Intimidation

Drive in this morning, not bad – 40 minutes, people must be off starting their Xmas shopping.

The cricket is over.

My mate survived his brush with the red wine on Saturday night, normally guarantees him a hangover apparently but this time he comes through it relatively unscathed. Must just be Mild that he has no tolerance for then.

It may have been a good drive in this morning but in the evening getting off Pride Park takes forever.

I drive over to Beeston to meet L. Who has arranged to pick up a Xmas present for Son from there.

We have no dog training tonight; we are on a Xmas break, so I take Doggo for a run round the pond. L joins us. Once we've done that, we go swimming. We go for a normal session rather than our usual 'Adults Only' because it starts and finishes earlier. I half expect the session to be full of kids but it isn't, there are only two in there, two overweight boys dive-bombing each other. They also have two lanes set out at one end. I daringly go in one lane; L goes in the other. At first there is just one chap in my lane but then another joins. They are both doing very professional looking front crawl and are a lot faster than I am. At first I try and stay ahead of them but when one almost swims over the top of me and the other, coming towards me, seems to almost swim under me, I admit defeat and am intimidated out of the lanes. Thoroughly put in my place I rejoin the main pool. Soon though L has her lane to herself and I join her there, not that L herself isn't intimidating, because she is, but the pace will be more gentle.

No sooner had I managed to put in a few lengths of dodgy front crawl that another psycho arrives, a big muscled bald headed chap with a girl in tow. I see him eyeing up our lane and get ready to bale out but luckily he goes in the lane next to ours. The girl doesn't go in the lanes, she obviously knows what’s coming and is too intimated to share a lane with him. She turns out to be a very competent front crawler and easily does a length faster than me. The psycho though is in a totally different league entirely. He starts doing very fast front crawl using only his arms; he has a float between his thighs (this is some psycho technique for strengthening your arms that L told me about but that I don't fully understand). He does three lengths in the time it takes me to do one. He's even doing kick turns still with the float between his thighs. He might as well be in my lane as the aftershock from the waves he's making with his kick turns can be felt in my lane, the waves are almost high enough to surf on. The girl is impressed; I think he's pulled tonight.

We get home and L does her trademark beans dish, this time with posh M&S Chorizo and Stilton! It is fantastic.

It's been all go tonight and after a bit of Xmas present wrapping L turns in, the double sports session has done her in. It's also done me, in that in my hamstring throb is back. It keeps me awake, although I often experience sleepless nights, usually one a week but since I've been biking I've been so knackered that I thought they'd become a thing of the past.