Swimming

I used to go swimming regularly. When I lived in Glasgow my flat was right next to a swimming pool and I would go swimming every morning before going to work. As a bonus, the water and showers were a damn sight more hygienic than those in the tenement block I lived in. It also kept me really fit. When I moved away I was lucky enough to have a gym at my workplace. That also kept me fit and managed to get me away from my desk at lunchtime. Now I've moved office again and don't have any such luxuries so I thought it would be a good idea to go swimming on my way home.

My father was a very keen swimmer and he encouraged us to all learn to swim at a young age. We would go along to a swimming club at the Guinea Gap swimming pool which was quite unusual for an indoor swimming pool in that is was a saltwater pool. At the time, there was one major international hero of the swimming world, American swimmer Mark Spitz, who had won an incredible seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics. I can distinctly recall Mark appearing in the Guinness book of records will all seven medals hanging around his remarkably toned body.

The one thing I love about swimming is that it is a very low impact sport. It's difficult to injure oneself except, perhaps, by doing the butterfly - which is essentially just drowning at velocity. I tend to stick to a good pace of breaststroke, which nicely controls breathing rate, mixed with the odd lane of crawl which gets the heart going. However, the feeling I get when leaving the pool is an almost euphoric sense of lightness. It's wonderful. Somehow, I feel that splashing up and down the lanes for an hour has countered years of beer and curry abuse. I feel like I should have a wonderful toned physique like the youthful Mr Spitz himself.

Then I catch my reflection in the mirror next to the showers. That Mark Spitz has really let himself go.