Way back in early January when I started looking at the whole swimming thing again, and switched my allegiance to DCU’s swimming pool away from Westwood (Clontarf Road)’s swimming pool, I was struggling to make 225m.

Some background. Back in the mists of time, I used to swim 1600m regularly. I haven’t done that for around 9 years which is appalling now that I admit it. I also exclusively backstroked while doing it. There were two reasons for that. 1) sports injury which was what got me swimming at the time and 2) it’s easier for me. I want to highlight that I’m not saying it’s easier for everyone; I only have experience of me.

In theory, I’m supposed to be rectifying the lack of a reliable front crawl but the second last time I went to the swimming pool, my nose clip somehow got lost which made front crawl a non-runner and during the course of that back stroke, I discovered I could swim 775m backstroke with a significant amount more ease than when I endeavoured to alternate between front crawl and backstroke. So I got to my mid target which was aggregate 800m over a swimming session and thoughtfully, wondered if I could do the 1600m backstroking without any hassle.

The answer to that question is actually yes. Today’s swimming trip was 1625, all backstroke.

Now, this is a monumental success and Runkeeper thinks I’m amazing. And I’m very proud of myself. Today, in particular, I’m also rather sanctimonious about it but that will wear off later.

In the meantime, I’ll be wanting to keep that up while doing something about substituting in the occasional front crawl lengths.