foolfillment: the blog

On the invitation of Guinea Pig Mum I went along to see about helping our at Tranent ASC on Thursday and Friday night. I had been meaning to get in touch with my old coach for a while to see about getting involved in swimming at some level but I was waiting for school to settle down then see just how much time I would have to commit.

Going back to the Loch Centre for the first time in about 6 years really made me think back, on two levels. First, the building has barely changed in all the time I’ve been away so I found myself slipping back into what is basically an old habit or routine - taking the stairs in the same way by swinging round the banister at the bend, using the same changing cubicle, standing/sitting in the same old places - it was as though nothing had changed. I even found the swimmers using a kickboard that was covered in doodles and names of people I used to train with.

On another level it made me think about how you teach people. I can only remember how I swam aged 16 not aged 8, likewise I can’t remember what my coaches did to progress my swimming when I was 8, those memories have all been replaced by those of what happened later.

I know I have all this knowledge about how to swim well, but I don’t know how to get it out. I could take a session of swimmers who are at a similar level to me when I stopped, but younger than that I don’t know where to begin.
Yet, this is what I do at school. I switch from teaching 1st years to sketch to teaching 4th years how to draw complicated measured perspective drawings. I go from showing a senior to cut a mortice and tenon joint to showing a 1st year how to hold a saw.

I suppose it is all about breaking everything down into its component parts in my head, going back to first principles then building it up from there. How do I do that in swimming though? It feels like I need to try to forget everything I know and teach myself from scratch.

Well, I thought I was fairly safe from this meme but Armin Grewe who writes Ministry of Propaganda and the Islay Blog tagged me to come up with 5 things you don’t know about me. This is hard because of the varied (if limited) readership that I have, my parents read this, as do two of my brothers - so not unsurprisingly they know a lot about me, let’s give it a shot anyway.

1. I was once (2001 maybe?) the 39th fastest person in Britain over 200m breaststroke and 45th over 100m breaststroke, or thereabouts, It doesn’t sound much but I like to think it was pretty good. I was in similar positions for the years around that time.
2. I took part in the procession at the opening ceremony of the Scottish Parliament, flanking Robin Harper
3. I once served a desert at work with Brown Sauce instead of chocolate sauce because the chefs hadn’t cleared the cold kitchen completely before dinner service - and I didn’t check.
4. I’m a natural blonde, I just dye my hair ginger to continue a national stereotype.
5. The first single I bought was ‘The more you ignore me, the closer I get’ by Morrissey

Now, I was scratching the barrel there, so one of those aren’t true and it’s up to you to guess which one, although it’s fairly obvious. Now, the next challenge is to come up with 5 people to tag. Let’s go for Ollie Bray, Robbie Alexander, Christine McIntosh, Gordon McLean, and Neil Winton.

[tags]5 things tou didn’t know about me, brown sauce, Scottish parliament, Morrisey, Meme, swimming, breaststroke[/tags]