El Andalous - Trying out the Pool

El Andalous - Larger Pool

Well, it seems that 2019 is all about trying out different swimming pools. Hmm, I guess you could use that as a metaphor for trying out different things in life, since it seems that many people around me are going through a year of change this year.

Anyway, I arrived back in El Andalous and went to the beach (as you do). I’d been looking forward to swimming in the sea and revisiting all my fish friends, but as I dipped my feet in the water, it was just too cold. Either that, or I’m becoming more and more of a wimp. Or I was tired after my flight and not able to stand the stress of submersing myself in water that was less than warm. It was disappointing because I’d come back in May specifically because the sea is usually warmer by then.

Later in the week, Nicole informed me that temperatures had been only 22-23 degrees in the preceding weeks, so I guess the sea hadn’t had time to warm up. On the day of my arrival, and every day since, it’s been around 30 degrees each day, but the sea is a large expanse and won’t warm up immediately. The lake in Zurich can quite often be warmer in the afternoon than in the morning, but that’s not really so with the sea.

So, on that first day, I just sat and read on the beach instead. On the way back to my flat, I dipped my foot into the water in our pool, and it felt OK. The following day was a bit cloudy and I couldn’t come over here and not swim, so I decided to try out the pool.

I’ve been here almost 6 years now and I’ve never used our pool. Now I think about it, that’s quite astonishing. People have recommended it to me, but I’ve turned my nose up at it, saying it’s too small for a proper swim. But now I needed to swim, I didn’t want to try the sea again if it was cloudy, and so I decided that even though the pool was small, I could still use it to do drills and to perfect my technique.

The water was a lovely temperature – I’d guess about 27 degrees (heated by the sun). And, to my surprise, it ended up being a lot larger than I thought it was. I used GPS on the first day to measure how long it was, and the GPS seemed to indicate it was about 24 metres long. The next day, I set my watch to pool setting (setting the size at 24m) rather than open water swim setting. However, my swimming statistics were way out so I decided that my 24m estimate must be wrong. Eventually, I settled on the length being around 30m; my strokes per length and speed were then roughly in proportion to what I swim in a 25m pool. Wow, 30m. That’s bigger than my local pool and the Kloten pool! All these years I’ve been maligning the pool as inadequate for my purposes and actually it’s been ideal.

So, I’m now fully converted to using the pool whenever it’s cloudy or rather windy. I’m loving the extra flexibility of choice. Even better, I often have the pool to myself, which is a real luxury. Its shape is rather curvy (which probably makes it look smaller) and there’s no line on the bottom, so it’s a good place to discover whether I’m managing to swim in a straight line or whether I have an unbalanced stroke. I often end up careering to one side or the other, so it really is useful to try it out and spot my deficiencies in my stroke.

On some days, there are people there and it’s been a place also to get talking to some other people. I met the wife of our accountant in there and got talking to a doctor (who I already knew) who owns a flat here. However, it’s always empty at some point in the day and even when it’s cloudy here, it’s perfectly warm, so I can swim and dry off with no problem. It’s also just outside my flat, I can go from my flat just in my dressing gown as I don’t leave our building’s premises, and I don’t need to wear my swimming shoes / Crocs. It’s absolutely perfect. What a discovery!