Knock On Effect

The air temperature was much warmer today and fortunately this also had a knock on effect on the pool temperature! I arrived a bit later than usual and as I came out of the changing room I caught Vince on his way out, running up the long side of the pool towards his bike - Vince has mastered the art for cutting his time at the Lido to a T and, so he says, always makes it to work on time! With a wide grin on his face he said "it's 8 today" I already had my earplugs and swimming caps (2 of them!) on and wasn't sure whether I heard him right?! "Yes, eight", he said .. well I was going to take that with a pinch of salt because although I know that Vince always checks the water temperature when he arrives, this sounded a bit high ... mind you he checks the thermometer at the deep end ... and we know by now that the thermometer in the deep end is always, shall we say, a touch optimistic :) the (only) thermometer reading to rely on can of course only be David's! Why? you may ask .. well because it always shows less and we know we are tough ... we know we can swim in much colder water then the deep end suggest!

I was too late to catch up with David and never really established what the water temperature was today ... my guess, however, is that it was around 7 Celsius - As I got in and pushed of I felt it was definitely a touch warmer than yesterday. I felt well enough to decide there and then that I was going to be fine swimming 4 lengths - and I did - plus a dive and 2 widths after 20+ minutes in the sauna - ahhhh what bliss :)

Bionic man, Carl Richards on the other hand ...

.... was in the pool when I came out of the shower, motoring ....

up and down the pool ... and only stopped

for 10 seconds flat to say hello and to tell me to do a boo on his friend Tom who attempted to swim here in cold water for the first time

at this point Carl was on lap 12 and soon to push off again - he said he wanted to swim 20 lengths - that's 1.1 Miles or 1.8 Kilometres

Batch had had a good workout too - running first and then 4 lengths

I tried to get Mark head on - not easy when not in the water and simply putting my hand in gaging distance and framing (more like guessing ...)

He too swam 4 lengths - here he is pushing off for lap no.3

while Liz arrived - and still had it all to do

Off I went to do a boo with Tom ... fully dressed again (and smiling!) after his (short) experience in the pool

and guess what ? Carl was still swimming up and down!

he ended up swimming 22 lengths (2 kilometres)

TOUGH, like Carl's cap says - you are not kidding!

before I left I looked for more traces of lido art