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Kicking against the pricks

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.

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