Swimalot!

It is now only Thursday and I have already swum 7 miles this week. This has partially been due to the fact that I have decided to take full advantage of my Swim London Membership - £26 per month - that allows me access to any of 40 council pools in the London area. As I was going to The Stag twice this week, rather than hanging around waiting in a pub spending money, I decided to brave visiting a new pool - namely the Oasis Leisure Centre on Shaftesbury Avenue. Going to a new pool is a bit daunting for me and I knew that Oasis might be really popular, ie full of gorgeous hunky men.

It is actually true. Oasis is full of gorgeous hunky men and it is really odd to suddenly go from being one of the youngest people in the locker room (Streatham Common) to being one of the oldest. There is a choice of two pools to swim in, one indoors and the other outside and after the usual game new people play in a locker room - the "How Do I Get To The Pool" dance - I was rather surprised. Both pools seemed really small but I opted for the outside.

I realise we are blessed in Streatham with a 30m pool but even at 27m it seemed tiny - and very full. Very fit guys were hanging around doing very determined lunges and pools-side stretching whilst others appeared to be doing specially measured strokes up and down the pool. I tentatively dipped my toe in and prepared for the worst. Further surprises! It was REALLY warm. Warmer than Streatham Pool. In fact, it took me all of about 5 minutes to work out that the muscle guys who were lapping the pool were not doing special excercises - they were simply slow swimmers. Pretty to look at but a bit slow and even slower to get out of the way for a turn. Still it was great fun swimming outdoors in the centre of London and I look forward to doing it more often in the future. Hurrah for Swim London!