Week 8: A plunge pool in Finland and buoyant flamboyance at home

Conor Pope: ‘My vigour in the pool does not go unnoticed’

I have gone on holiday by mistake. I am in Finland, and as luck would have it I have found myself in a hotel with a swimming pool. So, armed with my goggles, I head straight for it.

Once I have successfully, if mortify-edly, navigated the naked saunas so beloved of Finnish people, I find two sprawling pools in the hotel complex. One is outdoors. It looks lovely, but it is snowing outdoors so I decide on the indoor pool.

I put on my goggles and plunge into the water. The Finns like their pools cold. I start to swim. It is at this point I really understand the difference between swimming for exercise and swimming for fun.

Until I took up this Swim For A Mile challenge I have never stepped foot outside the latter camp but now I am expected to live in the former. I do a couple of lengths of the pool, barrelling past small children and their parents like some class of latter-day Michael Phelps.

My vigour in the pool does not go unnoticed. People are frowning at me. It is not hard to see why. A leisure centre populated by young families is no place to train, and me and my goggles are entirely out of place.

After a couple of lengths I feel compelled to stop. You can crash into small people wearing armbands only so often without it getting a bit ridiculous.

My progress thus halted, I have time to dwell on the enormity of what lies ahead. I have to swim a mile in the middle of May and, truthfully, I can’t imagine swimming one-third of it. And the “there’s loads of time left” line I have used to perk myself up when I have felt my spirits sinking is fast losing currency.

I have just five weeks left. Lordy, as the Finns might say.

Dominique McMullan: ‘I’m a one-woman synchronised-swimming team’

Lots of swimming action this week and everything feels like it’s stepping up a gear. Coach Peter Conway was commenting today on how far we have come, and the idea that we still have six weeks left is exciting. Watching my swimming buddies in Trinity gym moving gracefully up and down the lanes, you could almost be fooled into thinking we were a real swim team.

In training we covered breast stroke, and I’m improving slowly, although I still don’t have Victoria’s Secret thighs. I’ve learned to take more time between each stroke, to kick my legs correctly and, most importantly, why I was finding this challenging in the first place. When I was about 10, while breast-stroke-kicking vigorously, I kicked the swimming-pool wall and hurt my toe. This repressed childhood memory seems to have affected my kicking confidence, so a new tip is to do the breast stroke as far away from walls as you can. (And stay in touch with that inner child.)

I also learned that my hands have a strange tendency towards flamboyance under the water. I’m not really sure how to describe what exactly it is they do; think “wristy”, and you’re about a quarter of the way there. I’m a veritable one-woman synchronised-swimming team the way I go on. So it’s toy soldier arms for a while, as I try to knock the cabaret out of myself.

We also had a go at using the “pace clock” this week. This is a handy tool on the wall of all good swimming pools that allows you to see, to the millisecond, how long your length took. This also enables you to race against yourself. I’m currently at about 57 seconds for 50 metres. Watch this space.