Because of my shoulder, I’ve not been swimming for the last two weeks, but my physio told me (or, more accurately, told my wife to tell me) that although I can’t do freestyle, I could do breaststroke or use a kickboard. Like the joke about the man who asks his doctor if he’ll be able to play the piano after they remove one of his kidneys, I was pleased to hear I can do breaststroke, because I could never do breaststroke up until now.
I bought a kickboard from Amazon with a ridiculous Harley Quinn picture on it (which given I don’t care about comics that much is just confusing) and tried it out tonight.
It was … horrible. I couldn’t breathe, I was incredibly slow, everything felt wrong. I can do 25 yards in about 35 seconds on a good day (not wonderful, but there we are); kicking alone took a minute at a time. I did six laps, and near the end I realised that if I had my head down and kicked frantically, I’d go a bit quicker (last lap in 35 seconds) but having your head down and no easy way to turn to one side to breathe is … well, it took a lot of getting used to.
And home, to bed. Off to see the neck specialist tomorrow.