swim practice... here's hoping i don't drown, or take anyone else down with me!

Here's the thing about me and swimming. The nearest swimming pool to where I grew up was 100 kms away. I grew up "swimming" in ponds and creeks and lakes... full of fishes and leaches and weeds and tadpoles. This swimming involved a lot of wading and splashing around, it involved some floating, and a reasonable amount of head-decidedly-above-the-water swimming.

It wasn't until my family moved to the city when I was 16 that I actually learned to swim. I promptly dove into the pool, with poorly fitting goggles, and washed several hundred dollars worth of contact lenses out of my eyes... You might imagine how my mother felt about that. It also made it very difficult to see what the swim instructor was telling us to do. But I persevered. I became an okay swimmer. Comfortable in the water, at least.

I've been an intermittent splasher since then, having never really developed a LOVE for swimming.

Smacking my face on some rocks, getting pinned under a boat and almost drowning (bleeding into a river full of crocodiles, I might add!!) in the mid-90s has done little to inspire and motivate me to get my head back in the water.

Tonight, that changes... tonight I face my fears.