El Andalous - The Beach

Beach Now Sectioned Off!

A not so good surprise on my return was that part of our private beach had been sectioned off and given to another apartment block up the road from where I live. It doesn’t really matter just now, because there are days when I’m the only person on the beach, but it may be a problem when tourism picks up again. In fact, I will resent it when tourists come back and I don’t have the place to myself any more. It’s pretty perfect just now!

As I may have mentioned before, it’s nice having a private beach because it means that a lot of the time you know other people there and it’s like a little community. And, in any case, people just start talking to you. I took my Arabic book to learn Arabic while I was on my sun lounger and an Egyptian lady came up to me and started speaking to me in Arabic – we ended up speaking on many occasions after that, but my vocabulary is so limited, it was a bit difficult, and I gave up in the end. But it’s an example of how friendly it all is.

I was surprised on my first couple of swims that I’d forgotten how to see fish. This might sound a bit daft, but actually, you get used to spotting fish and maybe even to looking through swimming goggles. At first, I just couldn’t focus properly. I guess it’s like when you go on a safari and the safari guides always spot the animals so much faster than you do – their eyes are attuned and they also know what to expect where. In fact, I now think of my little snorkeling escapades as fish safaris. I could even maybe set myself up as a fish safari guide. But I digress….

For the first month or so back at El Andalous, I surprised myself by not actually doing that much snorkeling. I think I got a bit put off by my lack of ability to focus. Also, I can’t remember if I mentioned this in any of my Zurich blogs, but I’ve been trying to learn to do the front crawl, so I’ve been concentrating more on that.

I’ve used my Suunto Ambit3 Sport watch which has GPS to find out how far I’ve swum. It’s a bit off-putting swimming in the open water because you lose track of where you are when your head is stuck in the water most of the time. I’ve often found myself careering off into the middle of the sea instead of swimming along the coastline or, conversely, suddenly touching the ground because I’ve veered off back onto the beach.

I finally discovered that using the pause button would make the watch record your last bit of swimming as a lap and then you can have a rest or try a different technique for the next bit and still have a log of how you were doing before. Although I was pleased to have worked this out, the results have been a bit disappointing.

Initially, I was really proud of myself for building up my distance fairly quickly. It took me ages and ages to do 50m easily in Zurich and after that I had the occasional success at 100m and 150m, but they were not anything I could consistently do. Back in El Andalous, I’d swim my best and find I’d only done 90m. However, one day, something just “clicked”. It was almost like I decided not to get so uptight and just relax, and then I found myself doing 350m in one go, shortly after that I did around 500m, and then eventually 1km. I feel 1km is a fairly reasonable distance.

I’ve stopped going further than 1km at the moment and have been trying to improve my technique instead (but keeping to the 1km distance each day, plus or minus 10%). Although I feel theoretically my stroke must be getting better (I have fewer bubbles, I think I’m pulling harder), my speed is getting slower rather than faster, which is a bit depressing. I don’t know if I’m doing something wrong, or if it’s just a matter of needing practice. At the moment my breast stroke is still faster than my crawl and the whole point of learning crawl was to be able to do longer distance public swims that require you to do crawl in order to complete the distance in the time required. I’m not meeting that aim at this point in time!

I’m also still not good enough at the crawl to be able to say I really enjoy it, like I do breast stroke. With breast stroke, it’s like a gentle stroll in the park, whereas the crawl feels like running a marathon. I feel good afterwards, and I’m not absolutely dead at the end of it, but by the time I’ve completed the distance, I’m definitely glad to stop. I think it’s like how 50m used to feel, so I guess in time, I’ll get used to it and can then progress again.