21 September 2011 (Wednesday) - Swimming

Something which amazes me is how people know exactly what the price of petrol is in so many different petrol stations. And this fixation about how you can save one penny per litre if you drive miles to buy your petrol.
I was reliably informed that petrol from Morrisons in Canterbury was two pence per litre cheaper than from Tesco’s in Ashford. So after work I went to Morrisons in Canterbury. It involved negotiating some rather dodgy narrow country lanes, and trying to get to a petrol station via a car park was an experience. But having gone well out of my way and having made a journey I otherwise wouldn’t have made, I’ve saved myself seventy five pence.
It would have been a lot quicker if I just went to Tesco’s in Ashford; personally I think the time that I wasted fiddling about was worth a lot more than that seventy five pence. But what do I know?

And then on to the Stour Centre for a bit of swimming. I was rather amazed to have to pay up £4.60 when ‘er indoors TM had distinctly said it would only cost two quid. But do I complain? The Stour Centre have a deal whereby you can buy a monthly ticket for twenty quid and then you can go as often as you like. So after four swims in a month I’d be in credit.
However if I were to take them up on this offer I could only pay by direct debit, and they demand two months’ notice of cancellation. I think I’ll stick to “pay as I go” for the time being.

I hadn’t been swimming since the summer of 2007, and it showed. When I got to the pool I had the choice of slow, medium or fast lane. I thought I was probably a medium, but would start off in the slow lane. I was glad I did. I was one of the slowest there. And I developed a rather odd cramp between my shoulder blades. But I carried on regardless. I’d set myself a goal to do ten lengths before I gave up. In the end I did twenty-two. That’s just over half a kilometre. I don’t think that’s bad going for my first swim in four years.
Plugging my data into my fitness pal (dot com) tells me that half an hour’s swimming burned up about as many calories as were in Sunday’s roast dinner. Perhaps I should do more of this swimming lark.

And in closing I’ll make the observation that on the day that Google Plus goes live, the latest Facebook upgrade is so dreadful that it seems designed to push all of its users over to Google Plus..


1 comment:

  1. Having spent the last two days rejigging all my facebook friends into the default Family, Friends and Acquaintances lists, deleted my old lists and created some new custom ones, the latest changes to Facebook, including the news feed make a lot of sense, particularly since the changes allow me to filter out the dross.

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