worth every penny of the membership fee. To my surprise, I was able to float and swim little bit on the day 1 itself. Convinced and motivated by this, I was practising more and more and I could swim well in a week. After a month, I am able to do breakstroke and free style swimming very well though I am still learning backward swimming and yet to attempt butterfly stroke. Watching and getting valuable tips from fellow swimmers and practising along with some great professional swimmers of UK, is a real pleasure.

I am now able to clock 8 laps (1 lap=50metres) in 22-24 minutes in the competition pool. It may not be a great thing for regular or good swimmers. But for a guy who feared water a lot, it really is a big achievement. I am totally enjoying each and every minute spent in the swimming pool. During my process of learning I came across very good swimming tutorials on youtube which I want to share with all, as I found them to be very useful and effective. Jimmy D Shea- Many thanks for uploading your tutorial videos on Youtube.

FreeStyle



Breast stroke

2 comments:

Sail: said...

Haha... Cool.. :) so finally you are there in the race..!!

Anonymous said...

yeah!!congrats and u actually know swimming !!! surprised..all the best for a dive in the well